Ecuador Gold releases Santa Barbara drill results including 493 meters of 0.53 g/t gold and 0.11% copper and 212 meters of 0.62 g/t gold and 0.12% copper in drill holes DSB-33A and DSB-34

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TORONTO, Oct. 4, 2013 /CNW/ - Ecuador Gold & Copper Corp. (TSX-V: EGX), (the "Company" or "EGX") is pleased to announce further drill results at its flagship Santa Barbara Au-Cu porphyry deposit located within the Company's 8,300 hectare Condor Gold and Copper Project in the Zamora Gold and Copper Belt, Southeast Ecuador. Assay results from drill holes DSB-33A through DSB-37 have now been received. Highlights include 493.51m of 0.53 g/t Au starting at 320m in drill hole DSB-33A and 212m of 0.62 g/t Au and 0.12% Cu from 154m in drill hole DSB-34.  DSB-33A ended in mineralization at 813.51m, having encountered diorite porphyry at depth and is the deepest hole drilled to date on the project, extending mineralization at depth and to the east.  DSB-34 extends mineralization 100m to the north of the currently defined Inferred resource at Santa Barbara.  DSB-36 and DSB-37 were drilled further west and although lower grade, extend potential mineralization a further 100m east of DSB-33A.  DSB-36 encountered 159m of 0.28 g/t Au and 0.11% Cu starting at 432m, while DSB-37 intersected 182m of 0.23 g/t Au and 0.07% Cu. DSB-35 will be drilled in the next round of drilling scheduled to start near the beginning of November.  EGX drill results, at Santa Barbara, are summarized in the table below.

The Santa Barbara South Zone has an Inferred resource of 3.9 million ounces of gold contained in 216 million tonnes of 0.56 g/t gold and 0.09% copper (see EGX's News Release dated July 23, 2013 and its technical report dated effective July 23, 2013 and entitled, "NI 43-101 Technical Report on the Condor Gold and Copper Project Located in Zamora, Ecuador" (the "Technical Report") at www.sedar.com).  Drill holes up to DSB-25 were used to calculate this resource.

Drill holes at Santa Barbara South published since DSB-25 that indicate expansion of the mineralized zone to the east include DSB-27, DSB-30, DSB-32 DSB-33A, DSB-36 and DSB-37 while DSB-26 and DSB-34 indicate the deposit is still open to the north (see table below).  A collar map showing drill hole locations to DSB-37 is available at www.ecuadorgoldandcopper.com. EGX expects to complete an updated resource calculation at Santa Barbara South incorporating the most recent drilling up to and including DSB-37 by mid-October, 2013.

With the completion of drill hole DSB-37 at Santa Barbara South Zone, the Company has completed 17,321m of drilling in 12 months on its Condor Gold and Copper Project.  Drilling at Santa Barbara South has totaled 11,249 m.  Both drill rigs are currently shut down and off site for overdue maintenance with drilling scheduled to resume in early November. Company geologists are evaluating results of recent drilling to plan the next stage of drilling that will test for the further expansion of the deposit and for infill drilling to increase confidence in the resources calculated.  Drilling is also planned at the Santa Barbara North Zone where 145,000 ounces have been defined previously (contained in an Inferred resource of 5 million tonnes of 0.9 g/t Au - See Company resource table at www.ecuadorgoldandcopper.com).  Santa Barbara North is a similar porphyry gold-copper deposit that is located 800m northeast of Santa Barbara South, hosted in the same basaltic andesite and showing similar alteration characteristics.

Table 1:  Summary of EGX drill results at Santa Barbara (length weighted average assays, uncapped)

