COLUMBUS GOLD CORPORATION : http://www.columbusgoldcorp.com/ : Four Metals Property
Four Metals Property
The Four Metals Property consists of 40 mineral claims, covering approximately 826 acres, located in the Patagonia District ten miles north of Nogales, Santa Cruz County, Arizona. Subject to a net smelter royalty, Columbus owns a 50 percent interest in 16 claims and a 100 percent interest in 24 claims that make-up the property.
Columbus has optioned its interest in the Four Metals Property to Black Pearl Consolidated Minerals Inc., for cash and common share payments over a four year period totaling US$300,000 and 600,000 shares respectively. Columbus will retain a 1.5% net smelter return royalty on certain claims that form the property subject to a US$500,000 buy-down on half of the royalty (0.75%) in favor of Black Pearl.
The Patagonia Range contains a number of undeveloped porphyry copper, breccia copper, and polymetallic vein and replacement deposits within the famous Arizona Porphyry Copper Ore Province.
The claims cover the Four Metals copper mine which has been intermittently investigated since the 1960's by Duval Copper, Noranda Mines, and most recently Cobre Copper. The programs have included underground development, surface and underground core drilling, resource estimates, metallurgical test work, and various investigations of a leach copper mining operation at the site.
The Four Metals copper deposit is hosted within a crudely circular breccia pipe, about 1000 feet in diameter, intruding batholitic granite rocks. Mineralization consists of a shallow zone of supergene enriched chalcocite mineralization underlain by a larger body of primary mineralization containing chalcopyrite, pyrite, and molybdnite.
Various resource estimates have been carried out at Four Metals. The most recent and comprehensive, by Cobre Copper in 1991, estimated a high grade resource (characterized as mineable) of 7,583,000 tons grading 0.83% copper and a geologic resource of 23,042,000 tons grading 0.42% copper. Cobre also developed a conceptual mining scheme whereby the existing underground development, augmented by injection wells, would be utilized for an in situ copper leaching operation.
Based upon the Cobre Copper work the Four Metals copper project represents a potential near term opportunity for development of a small, low capital, copper mine in an area of favourable infrastructure and markets.
