Ankakori - the first hole

DISCLOSURE: I should have bought more

What a whopper! A great first hole from Regulus at Antakori (link). They have been very intelligent and the initial drilling is focused at filling in the gaps left by [insert name here].

You can download the 3D model from here (link) - please not that this file is big, I've included the topography and overlain the property boundary and some geophysics in the 2006 technical report.

Summary

• Antakori is a complicated multi-phase mineral system. dominated by:
• High-sulfidation Epithermal - Au, Ag, Cu and As rich
• this is what is mined by the neighbors to the SW
• Skarn/porphyry mineralization - Cu +/- Zn, Ag, Pb rich
• Great first hole, plugged into a nice high grade zone identified back in 20XX
• Mineralization is Epithermal (high-sulfidation) - hole will be Enargite (Cu-Au and As) rich
• AK-17-001 didn't go deep enough to test the skarn/porphyry potential, but hole AK-17-002 will!

Hole AK-17-001, 002 and 003 have been drilled along the SW margin of the property, where it butts up against the Tantahuatay Mine.

my annotations - is that mag low to the north a porphyry?

 Hole AK-17-001 went smack between historic holes SDH-034 (120m @ 0.63 g/t Au and 0.67% Cu) and SDH-037 (188m @ 1.07 g/t Au and 2.02% Cu) drilled in 2012, and demonstrate that this zone appears to be quite high-grade and robust.

here is a cross section

pink = HS-epithermal domain; blue = skarn domain

You can see where hole AK-17-001 has hit, the copper grades are very good, but the gold is restricted to a narrow (23m core length or ~ 10m true width) zone grading ~ 7 g/t Au with a lower grade halo, suggesting that there could be some high-grade veins in the core of that hit.

And a long section with some distances on it.




Why don't we take a bit of time to look at the Antakori property. To steal a football pun, it is a project of 2 halves:

1. High-sulfidation Epithermal deposit
2. Skarn-porphyry deposit

HS-Epithermal Mineralization

This is what they are mining next door and looks like this:

Dickite, hehehe

The enargite is the issue here, it contains arsenic, and historically this project is regarded as having an arsenic issue. It does, but it is local, and it will be a problem for the neighbors if (when?) they start expanding the open pit into this area (with a nice NSR to Regulus is they do!).

The Skarn-porphyry mineralization

Simple formation model - Porphyry + limestone = skarn

Peru has a few big 'uns (Antamina, Las Bambas, Tintaya etc.) that produce a lot of metal. The historic drilling has hit some skarn, but it hasn't been drilled systematically, and this is where a lot of potential for AK is. I was a bit disappointed that hole AK-17-001 didn't go deep enough, but a minor grumble.

It looks like this:

doesn't look impressive, but can be big!

However, hole AK-17-002 should be going a lot deeper properly looking at the skarn potential at Antakori, and is the hole I'm interested in!

So, early days, but it is good to start the 2017 drilling with a nice hot hole. A bit of a cheat (focusing on infilling a known high-grade zone, but might as well test the lowest risk targets to get the juices going.
However, I have a few questions:

• How much input do Regulus have in this drilling campaign, are they restricted by their partners?
• Do they have permitting to explore the entirety of the project or are they restricted to specific areas?
• Why are they drilling that gold project in the US?

This is going to be an interesting, developing story, I'm happy with the first results and would like to see some evidence of regional exploration (cheap, low-end stuff), and maybe some geophysics to see if there are other decent targets in the area.