The Kuru Tegerek deposit was discovered by Soviet geologists in 1963, and has undergone multiple campaigns of exploration, including surface sampling, mapping, geophysical surveys, trenching, drilling, and underground sampling. The deposit is a series of steeply dipping copper-gold skarn mineralized bodies that occur at the contact of a Carboniferous porphyritic diorite intrusion and lower Carboniferous carbonate units.
The “Southern”, “Northwestern”, and “Northeastern” copper-gold mineralized bodies comprise the main zone of mineralization. The Southern zone is the principal mineralized body, with dimensions of 400 meters along strike, variable thickness ranging from 100 meters to a complete wedging out, and 900 meters in down-dip extent. The upper portions of the deposits are oxidized, transitioning to mixed oxidesulfide and sulfide material at depth. The vertical extent of oxidation is variable.
The Southern and Northwestern mineralized bodies were explored during the Soviet era by various governmental agencies with over 7,200 meters of trenching, 16,000 meters of underground development and sampling, and 40,000 meters of core drilling. Exploration on the Northeastern zone was limited to surface exploration work. In 1980, the Central Asian Institute of Non-Ferrous Metals performed detailed studies of Kuru Tegerek and further exploration was discontinued in 1983. Further studies were conducted in 1995 by Mitsui Mining Company, and by a Kyrgyz-Russian joint venture in 1996.
The Kyrgyz Republic State Commission for Mineral Reserves reported the mineralized oxide material using the Soviet defined C1 and C2 resource categories (“Protocol Number 24, minutes of the session on the Upper Portion of the Kuru Tegerek Deposit”, unpublished government document, June 28, 2000). The Company is reporting the historical C1 and C2 estimates as originally stated in Table 1 below. Also reported were 1.71 million tonnes of “uneconomic” material with grades of 0.54 % copper and 0.69 g/t gold.
Between 1998 and 2000, Hemmco-Kyrgyzstan Corp. conducted additional work on Kuru Tegerek. Hemmco-Kyrgyzstan focused their work exclusively on the upper oxide zone of the Southern mineralized body. They drilled 115 in-fill core holes in 1999 at 25 to 30 meter spacing and contracted Pincock, Allen and Holt (PAH) to produce an updated study of Kuru Tegerek. From the Soviet era and Hemmco-Kyrgyzstan drilling and sampling PAH produced an updated “mineable resource” estimate that is summarized in Table 2 below (“Kuru Tegerek Deposit, Conceptual Project Analysis”, unpublished company document, May, 2001).
The Kuru Tegerek deposit has a long-lived and extensive history of exploration work and mining studies spanning over forty years. The Company is currently in the process of field verification and technical due diligence in preparation for filing a NI 43-101 Technical Report on the property in the upcoming months. The Company’s plan is to evaluate the exploration potential of the deposit and the surrounding area as well as to complete a scoping study to reevaluate the economics of the oxide portion of the Southern zone. This reevaluation is particularly important in light of current metal prices and improved extractive metallurgical processes for deposits of this nature. Kuru Tegerek represents a significant copper-gold mineralized deposit, and the Company looks forward to updating our understanding of the deposit’s resource potential during the current field season.
Mr. Dean Turner, P.Geo., a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and consultant to the Company, has reviewed and verified the technical mining information contained in this news release.
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For further information contact:
David M. Cole
President and Chief Executive Officer
Phone: (303) 979-6666
Email: dave@eurasianminerals.com
Website: www.eurasianminerals.com
Kim C. Casswell
Corporate Secretary
Phone: (604) 688-6390
Email: kcasswell@eurasianminerals.com
Website: www.eurasianminerals.com
The TSX Venture Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Forward-Looking Statement
Some of the statements in this news release contain forward-looking information that involves inherent risk and uncertainty affecting the business of Eurasian Minerals Inc. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements.