Cordoba Minerals Corp. is a mineral exploration company focused on making the next world class copper gold discovery in Colombia. The Company's San Matias Project is located on the northern extension of the prolific and richly endowed Mid Cauca Gold Belt. The Company has entered into a joint venture agreement with High Power Exploration Inc. ("HPX"), a company indirectly controlled by mining entrepreneur Robert Friedland, whereby HPX can earn up to a 65% interest in the San Matias Project by funding the Project and completing a feasibility study.
The San Matias Project covers over 20,000 hectares with ideal open pit topography. The project is situated near two operating open pit mines, on the national power grid, and easily accessible to paved national highways and roads
Projects
Highlights
- Located in northern part of the Mid Cauca Gold Belt, within the Department of Córdoba, Republic of Colombia, 200 km north of Medellin. Easily accessible by flight with paved and gravel road access to the project site.
Topography consists of rolling hills with a maximum altitude of approximately 200 metres above sea level.
Extensive land package covering most of the district -- current mining rights cover approximately 20,000 hectares (260 km2) with an additional 250,000 hectares under application.
Region is complex and richly endowed in mineralization -- within 30 kilometres there are two large operating open pit mines including Cerro Matoso (large Ni-laterite mine operated by South32) and Carbon del Caribe (coal mines operated by Argos).
Exploration project that hosts the Alacran near surface copper-gold skarn Deposit as well as several known areas of porphyry copper-gold mineralization including the discovery of two near surface copper-gold porphyries (Montiel and Costa Azul).
Ownership
- Two wholly owned Colombian subsidiaries hold 100% of the San Matias tenements while the Alacran Project is subject to an earn-in (see below).
The Alacran Option Agreement entitles the Company to purchase 100% of the tenements from Sociedad Ordinaria de Minas Omni ("OMNI") by completing the following commitments: - US$250,000 payment to OMNI on signing of the Binding Letter of Intent (LOI) and additional US$250,000 payments on completion of the Definitive Agreement and 24-month anniversary of signing the LOI
A 3,000-metre drill program to commence within 90 days and completion of a total of 8,000 metres within two years from signing of LOI
US$1,000,000 payment to OMNI on the 24-month anniversary of completion of the Definitive Agreement
Cordoba will file with the Colombian government for the relevant approvals to conduct activities of construction and commercial production at Alacran before June 30, 2018.
US$14,000,000 payment to OMNI when the environmental license and all other approvals, permits or licenses required to commence the construction and operation of a commercial mine at Alacran have been granted on a final basis by the Colombian government
OMNI will retain a 2% net smelter royalty with advance royalty payments of US$500,000 commencing three years after receipt of approvals to commence construction at Alacran or six years after filing for approval to commence construction at Alacran.
The entire San Matias Project, including Alacran, and an area of interest, is part of a Joint Venture Agreement ("Joint Venture") with High Power Exploration Inc. ("HPX"), a private mineral exploration company indirectly controlled by mining entrepreneur Robert Friedland, whereby HPX can earn up to a 65% interest in the project by carrying it to feasibility as follows: - Phase One HPX can earn a 25% interest by spending C$6 million (completed)
Phase Two HPX can earn a 51% interest by spending an additional C$10.5 million (completed)
Phase Three HPX can earn up to a 65% interest by the project through feasibility (current status)
Location
The San Matias Project is located in the Municipality of Puerto Libertador, Department of Córdoba, Republic of Colombia, about 200 km north of the city of Medellin. San Matias is easily accessible with a 40 minute flight to the Caucasia airport from Medellin, followed by a one hour drive to Puerto Libertador on paved roads and gravel road access to the project site. The mining rights cover approximately 20,000 hectares or about 200 square kilometres. The latitude and longitude are 7° 45' north, 75° 43' west, and the altitude is between 100 m and 170 m above mean sea level.
Project Overview
Cordoba's San Matias Project is an early stage exploration project on the recently interpreted northern extension of Colombia's Middle Cauca Belt. The Company is exploring a newly identified high grade copper gold district.
