New Money For Oro Silver Means Drilling To Increase The Size Of The El Compas Project In Mexico Can Now Get Underway
By Alastair Ford
minesite.com
It’s not been easy getting hold of Oro Silver’s Darren Bahrey lately. That’s been not because, like many a small cap mining company president in this market, he’s switched out all the lights and gone home until the financial turmoil blows over. To be sure, Oro Silver has made cutbacks, and has actually taken the hard decision to all but drop one of the two lead projects that it had such hopes for last year. But work carries on apace on the other one, the El Compas Mine in Zacatecas, Mexico. What’s more, Oro’s cash position is about to be boosted by C$500,000 in new funds, meaning that even if activity is curtailed, it’s by no means ground to a halt. No, the reason it’s been hard to get hold of Darren recently is because he’s been spending so much time out in the field in Zacatecas, working out drilling schedules, and indeed a whole new geological concept for El Compas, that he doesn’t get to spend much time back in the office.
But his investor relations team does a fair job of keeping in touch with the markets during his absence. And as soon he gets back to Vancouver and finds a message on his answering machine from Minesite, he’s straight on the phone and into a conversation about the latest developments at El Compas, the decision to off-load the Vetagrande silver project into a private company, and much else besides. As far as Vetagrande is concerned, says Darren, “it’s not over”. Oro will maintain links to developments there through a private company that’s been specially formed for the task. But even if it was a hard decision to let Vetagrande go, Darren has no doubts that it was the right thing to do. The world does look a better place now than it did in December, when the Vetagrande option was terminated, but there’s more to it than that. In December Oro also renegotiated the terms of the payment structure on its acquisition of El Compas, to the mutual satisfaction of both parties, and Darren remains keen on El Compas to the extent that when investors ask what Oro would be doing if the economic climate was much more favourable than it actually is, he says: “we would focus only on the El Compas Mine”.
Partly, he explains, that’s because - Oro Silver’s own name notwithstanding - El Compas contains a substantial amount of gold, and Darren’s bullish on gold. He’s bullish on silver too, so given that El Compas is officially described as “a gold-silver mining property” in the statements that accompanied the announcement of the renegotiated payment structure, it seems to tick all the right boxes. It might be big, too, although quite how big isn’t yet clear. Across the valley, though, the success of Mag Silver, serves both as an example of what can be achieved, and as encouragement to exponents of that favourite minefinders methodology, nearology. Not that El Compas is completely new. It’s already been a mine, although because of severe failings in the processing and plant operated by the former owner, not an altogether successful one. Darren’s in little doubt that El Compas could be restarted fairly quickly, given the right funding. “The surface rights are locked up, we’re getting the permits in place, the only component that’s missing is: what is the preferred milling option?”
Right now though, partly because there isn’t money for a new mill, the focus will be on exploration around the old mine. “I think we need to test some of the outlying targets to show the market that we are in a district”, says Darren. His thinking is that the more silver and gold ounces his planned drill programme can come up with, the more El Compas is likely to tempt in new money. “We have 10 targets in the district”, he explains, before expounding on the virtues of Zacatecas as an exploration destination in general. “Imagine being in Nevada thirty to forty years ago”. The plan is to test other veins that are out there, and also, or perhaps especially, to drill down at some depth, as Darren’s own idea is that there might be huge mineralization below what’s already known at El Compas. The first indications as to whether he’s right or not won’t be too long in coming. “The plan would be to have assays back before summer sets in”, he says. And, when the details are released to market, if Darren so happens to be out in the field once again, it’ll mean plenty more work for the investor relations team. Hopefully, though, the news will be good - that’d surely make everybody’s job a whole lot easier. It wouldn’t do the company’s share price any harm either. |
