EGX

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VANCOUVER, May 22, 2013 /CNW/ - Ecuador Gold & Copper Corp. (TSX-V: EGX), (the "Company" or "EGX") is pleased to announce completion of its previously announced Phase I 13,000 meter drill program at its four priority targets located within the Company's 8,300 hectare Condor Gold and Copper Project in the Zamora Gold and Copper Belt, Southeast Ecuador. Assay results from drill holes DSB-24 and DSB-25 have been released at the Santa Barbara gold-copper porphyry deposit. Drill hole DSB-25 returned 212m averaging 0.55 g/t Au and 0.11% Cu. This includes 50m that averaged 0.79 g/t Au.  DSB-25, drilled to 704m, was collared 100m southeast of DSB-22 that returned 484m of 0.80 g/t Au and 0.13% Cu (EGX News Release April 10, 2013).  DSB-24 drilled through and along intervals of lower grade gold in thick intrusive dikes but still encountered 292m of 0.38 g/t Au and 0.08% Cu.  This hole was located 200m northeast of DSB-19 where previous results showed 420m of 0.57 g/t Au and 0.08% Cu (EGX News Release October 17, 2012).  The Company has completed four more holes at Santa Barbara to follow up on recent success in extending the mineralized zone, particularly to the south and east.  Assays are awaited for four drill holes DSB-26 to DSB-29.  EGX results at Santa Barbara are summarized in the table further below.

Phase I Drill Program Complete (13,062m)

With the completion of drill hole DSB-29, the Company has now completed its previously announced 13,000m Phase I drill program and has commissioned Al Maynard and Associates of Perth Australia to prepare an updated NI 43-101 technical report to update drill results and recalculate resources based on all the drilling up to and including DSB-29.  This report is expected to be completed by June 30, 2013.

The Santa Barbara gold-copper porphyry deposit is one of four targets including two epithermal gold targets (Los Cuyes, and Soledad) in the northern part of the Condor Gold and Copper concessions and the promising El Hito copper-molybdenum porphyry target located 5km east of Santa Barbara. These four target areas have been prioritized for resource expansion drilling by the Company (see EGX News Releases, January 30, 2013 and March 5, 2013 for recent drill results at Los Cuyes and El Hito).  Project locations and drill hole plan maps can be found in the project map section on the Company's web site at www.ecuadorgoldandcopper.com and project descriptions and current resources in the June 14, 2012 Technical Report at www.sedar.com.

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). This resource is exclusive of the above-mentioned Phase 1 Santa Barbara drilling. Additional Inferred Mineral Resources contain 1.28 million ounces gold (within 28.4 Mt grading 1.4 g/t gold). The measured resource consists of 54,000 ounces of gold (within 147.0 Mt 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.

These existing resources were also calculated by Al Maynard and Associates in June 2012.

Santa Barbara

The Santa Barbara Au-Cu porphyry deposit, which shows exceptional promise, is emerging as the Company's flagship deposit.  Eleven drill holes have been drilled to extend mineralization to the north, south and east of the current resource.  The table below has been updated to reflect the results from drill holes DSB-24 and 25 while results for DSB-26 to DSB-29 are pending.  The company has commissioned an updated resource calculation for Santa Barbara that is expected to be complete by the end of June, 2013.

The Santa Barbara South Zone currently hosts an inferred resource of 21.0 Mt of 1.00 g/t Au (675,000 oz) while the Santa Barbara North zone (500m to the northeast), contains a further inferred resource of 5.0 Mt of 0.90 g/t Au (145,000 oz).  For further details see the Company's web site at www.ecuadorgoldandcopper.com or the June 14, 2012 Technical Report at www.sedar.com.

Table 2 summarizes the assay results for DSB-24 and DSB-25 and previous results from EGX Phase I drilling at Santa Barbara.

Table 2:  Summary of Phase I drill results from Santa Barbara (length weighted average assays, uncapped)

• g/t = grams per metric tonne.
• Gold equivalent grade (AuEq) is calculated assuming 90% recovery of copper with a $3.00/lb. long term price of copper and $1400 long term price for gold.
• The true width of down hole interval lengths are estimated to be approximately 25% to 50%.

