Pinnacle Silver and Gold (PINN ) is all set to commence underground delineation drilling at the El Potrero project in Mexico.
The company said that rehabilitation and drill station preparation is sufficiently advanced to start work at the Pinos Cuates mine, where ten drill stations have been prepared on the two levels of the mine.
Three stations, for 21 holes and 409 metres have been prepared on the upper level, and seven stations, for 46 holes and 915 metres have been prepared on the main level.
In total 67 holes and 1,324 metres will be drilled.
As the drilling is conducted at Pinos Cuates, rehabilitation and drill station preparation will be completed at the Dos de Mayo mine, where six drill stations for 35 holes and 887 metres are planned.
At La Dura mine, four drill stations for six holes and 205 metres are planned. The entire program currently entails 2,416 metres in 108 NQ-size holes, subject to modifications as it progresses.
“The commencement of the underground drilling program at El Potrero is a major milestone, as it will significantly de-risk the project on the way towards a formal production decision later this year,” said Robert Archer, chief executive of Pinnacle.
“Our systematic underground channel sampling, consisting of almost 900 samples, gave us a good indication of the location and tenor of gold-silver mineralization, yielding individual assays up to 85.1 grams per tonne gold and 520 grams per tonne over 0.5 metres in the upper level of Pinos Cuates. Now the close-spaced drilling will give us a better sense of the overall size, shape and grade of the mineralized zones. Surface drilling is being planned to immediately follow the underground program and will fill in gaps between the mines in addition to testing along strike on the Dos de Mayo vein and other mineralized veins such as El Capulin and La Estrella. The combined results will then be used to generate an internal resource estimate that will, in turn, be used to develop a preliminary mine plan.”
View from Vox
This drilling programme has been hotly anticipated for some time as Pinnacle has methodically prepared the ground at El Potrero over the past year or so. Once the results start coming in we will begin to get a real insight into the potential on offer at El Potrero. So far, the signs have been very favourable. But they don’t call it the rotary truth machine for nothing. It’s a big moment.