The Alacran Copper-Gold Project is located within a 390-hectare mining title (2.3 km x 1.7 km) in the northern central parts of the San Matias Project. The copper-gold mineralization is associated with stratabound replacement of a marine volcano-sedimentary geological sequence in the core of a faulted antiformal fold structure. The deposit comprises moderate to steeply dipping stratigraphy that is mineralized as a series of sub-parallel replacement-style or manto deposits and associated disseminations. The copper-gold mineralization is composed of largely chalcopyrite ± pyrrhotite with associated metasomatic magnetite and distal disseminated pyrite. High temperature biotite-amphibole-K feldspar alteration in the host geological sequence, and in adjacent geology, indicate that the copper-gold mineralization is proximal to a source intrusion.
Mineralization at Alacran occurs within all members of the sedimentary sequence commencing near the surface. Drilling at the Alacran deposit has outlined significant widths of high-grade copper-gold extending up to 250 metres laterally and remains open in all directions, highlighting the significant potential for further resource expansion over the 1.3 kilometres of strike drilled to date.
Exploration programs have been carried out on the 20,000 hectare area including stream sediment sampling, soil grid sampling, channel sampling, trenching, geological mapping, ground magnetics, and helicopter-borne magnetic and radiometric surveys. These programs resulted in defined copper-gold targets at Montiel West, Montiel East and Costa Azul.
Diamond drilling at the Montiel East target has focused on better defining the morphology of the high-grade porphyry copper-gold mineralization and testing of the newly discovered extensions from recent RAB drilling. The diamond drilling has located significant extensions to the copper-gold mineralization to the south of the previously drilled area and also located large volumes of various porphyry phases that are not evident in outcrop, greatly increasing the size of the target, due to it dipping to the south and south-east under what appears to be structurally emplaced mafic volcanic country rocks. The porphyry copper-gold mineralized phase is associated with a series of porphyry dyke and sill-like intrusives of varying phases and incorporates both sheeted and stockwork quartz-magnetite-chalcopyrite-bornite veins within strongly potassic altered diorite porphyry.
Drilling highlights at Montiel East include:
- 101 metres @ 1.0 % Copper and 0.65 g/t Gold
200 metres @ 0.42% Copper and 0.33 g/t Gold
123 metres @ 0.74% Copper and 0.60 g/t Gold
47 metres @ 1.31 % Copper and 0.86 g/t Gold
73 metres @ 0.84 % Copper and 0.74 g/t Gold
49 metres @ 1.0 % Copper and 1.21 g/t Gold
99 metres @ 0.84 % Copper and 0.49 g/t Gold
76 metres @ 0.43 % Copper and 0.46 g/t Gold
At Costa Azul preliminary diamond drilling has successfully intersected large widths of copper-gold mineralization associated with diorite porphyry intrusions that occur as a series of sub-parallel dykes and intrusive bodies within mafic volcanic country rocks (Figure 3). Copper-gold mineralization at Costa Azul is associated with quartz-magnetite-chalcopyrite-pyrite-bornite sheeted and stockwork veining, both within diorite porphyry and mafic volcanic wallrocks. The mineralization remains open to the west and north, where an E-W fault appears to truncate the mineralization but potentially remains open at depth. A follow-up ground magnetic survey will be conducted over the known extensions to better define the depth extensions and fault offset porphyry mineralization prior to deeper drilling.
Drilling highlights include:
- 112 metres @ 0.36 % Copper and 0.32 g/t Gold
87 metres @ 0.62 % Copper and 0.51 g/t Gold
At Montiel West preliminary diamond drilling has intersected zones of multi-directional sheeted quartz-magnetite-chalcopyrite-bornite veins that are hosted in both mafic and intermediate volcanic rocks (Figure 4). This style of copper-gold mineralization is interpreted to be porphyry-related, as seen at both the Montiel East and Costa Azul prospects, where it occurs immediately adjacent to the mineralized porphyry intrusives. Drilling however has yet to locate the associated porphyry intrusive and the defined mineralization remains open to the west where ongoing diamond drilling will test this extension. A follow-up detailed ground magnetic survey will be conducted over the known mineralization and defined extensions to locate any associated porphyry intrusives. A number of drillholes are awaiting assay.
