Orinoco Gold Continues to Report Outstanding Grades, Visible Gold at Cascavel, Brazil

Today was another exceptional news day for Australia’s Orinoco Gold (ASX:OGX). Not only did the company receive further “outstanding” assay results from its Brazil-based Cascavel gold project, but those results were obtained from “very shallow depths.” That means bonanza-grade Cascavel will likely be the near-term, low-cost project Orinoco has been hoping for.

According to Monday’s press release, the “[b]onanza grade nature of Cascavel [was] confirmed following the receipt of outstanding assay results from very shallow depths from the recently commenced exploration decline at Cascavel.” To date, the highest-grade assay results taken from contiguous, half-meter square samples on the wall of the decline have returned 5.73 meters at 113.3 grams per tonne (g/t) gold at roughly 21 meters from surface, with the highest-grade panel sample from the most recent batch indicating 0.5 meters at 842 g/t.

Those are not the only significant results that have been put out from Orinoco of late. The exploration decline commenced only recently — at the end of April — for Cascavel. Just two weeks later, Orinoco reported bulk sample results indicating an average grade of 27.2 g/t gold, and a month after that, the company put out a release stating that “[v]isible gold has frequently been observed in the decline.”

Monday’s press release, “provide[s] further strong evidence of the potential for significant, structurally controlled shear zone hosted gold mineralisation from very shallow depths at Cascavel,” and notes that “visible gold continues to be evident past the point of the reported assays.”

Orinoco’s managing director, Mark Papendieck, said in the release, “[t]hese results, together with the information we have gained from drilling and bulk sampling support our view that Cascavel is a substantial high-grade gold system with outstanding near-term development potential.”

Orinoco is currently targeting two prospects in Brazil as part of its 70-percent-owned Faina Goldfields project — the Eliseo prospect and the Cascavel prospect. However, Cascavel is the more advanced of the two, and according to Orinoco’s May press release, the company is hoping to provide high-grade ore from Cascavel to a central processing plant to be located near the fully permitted Sertão gold mine.

As Papendieck also stated, “[w]e continue to be pleasantly surprised by the extent of the high-grade mineralization so close to surface which may be amenable to extraction via low-cost gravity methods. In addition to continuing to evaluate potential underground mining scenarios possible with our existing licensing arrangements, the exploration decline is showing that there is plenty of potential for an open put at Cascavel.” Orinoco is currently stockpiling ore removed from the exploration decline at Cascavel, and continues to delineate additional high-grade shoots and to evaluate the best mining method for the prospect.

The company has only just commenced exploration at Cascavel, and as such has yet to formally define a resource. However, with all of the high-grade results coming out of Cascavel so far — and given the fact that Orinoco is already removing and stockpiling ore — the company is certainly one that gold investors may want to watch.

At close of day on Monday, shares of Orinoco Gold were up 12.24 percent, selling for AU$0.11 each.

Securities Disclosure: I, Teresa Matich, hold no investment interest in any companies mentioned in this article. 

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