The Valcheta Project is located in the Valcheta Department, province of Rio Negro. Geographically it corresponds to the Nodpatagonic Massif. The mining properties include 56,000 hectares distributed in 10 manifestations of discovery (MD), which cover the mineralized zones known as San Patricio Mine (Cu), San Lorenzo Mine (polymetallic) and San Martin Mine (W).
Introduction
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Project Location
Geology
The Precambrian basement outcrops in the sector, composed by schists, furrowed by abundant quartz veins of preponderant NE – SW strike. This basement is intruded by plutonic rocks (Gondwanic age), integrated by granites, granodiorites, tonalites, aplites and pegmatites of Carbonic – Permian age. In a discordant way they support the acid vulcanites of the Fm. Marifil, of Jurassic age. These vulcanites represent the last manifestations of an extensive eruptive cycle.
The mineralization associated to San Patricio and San Martin mines are genetically related to gondwanic plutonic rocks, being the first known case of deposit of type “Intrusion Related Gold Deposit” (IRGD) in Patagonia. Pollymetallic mineralization of San Lorenzo Mine is associated to the Jurassic vulcanites.
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Mineralization
In the old San Patricio mine zone, the mineralization is represented by the presence of thin quartz veins , copper carbonates, iron oxides, molibdenite and bismuth minerals, that fill up open spaces and microfractures, of general strike NE - SW and sub vertical dips.
The recognized minerals in field are azurite, malachite, brochantite, molibdenite, chalcosine, hematite and probable jarosite, like the most conspicuous. As it happens in the majority of this type of deposits, the highest gold grades are related to the high bismuth grades.
The initial prospecting tasks, realized on quartz structures and rocks, showed important geochemical anomalies. The maximum values found in the area are: Au (12.83 ppm), Ag (688 ppm), Mo (2,078 ppm), Cu (> 1%), Bi (> 2.000 ppm), Ba (> 2.000 ppm), As (597 ppm), Pb (> 1%) and Zn (902 ppm).
About 40 kilometres o the northeast of San Patricio Mine, is the old San Martin Mine, where wolfram was extracted in the last decades. This vein system, fitted in gondwanic granites, displays a mineralogical association characterized by the presence of copper, lead, zinc, silver, wolfram, bismuth and tin.
Conclusion
Trendix geologists, thinks that the belt of 40 kilometers of extension that unites the sector of San Martin Mine with San Patricio Mine has the potential to form a corridor with mineralizations associated to IRGD type deposits. Great part of this corridor is controlled by the mining properties of Trendix.
