projects > regalo gold property
PacBay's Regalo gold property is located in the Patagonia Region of southern Argentina approximately 70 kilometers southwest of Aquiline's Resources Inc.'s (AQI.TSX) world class Navidad silver-lead project. In December 2007 Pacific Bay and Aquiline entered to an agreement in principal whereby Aquiline has been granted an option to earn a 70% interest in the property by completing 3,000 meters of drilling within a 2 year period, completing an airborne survey, and paying Pacific Bay $100,000. Upon Aquiline exercising the option, both companies will form a joint venture according to their 70/30 working interests.
An Exciting, Early Stage Gold Project
The Regalo property lies in the arid, windswept extra-Andean Patagonian steppes in an area of subdued topography and poor outcrop that was not thoroughly prospected during the mining exploration boom of the 1990's when companies focused instead on the better outcrops in the Andean cordillera and foothills to the west. The Navidad silver-lead deposit 70 kms north of the Regalo property led explorers to stake favourable Upper Jurassic to Cretaceous calcareous clastic and volcaniclastic rocks similar to those hosting the Navidad mineralization along, crustal-scale, northwest trending, structural zones. The Regalo property encompasses one of the strongest multi-sample gold anomalies in the regional stream sediment database.
Pacific Bay Minerals began reconnaissance of the Regalo property in January, 2004, and quickly followed up on very encouraging gold values in dry-wash silt samples with a second field campaign in February-March, 2004. During the 2005 summer field program, it was discovered that Regalo hosts widespread epithermal- style alteration of host rock limestones, calcareous clastic sediments and volcaniclastic units. The hydrothermal alteration of these sediments and volcanics takes the form of widespread replacements of favourable stratigraphic horizons by chalcedony, jasperoid, "silicrete" or "ferricrete" in some of the gold anomaly areas, and by strong argillic (clay) alteration in others. Pathfinder elements such as arsenic, lead, copper and molybdenum are present at weakly anomalous levels in some of the hard, resistant rocks at the surface, but it is believed that the bedrock source of the strong gold anomalies tends to recede in outcrop and lies beneath soil cover.
Project History
The project began with exploration on the original "Regalo" claim, or cateo covering an area of 10,000 hectares (38.6 square miles). It quickly became apparent to Pacific Bay that potential gold mineralization extended to the north, and early in 2004 the "Regalo II cateo" was staked immediately to the north covering another 10,000 hectares (38.6 square miles). Work during the 2004-2005 austral summer field season has led PacBay to file for an additional 7,670.8 hectare (29.6 square mile) cateo over an area immediately to the east of the Regalo and Regalo II cateos. Approval of this "Regalo III" cateo is expected to be received from Chubut province in due course. All properties requested to date become part of the Regalo project under the option agreement's perimeter clause.
Fall 2004 Exploration
Pacific Bay's geological team carried out its first phase field program during the austral spring months of October and November, 2004.
Over 1,600 samples were taken, and the majority of these were soils collected on widely spaced grids with lines 200 m (656 ft) apart with 50 m (165 ft) sample spacing along the lines. Four main areas were tested, the Discovery Zone, the Jasperoid Zone, the Yastekt - West Valley Zone and the Yastekt South Zone. Although each area appears to have a somewhat different geological character, each returned substantial areas of strong gold soil anomalies of 100 ppb Au and above. Significantly, the highly anomalous gold values are not isolated occurrences, but rather appear in long strings over hundreds of meters along contiguous lines within each of the soil grids, over terrain with no outcropping rock exposures.
Discovered - 2005
In the Yastekt South Zone, the strong gold anomalies are consistent over
almost one square kilometre. The Yastekt South anomaly comprises 98 soil
analyses that average 299 parts per billion gold. Normal,
"background" gold values in the area are less than 5 parts per
billion. Two of the 98 soil analyses returned values in excess of 3 grams
per tonne gold, which, if removed from total, result in an average across
the approximately one kilometre square zone of 236 parts per billion gold,
which is considered to be very anomalous.
This data is now being analyzed, and preliminary indications are that several localities are now ready for trenching and test pitting to define targets for drilling, which is projected to take place later in the austral summer field season.
All technical work on the Regalo property to date has been done by Dr. Richard Culbert, P.Eng. who is an arms-length, independent Senior Consulting Geologist to Pacific Bay Minerals and Qualified Person under Canadian National Instrument 43-101.
Community Focus
While still at an early stage in the exploration process, Pacific Bay Minerals is committed to carrying out its field program on the Regalo property with the highest possible standards of environmental care and community awareness. PacBay has contracted with a local labor pool to hire field assistants, and has maintained excellent relations with the local landowners in this rural area with a very low population density. During the October-November, 2004 field campaign, an environmental impact study for the upcoming exploration phase of the project was carried out by an independent international environmental consulting firm.
Uncommon Opportunity, Great Potential
Pacific Bay Minerals believes that the gold anomalies found in stream sediments, follow-up dry wash samples and the new grid soil samples are uncommonly strong and uncommonly large, and indicate an uncommon potential for a significant gold discovery on the Regalo property, one that does not come along often in the business of gold exploration and mining.