Drill Hole	From (m)	To (m)	Interval (m)	Au (g/t)	Cu (%)	AuEq (g/t)
DSB-19	180.00	600.00	420.00	0.57	0.08	0.68
including	191.54	293.20	101.66	1.02	0.11	1.17
and	344.10	477.00	132.90	0.62	0.10	0.75
DSB-20	0.00	400.00	400.00	0.10	0.06	0.18
DSB-21	68.00	418.00	350.00	0.74	0.11	0.89
including	100.00	354.00	254.00	0.90	0.12	1.06
Including	100.00	306.00	206.00	1.01	0.12	1.17
including	140.00	228.00	88.00	1.35	0.14	1.54
DSB-22	190.00	674.00	484.00	0.80	0.13	0.97
including	190.00	620.00	430.00	0.86	0.14	1.05
Including	238.00	504.00	266.00	0.99	0.14	1.18
including	238.00	368.00	130.00	1.23	0.17	1.45
DSB -23	204.00	700.00	496.00	0.90	0.13	1.07
including	248.00	392.00	144.00	1.03	0.15	1.23
including	310.00	350.00	40.00	1.42	0.18	1.66
and	534.00	616.00	82.00	1.16	0.15	1.36
DSB-24	190.00	482.00	292.00	0.38	0.08	0.49
including	190.00	252.00	62.00	0.52	0.07	0.61
Including	358.00	482.00	124.00	0.47	0.09	0.59
and	552.00	590.00	38.00	0.49	0.12	0.65
DSB-25	244.00	456.00	212.00	0.55	0.11	0.70
including	302.00	430.00	128.00	0.67	0.13	0.84
including	380.00	430.00	50.00	0.79	0.12	0.95
including	380.00	402.00	22.00	1.16	0.15	1.36
DSB-26	204.00	350.00	146.00	0.90	0.12	1.06
including	216.00	304.00	88.00	1.17	0.14	1.36
and	402.00	473.00	71.00	0.60	0.10	0.73
DSB-27	266.00	742.00	476.00	0.68	0.12	0.84
including	370.00	680.00	310.00	0.80	0.13	0.97
including	370.00	514.00	144.00	0.89	0.13	1.06
including	368.00	444.00	76.00	0.95	0.14	1.14
DSB-28	476.00	586.00	110.00	0.13	0.04	0.18
DSB-29	0.00	694.94	694.94	-	-	-
DSB-30	482.00	692.00	210.00	0.51	0.14	0.70
including	534.00	670.00	136.00	0.60	0.15	0.80
and	630.00	670.00	40.00	0.78	0.17	1.00
DSB-31	176,00	224.00	48.00	0.71	0.11	0.86
DSB-32	236.00	472.13	236.13	0.64	0.14	0.83
including	362.00	472.13	110.13	0.83	0.16	1.04
DSB-33A	320.00	813.51	493.51	0.53	0.11	0.68
including	320.00	628.00	308.00	0.52	0.12	0.68
including	438.00	582.00	144.00	0.61	0.12	0.77
and including	710.00	813.51	103.51	0.82	0.11	0.97
including	762.00	813.51	51.51	1.13	0.18	1.37
DSB-34	154.00	366.00	212.00	0.62	0.12	0.78
including	198.00	338.00	140.00	0.74	0.14	0.93
including	244.00	338.00	94.00	0.82	0.16	1.03
DSB-36	432.00	591.31	159.31	0.28	0.11	0.43
including	460.00	512.00	52.00	0.34	0.12	0.50
DSB-37	342.00	523.95	181.95	0.23	0.07	0.32
including	402.00	452.00	50,00	0.33	0.09	0.45

• g/t = grams per metric tonne.
• Gold equivalent grade (AuEq) is calculated assuming 90% recovery of copper with a $3.00/lb. long term price of copper and $1400 long term price for gold.
• The true width of down hole interval lengths are estimated to be approximately 25% to 50%.

Santa Barbara

The Santa Barbara Au-Cu porphyry deposit, which shows very good promise, has emerged as the Company's flagship deposit.  To date, eighteen drill holes have been drilled to delineate mineralization and define the resource at Santa Barbara.  As noted above, recent results from drill holes DSB-26 to DSB-37 will be incorporated in the updated resource calculation expected in mid-October.  The Santa Barbara South Zone currently hosts an Inferred resource of 216 Mt of 0.56 g/t Au (3.9 Moz) while the Santa Barbara North zone (800m to the northeast), contains a further inferred resource of 5.0 Mt of 0.90 g/t Au (145,000 oz) for a total Inferred resource of just over 4 million ounces of gold at Santa Barbara.  For further details see the Company's web site at www.ecuadorgoldandcopper.com or the July 23, 2013 Technical Report at www.sedar.com.

The Santa Barbara South Zone remains open to the north and east and the Santa Barbara North Zone shows promise.  Porphyry gold-copper mineralization is hosted in altered basaltic andesite intruded by Jurassic intrusive stocks and dikes. Major structural orientations are exhibited by steeply dipping intrusive contacts, porphyry B-type quartz veins and faults striking northwest and northeast.  The 40km long Zamora Gold and Copper Belt in Southeastern Ecuador is host to Ecuacorriente's Mirador, Panantza and San Carlos copper porphyry deposits and to the Fruta del Norte epithermal gold deposit of the same age.  The Company cautions that reference to the nearby deposits is for information purposes only and there is no assurance that its Condor gold and copper concessions will develop into economically viable producing deposits.

