VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Oct. 11, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- New Pacific Metal Corp. (“New Pacific” or the “Company”) (TSXV: “NUAG”) is pleased to announce that it has received necessary permits from the relevant Bolivian government authorities and will immediately commence a 30,000 metres exploration drilling program on its 100% owned Silver Sand Project in the Department of Potosi, Bolivia.
At an elevation of approximately 4,050 metres, the Silver Sand Property, having an area of approximately 3.17 square kilometres, is located in the Potosí Department of Bolivia, approximately twenty five kilometres northeast of the world famous Cerro Rico Silver and Base Metal mineral system. The Silver Sand property is adjacent to historic and current tin mining activity in the area. Access is relatively easy with a road distance of fifty four kilometres to Potosi, of which twenty seven kilometres are paved.
The Property is one of the earliest silver discoveries in the district, having been made prior to the discovery of Cerro Rico in the mid-1500’s. Small-scale, historic mining is evident from scattered shafts, pits, adits, declines and dumps. The Property was explored previously by intermittent surface mapping and sampling, underground sampling and surface core drilling between 2012 and 2015. The Company acquired the Property in July 2017 after due diligence and four confirmation core drill holes.
At Silver Sand, the host rocks of the silver mineralization are Cretaceous-aged quartz-rich sandstone, which were strongly silicified and now occur in gentle, open folds, dipping shallowly to the north. The Cretaceous rocks unconformably overlie Ordovician- and Silurian-aged rocks, all of which were intruded by Tertiary-aged porphyritic igneous dikes, plugs and sills. Tin mineralization also occurs on the Property and is generally associated with the sills.
A total of five mineralized Zones (I, II, III, IV and V) were defined by surface geological work. Zone I is the most prominent with a mapped strike length of at least 1,600 metres, a horizontal width of up to 100 metres, and a depth extension of 350 metres and open at depth, based on surface and underground channel samples and diamond drilling of seven core hole intercepts (four confirmation drill holes by New Pacific, see news releases dated April 10th and July 20th, 2017 for historical exploration results).
Zone II has similar mineralization and is parallel, and situated 300 metres northeast of Zone I. Zone II has been traced over 1,400 metres in strike and up to twenty five metres in width, using sporadic outcrops of silicified, veined and oxidized sandstone. No drilling has occurred in Zone II, however channel samples have been collected from a small adit and decline (adit PD19) which yielded a total channel length of 21.4 metres with an average silver grade of 263 g/t.
The 30,000 metre drill program will initially focus on drilling Zone I along its 1,600 m strike distance gridding up to100 metres by 100 metres on sixteen parallel exploration sections which are normal to Zone I. Four to five drill holes (~400 metres/hole) are planned for each of the sixteen exploration sections. Some drill holes are also planned to test the depth of Zone I to 800 metres and to test the nearby Zone II to depth and along its strike extension.
One international and one Bolivian drilling contractor have signed drilling contracts with the Company to carry out the drilling program. One drill rig has already been mobilized to Silver Sand and is ready to drill this week. It is expected that three drill rigs will be on site by the end of the October and a total of five drill rigs will be drilling on site by mid-November. The climate at the Silver Sand project allows year-round drilling and it is expected that the drill program will be completed in six to eight months.
A team of Canadian and Bolivian geologists and supporting staff have been assembled with camp site at an elevation of approximately 3400 metres. A core storage, logging, and cutting facility has also been established.
Quality Assurance and Quality Control
Drill core will be HQ and NQ in size. Core samples from the all drill holes will be split by diamond saw cutting. Half of the core will be stored in a core storage facility and the remainder of the core will be shipped in security sealed bags to ALS Global in Oruro, Bolivia for preparation, and ALS Global in Lima, Peru for assay.
A standard quality assurance and quality control protocol will be employed to monitor the quality of sample preparation and analysis. Standards of certified reference materials, blanks and duplicates will be inserted in normal core sample sequences prior to shipment to the lab at a ratio of thirty to one, i.e., every thirty samples contain at least one standard sample, one blank sample and one duplicate sample.
Alex Zhang, P. Geo., VP Exploration of the Company and Qualified Person as defined under National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical information in this news release.
About New Pacific
New Pacific Metals Corp. is a Canadian exploration and development company which owns the Silver Sand Project, in the Potosi Department of Bolivia, the Tagish Lake gold project in Yukon, Canada and the RZY Project in Qinghai Province, China. Silvercorp Metals Inc. (TSX:SVM), the largest primary silver producer in China, is a major shareholder.
