St. Elias Mines doubles diamond drilling program at Tesoro to 20,000 metres

St. Elias Mines (CVE:SLI) said Monday it has doubled the ongoing diamond drilling program at its Tesoro gold project in Peru to 20,000 metres.

In order to do this, the company said it is taking all necessary steps to mobilize a second diamond drill rig to the project - expected to come on site at the start of the new year.

Additional mechnical trenching on the both the Main Structural Corridor and the Parallel Structural Corridor is due to begin in January.
 
St. Elias said it is also in the process of hiring three more geologists for the project, with necessary project infrastructure being expanded to accomodate the plan. 

The drilling program has been designed to test near-surface and deeper-seated geophysical anomalies identified by Titan 24 geophysical surveys, the company added.

The Tesoro gold project is 100 percent owned by the company with no underlying royalties, and covers roughly 6,974 hectares as part of the prolific 300 kilometre by 30 kilometre Nazca-Ocoña gold belt parallel to the Pacific coast of southwestern Peru. 

While the veins in the belt tend to be narrow, the grade is significant and the mineralized structures typically extend along strike for several kilometres and to depths of up to 1,000 metres.

To date, the company has identified five mineralized zones with more than 50 quartz veins, having a total combined length of nine kilometres at Tesoro. Underground and development work has been carried out on three of these veins so far.