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San Agustin


San Agustin is located 85 kilometers north of Durango City in Durango State, Mexico. We acquired the property in 2003 by staking and completed 3,890 meters of drilling in 24 drill holes. This program along with 10,400 meters of drilling by a prior property holder defined several zones of low-grade mineralization.

In 2006, Silver Standard optioned the property to a third party. In February 2009, in the midst of the global economic crisis, that company elected not to exercise its option to acquire the property. In the interim, over $10 million in exploration expenditures and 35,247 meters of drilling had increased gold resources by over seven-fold. As of April 2009, resources consist of indicated gold resources totaling 1.59 million ounces and silver resources of 47.9 million ounces; and inferred gold resources totaling 1.06 million ounces and silver resources of 37.0 million ounces.

San Agustin has excellent exploration potential for additional resources, both near surface and at depth. A comprehensive geophysical program is underway to test for the source of the known mineralization at depth which modeling suggests may be potentially high-grade and breccia-hosted.

A 6,000-meter drill program is planned in the third quarter 2010 to follow up the results from the surveys and to test areas of known mineralization. The Company has completed an internal study to evaluate the heap leach potential for processing the oxide mineralization at San Agustin. The results to date have been encouraging, and some of the planned drilling will target expansion of the near surface oxides resources. Metallurgical studies have been ongoing.

For details on the resources of the San Agustin Project, view the current Mineral Reserves & Resources Summary (16 kb pdf).