One Step Ahead

[Rommel117]

More due dilligence on v.sgg:

Date: November 23, 2004

Sonora Gold Looks To Ride The Mexican Wave.
By Our Canadian Correspondent

Since 1992 when Mexican mining law changed to allow 100 per cent foreign ownership, a number of Canadian and American based companies have been successful in outlining a series of large, open pittable, gold-silver resources. This fact has not been lost on newly named Sonora Gold.

This Vancouver-based junior is run by a couple of well-heeled brokerage boys, namely Dave McMillan and Robert Sibthorpe. Dave was senior vice president and director of Yorkton Securities up until 2000, while Robert was a senior mining analyst for Yorkton for ten years before moving across the street to join Canaccord. So one can assume that this duo knows that investor interest in Mexican gold plays is near an all time high.

Sonora Gold has a two pronged growth strategy in place. The first being to evaluate the economic potential of resuming operations at a past producing Santa Gertrudis property and the second to explore the rather nice looking early staged San Enrique exploration project. Both of which are favourably located in northeast Sonora State.

At Santa Gertrudis, previous operators Phelps Dodge and Campbell Resources produced some 540,000 oz of gold from 1991-2000. At last report, the property hosts a measured resource of 320,000 tonnes grading 2.27 g/t gold and an indicated resource of 1 million tonnes grading 1.9 g/t gold for a total of nearly 100,000 contained ounces. Another 6.9 million tonnes grading 1.7 g/t gold lie in the inferred section but considerable work will be required to price this up.

Despite the general low-grade, Sonora Gold must be encouraged by the results from its trenching and sampling at the bottom of two past producing pits, especially the Mirador pit, which returned up to 10.7 g/t gold over 10.1 metres. It is here where the initial ore will be gathered if a green light is given to resume mining operations at Santa Gertrudis. And let’s face it, Sonora Gold is going to need all the higher-grade material it can dig out because overall the grade and tonnage defined so far is at the low end of the economic range. That said, with gold closing in on the US$450 per ounce mark production could give the junior much needed cash flow and most certainly would give it market awareness.

But while the number crunching at Santa Gertrudis is continuing a more interesting development is taking place for the fledgling junior. After seven long years, the large San Enrique gold-copper-molybdenum geochemical anomaly is finally getting drill tested. Sonora Gold, which picked up the Mexican project in 2002, recently resolved the long standing surface access dispute with the previous owners of the property and is currently in the midst of a 2,000 metre drill program.

The promising soil anomalies, which lies only 6.5 kms south of the Santa Gertrudis property, was initially identified by a regional soil geochemistry program carried out by Campbell Resources. Five different targets have been defined including a 1 km long gold-in-soil anomaly that returned over 1 g/t gold in six samples and an area where rock chip samples yielded up to an eye popping 78 g/t gold.

Along with the gold targets, copper porphyry and skarn zones have also been recognized but the initial drill target is the Pinito area where a mineralised zone is marked by jasperoid bodies in limestone that have been traced on surface for 1 km. So far, surface sampling has identified three zones yielding up to 12.3 g/t gold over 0.6 metre.

The drill started turning November 1, so with the long line up at the assay lab it will probably be mid-to-late December before any numbers are known. But with a market capitalization on only C$4 million, any positive values could impact the price significantly . This is clearly one we will be watching.