What’s interesting here is that for decades the southern terminus of the famous “Early Cretaceous Porphyry Belt” in Chile’s Coastal Range was supposed to be the Colliguay Mine 200 Km north of us. This belt was made up of 90 to 100 million year old rock. A recent PR by AMC said that their head Geo was sending in samples of the Rhenium bearing molybdenite from our Pegaso Nero area to a specialty lab to test its age. Sure enough it’s the same rock age from the same “Veta Negro” rock formation and its 2 subdivisions the Lo Prado and the Ocoite. Now we have confirmation that this belt extends a little further south than we thought. This could result in a bit of a staking war in between us and Colliguay to our NW. Porphyries occur in a linear N to S alignment in the Chilean coastal Range.
Everybody and their brother in the mining industry have been heading to the Chilean Coastal Range recently because of the horrendous POWER and WATER issues in Chile’s Andes and Atacama Desert where over 95% of Chile’s mining industry hangs out. About 3 years ago some group from Peru tied down a huge swath of mining concessions from the border of our Mambo concessions up to the NW towards Colliguay.
On Figure 6.5 at the above link you can see porphyry deposit #8 north of Colliguay. This is the Andacollo Mine which plays a very special role in Medinah’s history. Les/Medinah noticed that 7 European hedge funds put $110 million into refurbishing this mine when it was run by Dayton Mining and Bill McKatyn. Dayton had failed to consolidate the surrounding mining concessions, however. Medinah decided to play opportunist and tied down the properties around the central pit of the mine. The 7 hedge funds, however, didn’t find that maneuver very clever and the bullets have been flying ever since. There was even a midnight bulldozing of Medinah’s office in the area and destruction of all of Medinah’s mining equipment. Tough neighborhood! How Medinah survived that onslaught I have no idea except for a lot of perseverance and the merits of the ADL properties.