Minera Irl (LON:MIRL) , the Latin American focused gold mining group, has reported a new set of drill data from ongoing exploration work at its Escondido project in Patagonia, Argentina. A discovery was made at Escondido last September and since then the company has been working to identify the limits of the gold and silver mineralisation. Initial drilling identified wide zones of potentially bulk minable gold and silver mineralisation, contiguous to the Las Calandrias Project, which is owned by the company’s neighbour, Mariana (LON:MARL) . More encouraging assay intersections have now been received from the widely spaced second-pass scout drilling programme carried out in December 2010. The Minera IRL share price gained 4.5p on the news to leave it trading at 97p.

The latest drill programme has confirmed that mineralisation extends over almost 700 metres of strike from the northern tenement boundary and remains open-ended toward both the east and south-east. Assay results have been received from nine new widely spaced holes into the Northern Breccia trend. The best intersections into the bulk tonnage target area include hole E-D10-020 with 33.5 meters grading 0.89 grams per ton (g/t) gold and 2.83g/t silver including 10.2 meters of 1.83g/t gold and 4.45 g/t silver. Elsewhere, hole E-D10-24 encountered 17.0 meters grading 1.13g/t gold and 8.23g/t silver.

Results have also been received from an extended IP Gradient Array geophysical survey which shows a wide resistivity anomaly over the remaining 900 meters of untested ground between the current drilling and the eastern boundary of the Escondido tenement block. A substantial, chargeability anomaly coincident with the resistivity has also been identified. The company said the extended geophysics had provided “another excellent drill target” for a 4,000 metre diamond drill programme about to begin this month.

Courtney Chamberlain, the executive chairman of Minera IRL, said: “The recent drill results provide a significant step forward in progressing our immediate objective of probing the limits of mineralisation on the Escondido Northern Breccia trend. A new fence of holes to the south east has confirmed continuity of gold/silver mineralisation along strike of a newly defined chargeability high within a broad resistivity geophysical anomaly. This confirms a strong probability for disseminated sulphide mineralisation within a silicified zone giving us another excellent target for the pending drilling programme.” Click here to read a…

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