LONDON, ENGLAND--(Marketwired - June 26, 2015) - Condor ("Condor" or "the Company") (AIM:CNR), is pleased to announce that the company's wholly-owned Nicaraguan subsidiary Condor S.A. has been granted a 25 year exploration and mining concession over a 32 km2 area on the western side of La India Project called the Tierra Blanca Concession (see Figure 1 below). The addition of the Tierra Blanca Concession expands the La India Project concession package to a total of 313 km2.
Mark Child CEO comments:
"The 32 km2 Tierra Blanca Concession on the western edge of La India Project was available for grant by the Government of Nicaragua under a 25 year exploration and exploitation concession. Condor's geologists completed a field visit and concluded that the Tierra Blanca concession offers excellent greenfield exploration potential based on historic exploration data. It is also located 30km from B2Gold's El Limon mine and only 10km due west of Condor's La India gold mineral resource of 2.33M oz gold at 4.0g/t gold. Condor has now been officially notified of the successful application for the concession."
The Tierra Blanca Concession is located on the western side of the La India Project adjacent and to the south of Condor's La Cuchilla Concession This new addition partially bridges the gap between La India Project and other neighbouring gold projects. The La India Project is located at the south-eastern end of a 75km long gold corridor. The Tierra Blanca Concession is situated within this corridor, 2.5km to the northwest of the core gold mineralisation zone at La India. A further 2km to the northwest of Tierra Blanca, Canadian explorer Cassius Ventures defined the Las Mercedes gold mineralised area with reports of up to 55g/t gold in rock chip samples (Cassius Ventures TSX-V:CV Press Release dated 1st February 2013). Beyond this the gold corridor can be traced for at least 55km further northwest via Cassius' Santa Barbara and Cerro Rojo areas to B2Gold's Villa Nueva Project near their currently active El Limon Gold Mine (see Figure 2 below).
Tierra Blanca covers the central part of a 10km wide, circular geological structure identified in satellite imagery, topography and Condor's airborne geophysics data that is interpreted as a caldera. The northern half of the caldera falls within Condor's La Cuchilla Concession. An active gypsum mine exploiting hydrothermal gypsum veins is located within the caldera on a small mining concession sandwiched between Condor's La India Concession and the Tierra Blanca Concession. The gypsum veins, which are on the eastern zone of the interpreted caldera indicate that mineral rich hydrothermal fluids were circulating within the caldera in the geological past, the heat source is likely to have been a magma chamber below the caldera.
Condor geologists identified Tierra Blanca as a greenfield exploration target based on the highly prospective geological setting: the magma chamber that was located beneath the caldera provided a heat source to generate mineralised fluids, and the complex structures caused by the magma movement which ultimately formed the caldera provided a network of faults to transport and deposit minerals. The location within a broad corridor of gold mineral occurrences and the proximity of known gold mineralisation on opposite sides of the concession, demonstrate that gold mineralised fluids were actively flowing in the region.
To view "Figure 1. Location of the Tierra Blanca Concession within the La India Project area", please visit on the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/CNR-figure1-626.pdf.
To view "Figure 2. Location of the Tierra Blanca Concession within a 75km long gold mineralised corridor between the Villa Nueva areas and Condor's La India Mining District", please visit the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/CNR-figure2-626.pdf.
Competent Person's Declaration
The information in this announcement that relates to the mineral potential, geology, Exploration Results and database is based on information compiled by and reviewed by Dr Luc English, the Country Exploration Manager, who is a Chartered Geologist and Fellow of the Geological Society of London, and a geologist with twenty years of experience in the exploration and definition of precious and base metal mineral resources. Luc English is a full-time employee of Condor Gold plc and has sufficient experience which is relevant to the style of mineralization and type of deposit under consideration, and to the type of activity which he is undertaking to qualify as a Competent Person as defined in the June 2009 Edition of the AIM Note for Mining and Oil & Gas Companies. Luc English consents to the inclusion in the announcement of the matters based on the information in the form and context in which it appears and confirms that this information is accurate and not false or misleading.
Technical Glossary
| Caldera | A ring shaped depression caused by the collapse of an area of land at the centre of a volcanic complex caused by the emptying of the underlying magma chamber. |
| Assay | The laboratory test conducted to determine the proportion of a mineral within a rock or other material. Usually reported as parts per million which is equivalent to grams of the mineral (i.e. gold) per tonne of rock |
| Gypsum | A soft transparent to white crystalline rock mineral composed of calcium, sulphur, hydrogen and oxygen. It is used extensively in agriculture and construction. |
| Hydrothermal | Hot water circulation often caused by heating of groundwater by near surface magmas and often occurring in association with volcanic activity. Hydrothermal waters can contain significant concentrations of dissolved minerals. |
| Mineral Resource | A concentration or occurrence of material of economic interest in or on the Earth's crust in such a form, quality, and quantity that there are reasonable and realistic prospects for eventual economic extraction. The location, quantity, grade, continuity and other geological characteristics of a Mineral Resource are known, estimated from specific geological knowledge, or interpreted from a well constrained and portrayed geological model |
| Mineral Reserve | The economically mineable part of a Measured and/or Indicated Mineral Resource. It includes diluting materials and allowances for losses, which may occur when the material is mined. Appropriate assessments and studies have been carried out, and include consideration of and modification by realistically assumed mining, metallurgical, economic, marketing, legal, environmental, social and governmental factors. These assessments demonstrate at the time of reporting that extraction could reasonably be justified. Ore Reserves are sub-divided in order of increasing confidence into Probable Ore Reserves and Proved Ore Reserves. |
| Vein | A sheet-like body of crystallised minerals within a rock, generally forming in a discontinuity or crack between two rock masses. Economic concentrations of gold are often contained within vein minerals. |
For further information please visit www.condorgold.com.
About Condor Gold plc:
Condor Gold plc was admitted to AIM on 31st May 2006. The Company is a gold exploration and development company with a focus on Central America.
Condor completed a Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) and two Preliminary Economic Assessments (PEA) on La India Project in Nicaragua in December 2014. The PFS details an open pit gold mineral reserve of 6.9M tonnes at 3.0g/t gold for 675,000 oz gold producing 80,000 oz gold p.a. for 7 years. The PEA for the open pit only scenario details 100,000 oz gold production p.a. for 8 years whereas the PEA for a combination of open pit and underground details 140,000 oz gold production p.a. for 8 years. La India Project contains a total attributable mineral resource of 18.4Mt at 3.9g/t for 2.33M oz gold and 2.68M oz silver at 6.2g/t to the CIM Code.
In El Salvador, Condor has an attributable 1,004,000 oz gold equivalent at 2.6g/t JORC compliant resource. The resource calculations are compiled by independent geologists SRK Consulting (UK) Limited for Nicaragua and Ravensgate and Geosure for El Salvador.
Disclaimer
Neither the contents of the Company's website nor the contents of any website accessible from hyperlinks on the Company's website (or any other website) is incorporated into, or forms part of, this announcement.
Contact Information:
Mark Child
Executive Chairman and CEO
+44 (0) 20 7408 1067
Condor Gold plc
Luc English
Country Manager
Nicaragua
+505 8854 0753
Beaumont Cornish Limited
Roland Cornish and James Biddle
+44 (0) 20 7628 3396
Numis Securities Limited
John Prior and James Black
+44 (0) 20 72601000
Farm Street Media
Simon Robinson
+44 (0) 7593 340107