Ecuador Gold & Copper Corp. Announces Santa Barbara Drill Results of 420 Meters @ 0.571 g/t Gold Including: 101.66m @ 1.017 ...

        






Ecuador Gold & Copper Corp. Announces Santa Barbara Drill Results of 420 Meters @ 0.571 g/t  Gold Including: 101.66m @ 1.017 g/t Gold and 132.90m @ 0.617 g/t Gold at the Condor Gold Project in Southeast Ecuador

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VANCOUVER, Oct. 17, 2012 /CNW/ - Ecuador Gold & Copper Corp. (TSX-V: EGX), (the "Company" or "EGX") is pleased to announce assay results from the first new drill hole at the South Zone of the Santa Barbara gold porphyry deposit located within the Company's major Condor gold and copper concessions in Southeast Ecuador.

This News Release reports assays from the first new drill hole on the Santa Barbara gold porphyry deposit, part of the previously announced 10,000 meter Phase I drill program on the Company's Condor Gold property. The 420 meters of mineralization includes two zones of higher grade mineralization and confirms the potential for Santa Barbara to become a large bulk tonnage gold porphyry deposit. Drill hole DSB-19 was collared one hundred meters east of two previously drilled holes, DSB-5 and DSB-16, ended in mineralization at 600m, and extends the known mineralized zone to the east and to depth. Drill hole DSB-19 was drilled as a follow-up to the two previous holes drilled on the same section: DSB-16 of total depth 249m intersecting 228m of 1.01 g/t gold; and DSB-5 of total depth 288.5m intersecting 136m of 1.11 g/t gold and a further 30m of 0.78 g/t gold. See attached cross-section and location map.

Assay Results from Santa Barbara South Zone Hole DSB-19

Drill Hole	From (m)	To (m)	Interval (m)	Au (g/t)	Cu (%)	Ag (g/t)
DSB-19	180.00	600.00	420.00	0.571	0.082	1.157
Including	191.54	293.20	101.66	1.017	0.108	0.838
and	344.10	477.00	132.90	0.617	0.101	1.121

• g/t = grams per metric tonne.
• The true width of down hole interval lengths are estimated to be approximately 50% to 60%.

Commentary

Drill hole DSB-19 intersected continuous gold mineralization over 420m from 180m to end of hole at 600m.  Grade is distributed in long intercepts (0.5-1.5 g/t).  Best grades are in andesite, especially between 200m-300m. There are other encouraging gold intersections down the hole, and the hole terminated in a sedimentary calc-silicate rock containing gold mineralization for over 100m of drill intercept.

10,000 Meter Phase I Drill Program

The Santa Barbara gold porphyry deposit is one of five targets including three epithermal gold targets (Los Cuyves, Soledad and Chinapintza) in the northern part of the Condor gold and copper concessions together with a promising El Hito copper-molybdenum porphyry target located 5km east of Santa Barbara that have been prioritized for resource expansion drilling by the Company.

The third and fourth drill holes, part of the 10,000 meter Phase I drill program are currently underway, drilling the Los Cuyes and Soledad epithermal targets respectively. Assays from the first new drill hole at the Chinapintza deposit are currently pending.

Drilling at the El Hito porphyry copper-molybdenum porphyry target is planned for November, 2012.

Drilling completed to date is 1900 meters.  Follow-up drilling at Santa Barbara will commence as soon as a drill rig is available.

Existing Resources

The Condor Gold Project contains a Measured & Indicated Mineral Resource of 1.52 million ounces gold (within 50.4 Mt grading 0.94 g/t gold). Additional Inferred Mineral Resources contain 1.28 million ounces gold (within 28.4 Mt grading 1.4 g/t gold). The measured resources consist of 54,000 ounces of gold (within 147,000 tonnes grading 1.0 g/t gold) and the indicated resources consist of 1.47 million ounces gold (within 50.3 Mt grading 0.94 g/t). For more information, please see the Company's resource table at www.ecuadorgoldandcopper.com or its Technical Report dated June 14, 2012 which is available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Quality Assurance

The Company has implemented a quality assurance and quality control program to ensure that the transport, sampling and analysis of all samples is conducted in accordance with the best possible practices. Drill core is transported from the drill by employees to the Company's secure core logging facility at its camp where, after geotechnical and geological logging, it is marked for sampling.  The entire hole is sampled and core samples are generally 2m in length, varying at geological contacts to between 1.5m and 2.5m and are split in half by EGX employees.  One half is retained in a secure storage facility and the other half is transported by EGX employees or a bonded courier to ACME Labs' sample preparation facility in Cuenca, Ecuador where the core sample is crushed so that 80% passes a 10 mesh screen and a 250g split is pulverized so that 85% passes a 200 mesh screen.  From Cuenca ACME Labs ships the samples to their laboratory in Santiago, Chile for analysis. The lab is ISO/IEC 17025:2005 (CAN-P-4E) certified. Samples are analyzed for gold by 30-gm fire assay with an AA finish and by gravimetric methods for assays over 10 ppm. Samples are analyzed for silver by ICP-ES after a four acid digestion.  For silver assays over 200 ppm samples, are analyzed using ACME Labs 7AR method consisting of hot aqua regia digestion and ICP-ES analysis. ACME Labs are independent from the Company.

Under the Company's QA-QC procedures, samples are submitted for re-analysis based on their proximity to a certified reference standard that returns a value greater than three standard deviations higher or lower than the mean value for that standard. In addition, any two consecutive reference standards falling outside the two standard deviation threshold will be considered to have failed. Since every twentieth sample is a reference standard, ten samples above and below a failed standard will be re-analyzed. The same protocol will be applied to duplicate samples considered to have unacceptably divergent gold values. Periodically, random samples will be submitted to another laboratory as an external check on the results provided by the primary lab.

Qualified Person

Mit Tilkov, P.Geo., VP Exploration of Ecuador Gold and Copper Corp. is the qualified person, as defined by National Instrument 43-101, supervised the project field work, and is responsible for the preparation of the technical information in this release.

Cautionary Note

The Company has not completed a preliminary economic assessment or feasibility study of the Condor Gold Project under National Instrument 43-101, and there is no assurance that the exploration and subsequent development operations of the Condor Gold Project will be economically or technically viable.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE Ecuador Gold and Copper Corp.

Image with caption: "Section A - A' (CNW Group/Ecuador Gold and Copper Corp.)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20121017_C7647_PHOTO_EN_19482.jpg

Image with caption: "Santa Barbara South Zone (CNW Group/Ecuador Gold and Copper Corp.)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20121017_C7647_PHOTO_EN_19483.jpg

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