The Condor Gold and Copper Project

The Santa Barbara gold-copper porphyry deposit is one of four targets including two epithermal gold targets (Los Cuyes and Soledad) in the northern part of the Condor Gold and Copper concessions and the promising El Hito copper-molybdenum porphyry target located 5km east of Santa Barbara. These four target areas have been prioritized for resource expansion drilling by the Company (see EGX News Releases, January 30, 2013 for recent drill results at Los Cuyes and May 22, 2013 for summary of recent drilling at Soledad and El Hito).  Project locations and drill hole plan maps can be found in the project map section on the Company's web site at www.ecuadorgoldandcopper.com and project descriptions and current resources in the July 23, 2013 Technical Report at www.sedar.com.

Existing Resources

The Condor Gold Project contains an Indicated Mineral resource of 2.033 million ounces gold (within 82.7 Mt grading 0.76 g/t gold). Additional Inferred mineral resources contain 4.355 million ounces gold (within 241.3 Mt grading 0.56 g/t gold). In addition the El Hito Cu-Mo porphyry deposit hosts an Inferred copper resource of 161 million tonnes grading 0.31% copper (1.1 billion pounds of Cu).  For more information, please see the Company's resource table at www.ecuadorgoldandcopper.com or its Technical Report dated July 23, 2013 which is available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

These resources were calculated and updated by Al Maynard and Associates Pty Ltd. of Perth, Australia as of July 23, 2013 and are described in the Technical Report.

Quality Assurance

The Company has implemented a quality assurance and quality control program to ensure that the transport, sampling and analysis of all samples are conducted in accordance with the best possible practices. Drill core is transported from the drill by employees to the Company's secure core logging facility at its camp where, after geotechnical and geological logging, it is marked for sampling.  The entire hole is sampled and core samples are generally 2m in length, varying at geological contacts to between 1.5m and 2.5m and are split in half by EGX employees.  One half is retained in a secure storage facility and the other half is transported by EGX employees or a bonded courier to ACME Labs' sample preparation facility in Cuenca, Ecuador where the core sample is crushed so that 80% passes a 10 mesh screen and a 250g split is pulverized so that 85% passes a 200 mesh screen.  From Cuenca ACME Labs ships the samples to their laboratory in Santiago, Chile for analysis. The lab is ISO/IEC 17025:2005 (CAN-P-4E) certified. Where appropriate, samples are analyzed for gold by 30-gm fire assay with an AA finish and by gravimetric methods for assays over 10 ppm. Samples are analyzed for silver and copper by ICP-ES after a four acid digestion.  For silver assays over 200 ppm, samples are analyzed using ACME Labs 7AR method consisting of hot aqua regia digestion and ICP-ES analysis. Copper assays over 10,000 ppm are re-analyzed using four acid digestion with ICP-ES finish (ACME Labs 7TD method).  ACME Labs are independent from the Company.

Under the Company's QA-QC procedures, samples are submitted for re-analysis based on their proximity to a certified reference standard that returns a value greater than three standard deviations higher or lower than the mean value for that standard. In addition, any two consecutive reference standards falling outside the two standard deviation threshold will be considered to have failed. Since every twentieth sample is a reference standard, ten samples above and below a failed standard are re-analyzed. The same protocol is applied to duplicate samples considered to have unacceptably divergent gold values. Periodically, random samples will be submitted to another laboratory as an external check on the results provided by the primary lab.

Qualified Person

Mit Tilkov, P.Geo., Vice-President Exploration of Ecuador Gold and Copper Corp. is the qualified person, as defined by National Instrument 43-101, supervised the project field work, and is responsible for the preparation of the technical information in this release.

Cautionary Note

The Company has not completed a preliminary economic assessment or feasibility study of the Condor Gold Project under National Instrument 43-101, and there is no assurance that the exploration and subsequent development operations of the Condor Gold Project will be economically or technically viable.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

 

 

SOURCE: Ecuador Gold and Copper Corp.

Glenn Laing
CEO & President
Telephone: [phone]
E-mail: [email protected]