The Santa Barbara South Zone remains open to the north, east and south.  Porphyry gold-copper mineralization is hosted by altered basaltic andesite intruded by Jurassic intrusive stocks and dikes. Major structural orientations are exhibited by steeply dipping intrusive contacts, porphyry B-type quartz veins and faults striking northwest and northeast.  The 40km long Zamora Gold and Copper Belt in Southeastern Ecuador is host to Ecuacorriente's Mirador, Panantza and San Carlos copper porphyry deposits and Kinross's Fruta del Norte epithermal gold deposit of the same age.  The Company cautions that reference to the nearby deposits is for information purposes only and there is no assurance that its Condor gold and copper concessions will develop into economically viable producing deposits.

El Hito

El Hito is a Cu-Mo porphyry system hosted in diorite porphyry located approximately five kilometers east of the Company's Santa Barbara Au-Cu porphyry deposit.  The Company has drilled five drill holes at El Hito in its PhaseI drill campaign to follow up on four shallow discovery holes from previous operators.  The deposit remains open to the north and south and further mapping to the north in particular has indicated the potential to double the strike length of the known mineralized system.  EGX plans further drilling in its Phase II drill program pending detail mapping of the diorite and alteration to the north that is planned for June and July of 2013.  Results from DEH-05 to DEH-08 were released previously (Company News Release, March 5, 2013) and the table below has been updated to show the results from DEH-09, the last hole drilled in Phase I drilling.  DEH-09 encountered continuous copper mineralization from 24m to the end of the hole at 560m including 106m starting at 24m of 0.32% Cu and 1.06 g/t Ag and a further 110m of 0.33% Cu and 1.71 g/t Ag starting at 368m.

Table 1 has been updated to include DEH-09 and summarizes the assay results to date.

Table 1:  Summary of Phase I drill results from El Hito (length weighted average assays, uncapped)

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

Los Cuyes

One drill hole, DCU-41 (see Company News Release January 30, 2013) was drilled at Los Cuyes where there is an indicated resource of 46.85 million tonnes of 0.82 g/t Au and 6.19 g/t Ag (1.23 million oz Au and 9.32 million oz Ag). Los Cuyes is a well defined epithermal gold deposit hosted in lapilli tuffs and phreatomagmatic breccias related to rhyodacitic intrusives and dikes and bounded on four sides by near vertical faults.  DCU-41 tested the potential to expand known resources to the north where promising east-west structures intersect rhyodacite intrusive dikes.  DCU-41 was collared approximately 50m west of the known resource and encountered 149 meters of 0.84 g/t Au starting at 132m adjacent to the known resource including a 14.1m fault intersection grading 5.00 g/t Au.  The hole was drilled to 638.5m and encountered 5 more narrow structures ranging in width from 0.5 to 3.4m with grades of 0.5 to 3.4 g/t Au. The company is planning further mapping at Los Cuyes to define new drill targets.

Soledad

Three drill holes totaling 1935m were drilled at Soledad.  DSO-28 and DSO-29, drilled to the east and west scissoring towards each other, were designed to test for extensions of known mineralization in the southern part of the known deposit in an area without previous drilling.  Both drill holes intercepted a narrow east-west trending corridor of previously unrecognized and unmineralized phreatomagmatic breccia.  DSO-30, drilled towards the south, encountered 90m of 0.72 g/t Au starting at 54m including 28m of 1.00 g/t Au before intercepting the phreatomagmatic breccia.  Epithermal gold mineralization at Soledad is hosted in a rhyodacite intrusive.  Soledad hosts an indicated resource of 2.32 million tonnes of 1.33 g/t Au (99,000 oz) and 6.35 g/t Ag (474,000 oz) in two separate breccia bodies in the northern part of the intrusive (see the Company's June 14, 2012 Technical Report at www.sedar.com and maps at www.ecuadorgoldandcopper.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 are 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. Where appropriate, 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 and copper 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. Copper assays over 10,000 ppm are re-analyzed using four acid digestion with ICP-ES finish (ACME Labs 7TD method).  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., Vice-President 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.