Chesapeake has an option to acquire a 100% interest in the La Cecilia gold project, an 800 hectare mineral concession located in northern Sonora state. La Cecilia is an old mining camp centered on "Cerro Magallanes", a rhyolite flow dome complex that forms a dominant topographical feature in the area.
La Cecilia is being acquired from the Consejo de Recursos Minerales de Mexico (CRM), a federal mining department of the Mexican government. Chesapeake can earn its interest by making staged payments totaling US$100,000 over 4 years.
The La Cecilia project is a classic low-sulphidation, epithermal-type gold-silver system related to two well-developed northwest and northeast trending sets of fractures and faults associated with a rhyolite dome complex. The gold-silver mineralization occurs as high grade in vein structures and as lower grade within broader zones of stockworks and breccias. Numerous other anomalous zones of silicification, brecciation and argillic alteration exist across the extent of the flow dome complex, an area of more than 1 kilometre by 2 kilometres
During the late 1980's, the CRM completed a surface mapping, sampling and limited drill program on the southeastern portion of the La Cecilia concession. Rock chip samples (1 - 2 metres wide) from several high grade shoots within Cerro Magallanes have returned grades ranging from 22 g/t to 53 g/t gold and 204 g/t to 1128 g/t silver. The CRM drilled four core holes of which two holes returned significant intersections (over 100 metres) greater than 0.7 g/t gold and 15 g/t silver. One hole, Barreno-3, intersected 180 metres of 1.2 g/t gold and 20 g/t silver from surface-down.
Preliminary review and evaluation by Chesapeake indicates that a large portion of the property including broad zones of silicified breccias further to the northeast has not been sampled or drill tested. Also at surface, the extensions of the northeast and northwest trending fracture systems continue under cover from the dome complex in both directions.
Chesapeake plans to undertake a program of detailed mapping and surface sampling on La Cecilia, together with ground geophysics to define additional drill targets. Chesapeake believes La Cecilia has the potential to become a large, bulk tonnage, open pitable gold deposit.
