Emu onto new epithermal gold target in Chile

ASX-listed Emu NL has outlined a new epithermal gold target at its Jotahues project, within the strongly mineralised Maricunga precious metal belt, in the Atacama region of northern Chile.

Soil geochemical sampling at the Peon 4 concession has outlined a 600m wide and 1.2km long anomalous zone of coincident gold, silver, copper, mercury and lead assays, which according to the company, are typical fingerprints for an epithermal gold system.

The exploration defined a north-northeast trending mineralised zone of elevated geochemistry open to the north and south and lying on the same trend as Anglo American’s Cicique gold discovery to the northeast of the Jotahues project.

The company plans to extend its soil sampling program at Jotahues to the south, where cohesive, strong geochemical anomalies exist. 

The new discovery is 7km west of Emu’s recently drilled Vadalita project with the still pending results eagerly anticipated after that campaign intersected sub-surface epithermal gold and silver mineralisation in sulphides.

The company will now compile a reconnaissance drilling program to test the new gold target at Jotahues for the next field season.

Emu is in exceptional company in the Maricunga and adjacent El Indio mineralised belts, with Barrick’s 2015 world-class discovery at Alturas containing a resource of 6.8 million ounces of gold and Gold Fields’ 2011 Salares Norte discovery holding 3.66 million ounces of gold and 49.6 million ounces of silver. 

Whilst assays from the drilling program at Vidalita are pending, Emu appears confident that it is closing in on a solidly mineralised epithermal gold system in this region of Chile.

The identification of highly anomalous soil geochemistry at Jotahues, which accompanies earlier elevated gold and silver assays in rock chip samples at the project, shows that Emu has put its foot on something pretty interesting in the Maricunga precious metal belt.