Royal Road Minerals to expand drilling campaign at Colombian project

Guintar-Niverengo concession area. (Image courtesy of Royal Road Minerals).

The Regional Autonomous Corporation of Antioquia Corantioquia, in northwestern Colombia, has approved Royal Road Minerals’ (TSXV: RYR) plan to conduct further drilling on the mining concession contracts IJN-14221, known as Guintar, and IJN-11331, known as Niverengo.

In a press release, the Jersey-based company said that the Guintar and Niverengo concession contracts are contiguous title areas totalling approximately 2,254 hectares and located on Royal Road’s “Northern Block” in the Anza mining district.

 The titles were acquired through Royal Road’s purchase of Northern Colombia Holdings, an affiliate of AngloGold Ashanti

The titles were acquired through Royal Road’s purchase of Northern Colombia Holdings, an affiliate of AngloGold Ashanti.

“The Guintar title area covers an artisanal mining district with more than 50 known historic underground adits developed on steeply dipping east-west oriented gold mineralized vein structures,” the European miner said in the media brief.

“Outcrop on the neighboring Niverengo title area is limited and so AGA’s drilling was focused on a 2000 by 800 meter wide target zone identified primarily using ground magnetic data, IP-geophysical data, and soil geochemical results. Drill core revealed that gold mineralization at Niverengo is hosted in pyrrhotite-pyrite-silica-calcite breccias, veins and fractures which are oriented at a high-angle to bedding in a well-laminated black-grey shale sequence.”

Royal Road said it believes that there is potential for higher-grade bulk-tonnage targets at depth, as sheeted vein structures or hydrothermal breccia in strongly hornfelsed host rocks at Guintar and possibly associated with concealed high-grade hydrothermal breccias beneath the gold mineralized shale package at Niverengo.

“We have completed an initial reinterpretation of drill-core, geophysics and geology at Guintar-Niverengo and we are excited by the potential for underlying, possibly higher-grade, bulk-tonnage vein and breccia bodies located beneath strong hornfels alteration at Guintar and below the gold mineralized shale package at Niverengo,” Tim Coughlin, Royal Road Minerals president and CEO, said in the media statement. “We have more field and core studies to complete before locating the next round of drill holes, but we expect to commence drilling before end Q1, 2020.”