Rugby Provides 2019 Year End Exploration Update

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rugby Mining Limited (“Rugby” or the “Company”) (TSX-V: RUG) is pleased to provide an update on its exploration activities to December 2019.

Argentina Update - El Zanjon
Rugby recently completed a first pass ground magnetic survey on the prospective El Zanjon epithermal gold-silver project in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. The project was acquired for its regional geologic and geophysical similarities to the Cerro Moro and Cerro Vanguardia gold systems located to the north.

The magnetic survey was conducted at a line spacing of 320 metres (“m”) (Figure 1). Follow up work will reduce the line spacing to 160m and 80m. Of particular interest are flexures where the major faults deflect from the dominant northwest trend to an easterly trend (Figure 2). The high-grade veins at both Cerro Moro and Cerro Vanguardia are located on such easterly flexures.

Very early in 2020, Rugby plans to complete in-fill ground magnetics and low detection level geochemical sampling of the overlying sedimentary veneer to test for responses related to underlying mineralization.

Colombia Update
Rugby continues to conduct sampling on the Pastora and El Playon gold projects in the Bucaramanga gold belt in north central Colombia. This program is anticipated to continue through Q1, 2020 with the expectation that the Agencia Nacional de Mineria (ANM) will be granting exploration titles in the near term.

The Company is undertaking the sampling program at Pastora ahead of induced polarization (“IP”) surveying. The IP program is to define specific targets within extensive, strong gold-silver anomalies generated by Soratama, the company acquired by Rugby from a major gold company. 

Separately, the Company continues to work with environmental and legal advisors to address Department of Forestry’s concerns that stand in the way of a drilling approval for the Cobrasco porphyry copper project.

Motherlode and Otway Project Updates
Rugby intends to test both projects in Q1, 2020 for potential large scale copper-gold systems using magnetotelluric (“MT”) geophysical surveying. At the Motherlode, a strong ~ 2 kilometer IP anomaly has been defined at +700m depths, which is close to the limits of IP surveys. Consequently, our geophysical consultant has recommended a MT survey to assist in defining drill targets for deeper, potentially high grade copper porphyry mineralization. Support for the targets was returned from Rugby’s drilling in 2019 that intersected 584m of modest grade copper-gold mineralization at 0.3% copper and 0.3g/t gold. That intercept is considered to potentially occur within a very much larger porphyry system.