News

May 08, 2008

Orko Silver Could Be Onto A Company-Maker At La Preciosa

By Charles Wyatt

When we wrote about Canadian-listed Orko Silver towards the end of last year the suggestion was that the company was aiming to boost its resource estimate at its La Preciosa project in Mexico to 100 million ounces of silver, but that this might take a little time to achieve. In fact it took just a few months, as in March chief executive Gary Cope was able to announce a new estimate of 15.35 million tonnes grading 0.321 grammes per tonne gold and 190.0 grammes per tonne silver. At a cut-off grade of 100 grammes that gives silver equivalent of 209.2 grammes per tonne. This estimate is still in the inferred category, but the contained metal amounts to 93.7 million ounces of silver and 158,000 ounces of gold which, on a silver equivalent calculation derived from adding the silver grade to 60 times the gold grade, comes to 103.2 million ounces of silver equivalent - 41 per cent ahead of the previous figure delivered last October.

Job done, some might say, but not Gary Cope. Once one target is hit he switches to another, and recent results from further drilling on the Martha vein at La Preciosa show that 150 million ounces of silver equivalent could now be in range. The Martha vein accounted for all of the additional ounces added in the new resource estimate and now represents 56 per cent of the total resource estimate for La Preciosa. And there’s still plenty more to come from this epithermal vein which has a true...