Tuesday, June 12, 2012 -
The early onset of winter in Kyrgyzstan limited Chaarat Gold to one exploration drilling at its Chontash prospect, but it managed to find copper, gold, and silver there, the miner said on Tuesday.
Aside from its Chontash copper-gold-silver deposit, the Kyrgyz-focused miner also owns the profitable Chaarat mine in western Kyrgyzstan.
The company said in a statement it identified eight target areas at Chontash, but “due to the early onset of winter only one drill hole could be drilled on one of the targets.”
Drilling reached a depth of 1,128 feet against a planned depth of 1,800 feet, it said.
Nevertheless, it found all three metals between a depth of 522 feet and 650 feet.
“Chontash has the potential to become another significant project for the company adding to the already exciting Chaarat Project,” said Dekel Golan, chief executive officer of Chaarat.
Further exploration of Chontash “may identify another major deposit in the Central Asian mountains, adding to the other large porphyry systems hosted in the Central Tien Shan belt,” said Golan in a statement.
Kyrgyzstan’s mining sector contributes 14 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), according to a report released Tuesday from a meeting of the International Business Council, the KyrTAG news agency reported.
According to the report, the sector is responsible for almost 59 percent of total national industrial production and more than 53 percent of its exports.