Apogee eyes new oxide potential at Pulacayo silver project

Deeper silver in sulphides it knows well. But now, for the first time, drilling results from near surface oxides are also showing promise for Apogee Silver.

With strong near-surface silver intercepts out today, Apogee Silver (TSX-V: APE) shone the light on the potential to open-pit mine oxides at the Pulacayo project in southwestern Bolivia.

Until recent metallurgical tests proved otherwise, Pulacayo had been an underground mining story with resources exclusively encompassing deeper sulphides beneath a 50- to 100-metre-or-so layer of oxides at surface.

In the sulphides Apogee had, at last count, outlined 6 million tonnes @ 153.14 g/t silver, 0.91 percent lead and 2.04 percent zinc for 29 million ounces silver, 120 million pounds lead and 268 pounds zinc in contained metal, with about as much again in inferred resources at similar grades.

But late last year Apogee subjected oxide material above sulphides to metallurgical tests to assess whether it could recover silver by heap leach, an especially cheap method of recovering metals, primarily from oxide ores. Heap leaching silver can be a tricky endeavour, but the testing showed promise with recoveries ranging between 77 percent and 81 percent.

The metallurgical testing led Apogee to fast track a drilling program in the undefined blanket of oxides to see whether the vertically dipping Pulacayo vein system therein, dozens of metres across in places, held significant silver, lead and zinc mineralization. So ensued a drilling program last year, the results from which are now streaming out.

Source: Mineweb

Tags: Pulacayo silver project, Silver, silver mining, silver mining companies, silver mining industry

Posted by Silver Guru on Jan 31 2012. Filed under Silver mining. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry