Angostura’s growing underground gold-silver resource is an attractive investment for several reasons:

• High-grade veins contain more than 2 million ounces of gold and 13 million ounces of silver.
• More than $160 million has been invested in the project to date.
• The proposed underground operation will have a much smaller surface footprint than the previously planned open-pit mine.
• The site is accessible year-round by road or helicopter.
• Infrastructure includes a major power grid and abundant water supplies.
• The deposit remains open at depth.
• There is blue-sky potential at four nearby satellite deposits, Armenia, La Plata, La Violetal and Móngora.

Geology

The Angostura property is situated within the Precambrian gneisses and schists of the Eastern Cordillera’s Santander Massif. Intermediate intrusives were emplaced during a period of uplift in the Triassic and Jurassic time periods. Tertiary age porphyries are common to the area and probably related to the mineralization. On a local scale, faulting is considered to have controlled the emplacement of the intrusive rocks and the subsequent alteration and mineralization.

Angostura is a typical high-sulphidation epithermal deposit. Gold and silver mineralization is controlled by swarms of east-northeast-trending structures that dip steeply to the north and crosscut intensely altered Precambrian gneisses and younger felsic intrusives. The mineralized structures may be single veins but are more often made up of several closely spaced composite veins with widths of up to 40 m or more. Higher-grade shoots tend to occur in structurally favourable settings, such as the intersection of two veins within broader zones of lower-grade mineralization.

Reserves and Resources

Angostura contains an inferred mineral resource of 2.4 million ounces gold and 13.6 million ounces silver using a gold cut-off grade of 3 g/t. (see Eco ORo's News Release dated April 29, 2011, which is available on this website). Click here for more details.

Eco Oro has completed more than 300,000 m of drilling and 3,000 m of underground development to date. Historically there were seven drilling areas within Angostura that corresponded roughly with the deposit’s structural domains. Eco Oro is currently focusing on high-grade structures within the Veta de Barro, Cristo Rey, Los Laches and Silencio domains as these have the most potential to increase the underground resource.

In 2010-2011, an 18-hole program designed to test the extent of higher-grade mineralized structures confirmed the presence of mineralization along strike and down dip. Sixteen of the 18 holes contain a total of 52 intercepts of greater than 2 g/t gold with a weighted average grade of 4.4 g/t gold and 19.7 g/t silver.

A 40,000-m infill drilling program commenced in June 2011 and will continue into mid-2012. The program is designed to convert inferred mineral resource estimates into the indicated mineral resource category and identify high-grade proximal structures that can be included in the estimate. Drilling will be completed in stages that reflect priorities in the mining sequence, with the current focus on the central core of the deposit. 

David Heugh, FAusIMM, FSAIMM, Chief Operating Officer of Eco Oro and a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed, verified and takes responsibility for the technical information contained herein.