Mining’s old guard needs strong medicine
A new report details subpar investor returns in the mining industry over the last decade, particularly big cap diversified companies which have not adapted to new realities.
Canadian junior mineral exploration and development company Westridge Resources (TSX-V:WST) is living up to its ‘Midas’ touch’ reputation among market watchers, after the company announced today it has extended high grades in the El Padre Vein, at its gold/silver Charay Project (pronounced “cha-rye”) in Mexico.
The relatively new company said it also intersected high-grade veins not previously known even though it has explored far less than 1% of the property.
“With each step of our exploration, this district simply continues to get larger and respond with high grade results,” Robert Barker, geologist and board member said in a press release. “We are eager to initiate a larger, more aggressive drill program to start to properly test the large number of targets in this growing gold system.”
Westridge Resources has attracted investor support since its beginnings in 2010, mostly due to successes at Charay.
The company signed an agreement in principle to acquire Charay from Musgrove Minerals in May 2011, after due diligence by CEO Peter Schulhof and his team.
The Charay property is classified as a low sulphidation, epithermal, gold-silver quartz vein with low base-metal content. An epithermal vein forms near the Earth’s surface when hydrothermal fluids related to volcanism flow upward along earthquake faults.
Schulhof said the Charay system bears resemblances to the underground gold-silver El Peñón Mine, operated by Yamana Gold. The mine is located in northern Chile, about 160 kilometres southeast of Antofagasta.
“El Peñón is a very well-known mine in Chile. The epithermal system is very similar to ours. Its cover is a little bit thicker than ours but it is also in a flat-ish type area. The cut away on their vein and cut away on our vein are extremely similar.
“When you look at El Peñón, it started as a little 300m anomaly and nobody quite understood it. Gold was $250/oz. It was really hard to fathom whether it was worth spending money on it or not, because gold was really not that valuable and over time it was too irresistible and they kept working at it and working at it. As they worked at it, it grew into another vein and another vein. They realized they had enough mineralization to start mining. In the last decade, they pulled out 3 million oz.”
For more information about Westridge Resources, please read MINING.com’s profile on the company.
To learn more about today’s release, check the official release.
(Photo: Major Drilling in Mexico at work)
