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Gold/Mining/Energy : Mining News of Note -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LoneClone who wrote (36609)	5/6/2009 9:50:30 AM
From: LoneClone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 195618

Maybe Courtney Chamberlain Of Minera IRL Will Sprinkle A Little Stardust On The Upcoming Listing Of Catalina Resources By Charles Wyatt minesite.com Catalina Resources is a small mining company with a big plan. Its managing director Peter Bridges is going to list the company later this year and when he come to market he will be remembered for his role at Greenwich Resources with its assets in Greece. That was before Robert Champion de Crespigny’s Scarborough Minerals acquired the company and well before Scarborough merged with Keith Liddell’s Mineral Securities. De Crespigny and Liddell planned to build a resource investment house based in London, but the subsequent deal with CopperCo was a step too far and the whole thing went down the pan. Needless to say Peter was well away by that time and Catalina, with its assets in Chile, is the fruit of work he has been doing since then. At the moment it has two assets and the latest news is that Courtney Chamberlain of Minera IRL has an option to acquire a 75 per cent interest in Catalina’s La Falda project in Chile. Minera IRL has been one of the best performers on Aim during these difficult times, after Courtney pulled off a masterstroke when he brought its Corihuami gold project in Peru into production within budget and ahead of schedule. On the principle that a man is known by the company he keeps Peter Bridges should benefit in more ways than one from this deal as there is no doubt that Courtney will have done his homework meticulously. The deal agreed between Courtney and Peter is that Catalina was advanced US$200,000 once the letter of intent was signed and this will be used to pay for vendor and mining lease payments that are becoming due, as well as for an immediate follow-up geophysical programme to be completed before the beginning of the winter season. Minera IRL has also paid a US$50,000 signing fee and once the definitive agreement is signed - which has to be before the end of August - Minera IRL will start an exploration and drilling programme at a cost ogf at least US$700,000 over the next year. Once that has been completed Minera IRL will be in a position to exercise its option and, if it does so, will pay another US$2.3 million to be used for the final vendor payment and/or exploration. Thereafter it will make a further payment of US$200,000 to Catalina to acquire its 75 per cent interest in the La Falda gold project. La Falda consists of mining and exploration permits totalling 15,425 hectares on the Maricunga Belt in north central Chile. These cover a number of epithermal gold targets as well as a series of sub-volcanic porphyries which Catalina discovered recently. Surface sampling has also recorded elevated gold values associated with veins of multiple banded light and dark grey quartz. This style of mineralization is said to similar to that of other porphyries on this Belt, such as Kinross’s Maricunga mine, and the Volcan deposit owned by Andina Minerals. The focus of interest, however, is on two outcropping porphyry domes which have never been explored before. One of these is about 800 metres in diameter and on which a ground magnetic survey delineated weak magnetic highs flanked and cut by strong magnetic lows. Again, this is similar to the magnetic pattern displayed by other Maricunga porphyry systems, so Peter Bridges got Jeffrey Hedenquist, a well known expert on epithermal and porphyry copper–gold deposits, to take a look. He sent in a report in February 2008 which read as follows, “These observations indicate that the very top of the porphyry intrusions is exposed with both Central and Norte host to banded quartz veins typical of the Maricunga Belt. Vertical intervals in these deposits are at least 300 metres”. This is geological speak from an expert who is staking his reputation by saying “You’ve got a big one, and maybe two.” Catalina’s other project, Kahuna, contains a series of vein hosted cobalt, copper and gold targets along strike from the old Carrizal Alto copper mines down on the Coastal Ranges of the same region. Two targets have priority at the moment. The first is around a contact zone between metamorphic rocks and a diorite extrustion where drilling has intersected grades of 0.5% cobalt with associated copper. The second is the southwest extension of the vein system that was mined at Carrizal Alto where historic production reached of three million tonnes at an average grade of 5% copper. In fact both copper and cobalt were produced from ore shoots in a suite of veins worked to a depth of 500 metres. La Falda will be the main talking point when Catalina lists. The primary exploration target is a multi million ounce near surface gold porphyry with associated epithermal gold-silver mineralization. Credit to Peter Bridges and his team for recognising it, and credit to Courtney Chamberlain for moving fast to get an earn-in agreed before the big boys got moving.