(TSQ-V ) In mining, as with other types of real estate, it’s often all about location. This seems especially true for Tosca Mining (TSQ-V), which is currently advancing the Carol Project in the southern Sonora State of Mexico.
The company has an option to earn a 100% interest in the Carol property by paying Alta Vista Ventures a total of $50,000, issuing one million shares to Alta Vista as well as performing $2.2 million in expenditures on the property within five years.
For Tosca Mining President Ron Shenton, what distinguishes his project from many others being developed is simply a matter of risk versus reward.
“We’ve had the good fortune of finding a property next to the third-largest copper mine (Invecture Group’s Piedras Verdes mine) in Mexico,” Mr. Shenton said, adding that the Carol property is road accessible, near to power and water sources, and that by spending a small amount of money on it he believes Tosca will be able to attract the interest of its much larger copper mining neighbour.
Mr. Shenton asserted that his company has no aspirations or desires at this time to take the property into production by itself but instead “groom” it as quickly as possible to a level where it can approach its neighbour in the hope of working together. This could involve such activities as sending the ore from Carol and running it through its neighbour’s mill (bringing their head grade up).
“The Carol property appears to be a fairly high-grade skarn-type deposit containing copper, silver, gold, and zinc. One of our best trenches, which is in the southern part of project, graded 0.86% copper and just over 16 grams per tonne silver over a width of 48 metres,” says Jonathan George, a Director of Tosca Mining as well as a consulting geologist and past President and CEO of Alpha Minerals Inc. In his opinion this is an “exceptional” trench value, adding that there was 17 trenches done in the past, many of which showed values of more than 1% of copper equivalent widespread over an area of more than a kilometre by 800 metres.
To put that into perspective, Mr. George claims that the worldwide average copper grade for an economic open-pit mine is 0.25% to 0.3%, and while it’s too soon to determine the parameters of Tosca’s Carol project he says that most of the mineralization it has found to date has been near surface. He also pointed out that the neighbouring Piedras Verdes mine is producing economically at an average grade of 0.36% copper.
With the closing of its most recent financing, Tosca plans to drill about six holes of approximately 100 metres per hole at a cost of “a couple hundred thousand dollars,” according to George.
Seeing that Tosca Mining currently has a mere 17 million shares outstanding (approximately 25 million fully diluted), some good drill results could spark its share price.
Although more drilling will be needed for Tosca to take its next significant steps forward, the company is encouraged by its progress so far. |
