Blog

Drilling continues at both the North Zone and Brasiles.  At the North Zone, we focus on following the mineralization along strike and to depth below the Santo Tomas ridge.  We seek to minimize our impact on the environment and to get the best use of old road building that runs along the flanks of the ridge.  Therefore, we push our step-out drilling northward and southward at once.

Rig #1 completed drilling hole N019 at the northern extremity of the new drilling, testing the North Zone deposit at depth below N009, and N016.  Next, we will move this rig further north to test another increment of the deposit northward and to depth in another 2 to 4 drill holes, progressing up to 300m northward along strike and to depth.

Rig #2 began drilling hole N020 last week at the southern extremity of the new drilling.  Drilling continues. N020 is collared in an area blanketed by young volcanic rocks that conceal the North Zone deposit.  This drilling is a full 200m south of the fence drilled by N017 and N015.  Our geological modelling shows that the historical drilling near this location only “clipped” the North Zone mineralization.  Drilling here will test the full width of our targeted North Zone body.

N020 has now encountered strongly altered volcanic and intrusive rocks at the predicted depth and we are “on schedule” with this test.  Core intervals are presently being logged and prepared for core splitting.  Overall, the Santo Tomas deposit is a very large, tabular body of Laramide age intrusive dikes into altered andesites. Mineralization is comprised of pyrite, chalcopyrite, bornite, covellite, and molybdenite in veins, fractures and disseminations.  

Rig #3, is located in Brasiles.  The rig completed drilling of the southern portion of a linear zone of intrusion and alteration in limestone and andesite.  B006 was located 200m south of B005.  The road building is now complete, and we are stepping 400 m north of our first holes in this Brasiles West zone.  A B007 test at this location will extend our testing of Brasiles West to a full 900 m of strike length.

Geologists examining core at Ranchito

Shipping more cut core

Receiving pulps

May 30 Twitter Post:  https://twitter.com/OrocoCorp/status/1531370323957800960?s=20&t=jM_Wu_6k9HG_upL7rSNuQA

Copper May Be One of the Tightest Markets In History - https://bloomberg.com/news/audio/2022-05-27/copper-may-be-one-of-the-tightest-markets-in-history-podcast

Nick Snowden, Goldman Sachs - " An environment where we hit peak copper supply within the next 2 years and there's a complete absence of fresh investment coming into the sector and so after that peak supply it is trending into an open-ended contraction. So you have this clear...tightening tension between the boom in demand tied to the green transition and really a complete lack of growth coming from a supply side"

In response, "prices are going to go absolutely ballistic to the upside."

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