Aguia drill rigs roll in Colombia to chase gold bonanza
Aguia Resources has fired up the diamond rigs at its high-grade Santa Barbara gold project in Colombia with a 25-hole, 2500-metre program designed to unlock a potentially huge discovery in the system's rich mesothermal vein network.
The company will also pepper the existing stockwork to clear a path for expanded underground production and set the stage for a maiden JORC resource towards the end of the year.
Definition drilling will follow up on known mineralised zones at the Santa Barbara and Mariana workings, some already with shallow underground access. The company says the holes will typically be less than 100m deep and chase the Santa Barbara main vein and an associated structure known as Vein 2.
Deeper holes will then test the system's downdip potential.
'The real speculative appeal comes from the possibility that we could be sitting on a large high-grade gold resource.'
Aguia Resources executive chairman Warwick Grigor
Aguia says confirmation of both grade and continuity at depth and along strike is the first item on its wish list, which will underpin its resource modelling and development plans.
The rig will then push deeper into discovery mode, shifting the focus to a broader exploration blitz across a 7-kilometre stretch of mapped surface veins.
The hunt is on to uncover repetitions and extensions of Santa Barbara's main mineralised structures - and if the bit hits paydirt, Aguia could be staring down a geological jackpot.
The program is being guided by an in-house 3D structural model that has already hinted at a northerly trending domino-style fault system, which likely offsets and repeats the high-grade veins. The model has proven its worth, with artisanal workings turning up exactly where the geologists predicted and opening up a promising new southwest extension of the system.
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