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 Wed Jan 19, 2000
Excerpt from Bottom-Fish Action for week of Jan 10-14, 2000
    Publisher: Kaiser Research Online
    Author: Copyright 2000 John A Kaiser

 Excerpt from Bottom-Fish Action for week of Jan 10-14, 2000

Altoro Gold Corp (ATG-V: $0.24)
Top 20 RS BF for 2000 ($0.30-$0.49)

Altoro Gold Corp (ATG-V) reported assays on January 12 for the first five holes, four from the Trapia West Zone and one from the Trapia One Zone. Of the 18 holes drilled (1,200 m) there are still three to come for Trapia West, two from the Ipueiras Zone and eight from the Esbarro area. In the Trapia West Zone hole #1 yielded 14.2 m of 1.2 g/t platinum and 0.9 g/t palladium, hole #2 yielded two intervals of 7.7 m of 0.6 g/t Pt and 0.6 g/t Pd and 23.1 m of 0.3 g/t Pt and 1.0 g/t Pd, hole #3 yielded 39.2 m of 0.5 g/t Pt and 0.9 g/t Pd, and hole #4 yielded 14.8 m of 0.5 g/t Pt and 1.2 g/t Pd. Hole #2 was 50 metres east of #1 and 25 metres west of #3 for a strike length of 75 metres. The mineralization was intersected at shallow depths by the angled holes and represents a better picture of true width than the corresponding trenches on surface. The market reacted negatively, perhaps because it was hoping for spectacular holes, but as I warned in an earlier comment, a platinum-palladium orebody at Pedra Branca will have to be "made", not "discovered". If there is any disappointment in these results it is in the fact that the average combined Pt-Pd grade of hole #2 was only about 1.2 g/t compared to the 40 m of 5.2 g/t trenched at surface. The 2.1 g/t combined grade for hole #1 compared well with the 43.4 metre trench of 1.8 g/t at surface. A good way for readers to put grades in an economic context is to assign a rock value of US $13 per gram based on a $400 average price for platinum and palladium. In other words, a grade of 1 g/t becomes interesting for a bulk mining scenario provided the mineralization has a shallow dip and the overlying waste rock is not large. At 3 g/t a rock value of US $40/t becomes very attractive for bulk mining. Altoro now controls 40 km of strike length. The PGM horizon is part of an easterly dipping sill complex. The exploration objective is to establish the continuity and grade consistency of the mienralized horizon which outcrops at the western margin of the sill complex. Again, to put the play into perspective, imagine that the zone has an average thickness of 15 metres and a downdip extension of 100 metres that is accessible by open pit mining. At a specific gravity of 2.8 every 100 metres of strike length would represent 420,000 tonnes of ore, or, let's say 400,000 tonnes for simplicity's sake. If this zone were continuous along the entire 40 km strike length the open-pittable geological resource would be 160 million tonnes. Obviously the zone will not be continuous everywhere, and the grade will vary significantly. Altoro's goal will be to identify the higher grade and thicker sections with the shallowest dip. The current program is intended to prove the geological model and fine tune Altoro's exploration tools so that it need not rely on brute force grid drilling to find the better zones. The junior's problem is that it does not have a big warchest in a hostile market that wants a sure thing scenario before it offers serious financing. If the remaining holes are not better and thereby improve the odds of success, Altoro will have a tough time financing further work without accepting heavy dilution.


 
 

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