Titan Minerals has been reinstated as owner of the of the Jerusalén Concession (Jerusalem Gold Project) by the Ecuadorian Ministry of Mines.
The Jerusalem concession was formally validated and registered late last week, finally ratifying a succession of developments that occurred when the area was the subject of artisanal mining, during which time the government declared a force majeure. The project has been reinstated to the company and is is not an acquisition by TTM, meaning there is no dilution of equity.
The Jerusalem project has an existing foreign resource estimation of 1.28Moz gold averaging 14.5g/t and 8.6Moz silver averaging 98g/t. While not a JORC compliant resource, the company believes that the foreign estimate is sufficiently reliable to deem the property to have merit for further exploration expenditure, but not to underpin any economic reviews.
The categories of the mineralisation reported under NI 43-101 are similar to the JORC Code (2012) classifications, which provides a basis to contribute funding for continued exploration activity and advancement of Jerusalem.
TTM already had a 2.1Moz resource, averaging 4.5 g/tonne gold resource inventory at its Dynasty Project. With today’s addition, its resource base has jumped 64%.
The new project consists of numerous high grade targets that have been identified, but are yet to be explored. The project is located on trend between the Fruta del Norte deposit, just 40km to the north and the contiguous land holding of Luminex Resources’ Condor Project. Fruta del Norte, operated by the $2.4 billion capped Lundin Gold (TSX: LUG), is a world-class producing gold mine and holds the most valuable greenfields gold discovery of the last 15 years. Luminex Resources’ Condor project to the south hosts a 5 million ounce resource.
The Jerusalem Project is the perfect complement to TTM’s flagship Dynasty Gold Project in Ecuador, where the company is focused on expanding the existing 2.1 million ounce Foreign Resource Estimate averaging 4.5 g/tonne gold, into a much bigger JORC resource by the end of the year. The company commenced a significant drilling campaign in Q3 2020 to do this. The assay results for the Dynasty Gold Project support an emerging large-scale gold system and extend known mineralisation that remains open in multiple directions and at depth.
The flagship Dynasty Gold Project is located in the underexplored Loja Province of Ecuador. Dynasty is close to existing infrastructure, has strong local support and the company is fully permitted to begin work here. Titan has two other projects of note: the Copper Duke Project, a multi-phase, outcropping, gold rich porphyry copper project, exhibiting several encouraging characteristics and the Linderos gold project, where a recent high-grade gold discovery was made.
The three projects can be seen on the following map with both Dynasty and Copper Duke lying to the west of the Jerusalem project. Titan has continued to grow in stature this year, reaching a high of 17 cents from just 4.8 cents back in April. While the company is now back at 13.5 cents, the addition of the Jersualem Project should act as a further catalyst for the company.