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El Tigre Sets The Silver Ball Rolling
By Claire O'Connor and James West
MidasLetter.com
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
El Tigre Silver Corp. (TSX.V: ELS) has started its work program on its El Tigre Property, located in Sonora, Mexico. Initially discovered in 1903, the El Tigre Property has a recorded production of approximately 75 million ounces of silver and possibly as much as 400,000 ounces of gold. The way El Tigre sees it; the property produced in the past, now they’re putting their all into developing production for the future.
A serious feather in the Company’s cap comes in the form of consulting geologist, Eugene K. Schmidt. As well as having 35 years experience in the mining industry, Schmidt actually worked on the El Tigre Property in the early 1980’s as project manager during a work program carried out by Anaconda Mining. When Midas Letter asked El Tigre President and CEO Stuart Ross how he managed such a fortuitous move, Ross replied:
“That was serendipitous. We were at the PDAC and he (Gene) showed up at our booth. We found out he’d worked on El Tigre in the 80’s, he wasn’t working on anything at that minute, I asked him if he would consider the job of Consulting Geologist and after due consideration he said he’d do it”.
The addition of Schmidt to Ross’ team of course boosts the Company’s exploration progress significantly.
“We believe his experience at the El Tigre property will allow our work program to progress at a substantially quicker pace.” Ross said, “and we expect his knowledge of the geology of the area and property to be invaluable as we move forward with our exploration of the area.”
Schmidt was also able to provide the Company with some background regarding Anaconda’s swift halt to exploration back in 1983 It was a head office decision. Anaconda had been acquired by a much larger company, Atlantic Richfield. The latter ordered the former to cease all exploration as changing economics in Mexico and internal changes in corporate priorities.significantly in a short period of time. .
“This group on site were running a drift and actually walked away when they were about fifty meters from a high grade drill target”, Ross states incredulously. “Fifty meters away and they walked away from it! I think this area needs to be reviewed.”
El Tigre’s Game Plan
With Schmidt on board, and confidence in the potential of the property soaring, progress has been swift - especially since the reinstatement of trading on March 9, 2010. Since a National Instrument 43-101 report was completed on the property on November 29, 2009, the Company has been reviewing an amalgamation of all the historical data from the work completed on the property by Anaconda Mining in the early 1980’s along with data collected from other sources.
The end result will be an electronically accessible database of all the relevant historical information from which they can more accurately evaluate the potential and known mineralization of the property.
The company has also commenced the rehabilitation of roads on site and have cleared a site for the camp. The many of the original 22 Anaconda drill holes have been relocated and marked for reference.
The Tale of El Tigre
The El Tigre Property is a property with an impressive history. The El Tigre Property is currently comprised of nine mining concessions covering approximately 43,000 hectares which not only covers the original El Tigre mine site which is approximately 321 hectares, but a larger area of other potential prospects throughout the district. Discovered around 1900 by Lucky Tiger Combination Gold Mining Company, the original El Tigre Mine recorded an estimated production of 75 million ounces of silver and possibly as much as 400,000 ounces of gold from 1904 to 1939 (Thoms, 1988).
The narrow, high-grade veins have been traced for more than three kilometers, but modern exploration and development has been conducted mainly in a small area of the El Tigre Property. Since the initial discovery was made in 1903, no evidence exists that any modern exploration techniques have been directed to the evaluation of the potential for exploitable gold mineralization. The real potential for the property lies not in the high grade veins but in low grade silver mineralization found between the El Tigre and Seitz-Kelly veins and in low grade gold values outcropping on Gold Hill.
Anaconda Cut El Tigre’s Corners
Virtually no work was completed on the El Tigre Property from this time until the early 1980s when Anaconda and Compania Minera Talaman S.A. de C.V., a company now owned by El Tigre, completed work programs to prepare the district for modern mining. A district-scale exploration program conducted mine and topographic surveying that resulted in first rate topographic maps district-wide, detailed Anaconda-style geological mapping of the surface and underground workings at scales ranging from 1:500 to 1:10,000 scale, diamond drilling of the vein structures with 22 holes totaling 7,812 meters, 352 meters of exploration drifting along the Fundadora vein, drill core and sampling analysis, road rebuilding from Esqueda, drill pad road construction, petrographic studies of the rock types, metallurgical studies and engineering for tailings reprocessing, , air photo coverage and production of land-controlled photogrammetric base maps. It has been estimated that the cost of this work today would be over $10 million (Bradbury, 2007).
Rudimentary geologic analysis of that data revealed high-grade vein targets, but they were unable to identify a resource that was of interest to Anaconda. However in their summary report on the project by Anaconda, J.A. Thoms (1988) stated that “In the Tigre Mine area, deeper extensions of productive veins and fault offsets, particularly related to the Fortuna fault, remain prime exploration targets.”
Most importantly, Anaconda's work produced a solid base of knowledge from which to continue exploration of the district. Rigorous geologic analysis of project data reveals a number of high-grade vein targets on the property. As well, it appears that a substantial target of +10 ounces per tonne of silver ore remains standing in the mine, as the cutoff grade in the old El Tigre Mine was about 10 ounces per tonne silver. It does not appear that Anaconda fully addressed that potential.
“Over the 35 years, with that cut off grade, they would be throwing rock back in the mine, backfilling it with 10 oz per ton rock. So there’s an enormous amount of potential in the mine.” Ross comments.
El Tigre Picks El Tigre
Ross explains how the property caught the company’s eye:
“We found it when we were looking at the tailings that were the result of the 35 years of mining, and in researching the tailings, we researched the mine. In doing that, we determined that there was more opportunity in the mine than in the tailings. That came from the reports that Anaconda did on the property. From our perspective, what’s compelling is that El Tigre was a past producer. It’s possible that it could be producing again. We’d like to go back in and re-prove what Anaconda did. Anaconda had high grade targets and low grade targets but the low grade were bulk underground, they were huge. There’s also the possibility of production; production through tailings, and production through what’s actually left un-mined."
Optimum Position
El Tigre is in an optimum position with the El Tigre Property right now. The process of digitizing the historical data underway, Consulting Geologist Schmidt is already on the ground in Mexico, road building has already begunand equipment has been contracted to continue the road reconstruction process at the mine site. The company intends to be in a position to review its alternative targets in the very near term.
“We’ll have budgets for each proposed target,” Ross commented, “And after review of the alternatives we will prioritize those targets. What’s different about El Tigre Silver Corp. is we’ve been able to move quicker than most - it was an existing mine, we have our ConsultingGeologist who knows more about the property than anybody, there’s no learning curve.”
Follow El Tigre’s progress at www.eltigresilvercorp.com.
Disclosure: A fee has been paid for the production and distribution of this article and as such should be viewed in the context of advertising.
SOURCE: http://www.midasletter.com/news/100601_Eltigre-gets-the-silver-ball-rolling.php
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