Drilling highlight includes:
- 52m @ 0.35 g/t Au and 0.43% Cu
Surface sampling, incorporating stream sediment and soil auger sampling programs, along with detailed geological mapping, is well advanced along the unexplored 8 kilometres of strike of the main porphyry corridor in the southern parts of the San Matias project tenure. The main porphyry trend is defined by a 13 kilometre long linear north-south trending structural corridor that hosts multiple intrusive porphyry centres, as defined by the airborne magnetics (Figure 5) and displays extensive zones of surface gold-copper-silver anomalism. The ongoing sampling program along this trend has rapidly defined a number of new prospects and targets that are currently undergoing detailed geological mapping and soil sampling and are related to both porphyry-style mineralization and alteration halos over large areas (Betesta, Costa Rica, Nieves). Significant gold-copper-silver in-soil anomalies have been defined within these targets to date and infill sampling is ongoing. Additionally, both high-grade gold targets associated with quartz-pyrrhotite-chalcopyrite veining over significant strike lengths of +500m are associated with zones of artisanal open-pit and underground mining at the Mina Ra and Escondida targets that also host porphyry style alteration halos in adjacent host rocks. Furthermore skarn/replacement style mineralization and alteration has also been located at the Buenos Aires and Botero targets. Active ongoing exploration with multiple field crews is expected to advance all of these targets in the near-term for additional drilling programs in 2015.
San Matias Project History
Informal artisanal gold mining is carried out at several places on and adjacent to the project in alluvial, saprolite and hard rock deposits in open pits and underground workings. The only previous modern exploration to be carried out for gold and copper in the San Matias Project area was the adjacent El Alacrán property (described in Section 15 of Cordoba's NI 43-101 Technical Report: Córdoba Project dated December 11, 2013), and at Mina Rá in 1984-87 by Dual Resources Inc. (Dual Resources). The license was acquired in 1995 by Sociedad Ordinaria de Minas Santa Gertudis, a private Colombian company, which changed its name to Sociedad Minera El Alacrán S.O.M. in 1996. The property was optioned to Billiton Inc. in 1998. The exploration at El Alacrán is described in reports by Vargas (1998, 2001 and 2002) and Shaw (2002).
Dual Resources carried out drilling at Alacrán (described in more detail in Section 15) and also drilled five holes of 70-120 m length each at the Mina Rá mine in 1984-86, but the results and core are lost (Vargas, 1998). The El Alacrán deposit was recently explored by Ashmont Resources Corp., a private company based in Vancouver, which carried out a diamond drill program in 2011 to 2012 of 11,230.55 m in 45 holes.
There was no known prior exploration of the copper and gold mineralization at Montiel West, Montiel East and Costa Azul.
Property Geology
The San Matias Project is located in an accreted oceanic terrain of Upper Cretaceous age ocean floor basalts and sediments with lesser volcaniclastic units. These are overlain by Tertiary sedimentary rocks in the northern part of the project, and by recent alluvial deposits. The Upper Cretaceous rocks are intruded by diorites, tonalites and intermediate porphyry stocks. The project is interpreted to be located at the recently interpreted northern end of the Middle Cauca Belt, where gold and copper mineralization is related to the emplacement of porphyry stocks of a suggested Miocene age.
The central part of the project is underlain by basaltic volcanic and volcano-sedimentary rocks intruded by tonalite plutons and a number of intermediate porphyry stocks. Cordoba has identified porphyry style copper and gold mineralization at Montiel West, Montiel East and Costa Azul. Mineralization is hosted by porphyry stocks and also in wall rock lithologies. The mineralization is associated with a high density of quartz-magnetite veining, as sheeted veins and stockworks, associated with chalcopyrite-bornite and pyrite mineralisation. Hydrothermal alteration, related to porphyry-style mineralization, is largely potassic (magnetite, K-Feldspar, Biotite/phlogopite), with lesser distal propylitic (epidote, chlorite, sericite pyrite) and minor sodic-calcic alteration (albite-actinolite).
NI 43-101 Technical Report: Córdoba Project
December 11, 2013 [13.5 mb]
May 17, 2017 Cordoba Minerals Announces Additional High Grade Copper-Gold Mineralization at the Alacran Deposit in Colombia
Feb 07, 2017 Cordoba Minerals Corp. Receives Approval to Extend Term of Warrants