Royal Road Minerals Ltd (CVE:RYR) updated on its activities at the Nariño province in Colombia, one of the most prospective and under-explored regions in the Andes.
In a newsletter for April, Dr Tim Coughlin, president and chief executive at Royal Road, said field crews were now conducting gold occurrence inventories and prospecting on some of the firm's 115 concession contract application areas there.
As previously reported, Royal Road has applied for more than 400,000 hectares of contracts covering what management believe is highly prospective for both gold and copper-gold.
There are approximately 120 registered small producing gold mines, scores of unregistered informal occurrences and new deposits and mineralised camps being discovered by local miners on a regular basis along a 65-kilometer-long gold mineralised belt in Nariño, said the company boss.
"One of the largest gold occurrences is El Canada which, it is estimated, has produced around 5mln ounces of the yellow metal over the last 50-years from some 60-separate high-grade underground vein structures," he highlighted.
"Parallel to the gold belt and just 20 kilometers to the west of it, is an approximately 70-kilometer-long belt of porphyry copper and gold occurrences some of-which were mapped by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in the 1980’s and occur within our application areas. These occurrences will form the focus of upcoming field campaigns."
The firm added it is working closely with strategic partner, Economías Sociales del Común (ECOMUN)to develop a sustainable co-existence strategy and align itself and assist with the Colombian government's post-conflict initiatives in the region.
At government level, the Agencia Nacional de Mineria (ANM) is working to convert Royal Road’s application areas to concession contracts - a process steadily advancing.
Last but not least, a regional airborne geophysical survey will be of significant assistance in prioritising known occurrences and defining new targets of interest, said Coughlin.
"The Servicio Geologico Colombiano has announced a proposal to fly a survey over Nariño, hopefully this year."
Royal Road Minerals shares were unchanged at C$0.11 in Toronto.