Petaquilla

Petaquilla geologist John Kapetas  inspects core at Oro del Norte

John Kapetas is an agreeable Australian who joined PTQ as exploration VP four years ago after a decade of jungle geology in Africa and Indonesia. He likes the odds of finding at least one more million-ounce gold deposit in the Petaquilla batholiths, and has spent his time with the company walking and canoeing its rivers and streams, collating data from the U.N.’s initial research with more modern sampling and mapping. Of special interest are gold anomalies along the Cocle del Norte River. Petaquilla has set up a 90-man camp and drilling station not far from the Atlantic coast to test Kapetas’ not terribly unconventional theory that where there’s gold in the river, there’s a gold mine waiting to be born  nearby.

The first phase of drilling at the Oro del Norte camp will be completed in Q3 2010, which could lead to a mine-construction decision next year following an N.I. 43-101 workup. The company recently announced discovery of a new epithermal gold vein system from its drill and trench program there; Oro del Norte is within trucking distance (20 km) of the Molejon mill.

Petaquilla geologist John Kapetas (right) inspects core at Oro del Norte

“Panama is an easy place to work in,” says Kapetas, who has charge of PTQ’s $200,000 per month exploration budget. “Molejon is a simple ore body in an andesite host.” Between Molejon’s two gold-bearing quartz veins is a vast quantity of aggregate waste rock that has a commercial potential for the road-building that will be necessary to Inmet’s Cobre mine, slated to enter production in 2014. Mud is so predominant in the Panamanian jungles that as much as a metre of aggregate must be overlaid before a road can be stabilized.

Petaquilla paid more than $40 per ton for the stuff to build its roads. The company can produce similar aggregate from below its upper quartz zone for a fraction of that price, making Molejon’s lower gold zone much more cost-attractive.

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