The options cover three claims with an area of about 2,102 hectares that are encircled by concessions held by Pan American Silver, for which acquisition Silver Viper has also signed a letter of intent.

VIPR is preparing to undertake an initial diamond drilling campaign of up to 5,000m at Rubi-Esperanza, while it works toward finalising a definitive accord with PAS.

Under terms of the option agreements, Silver Viper will make escalating staged cash payments totalling US$4.5 million, and grant the vendors a 2% net smelter return royalty.

President and CEO Steve Cope said the option agreements marked the start of consolidation of the relatively underexplored silver-gold camp. "Our due-diligence work has included field reconnaissance and prospecting, and the team is progressing into the advanced targeting and drilling phases on this exciting project," he said.

Due diligence to date had included a first-pass geochemical reconnaissance programme over the PAS claims. The company has completed the required environmental studies for drill permitting and is busy formalising an access agreement with surface rights owners in hope of getting started on the exploration drilling in July.

The assets form part of the La Virginia area, which is characterised by laterally extensive epithermal style gold-silver mineralisation in quartz stockworks, veins and hydrothermal breccias hosted in andesites and felsic dykes. The Rubi-Esperanza claims had seen 188 diamond drill holes for 52,635m completed between 2010 and 2013, of which results for only the first 50 holes have been published.

Silver Viper said it would have to undertake check sampling of existing core before it will be in a position to publicly disclose the historical metal values. Among the published results from 2011 are highlight hole LV11-47C of 2011, which intersected 23.5m grading 13.69 grams per tonne (GPT) gold equivalent, and hole LV11-50C which returned 15m averaging 6.14gpt.

The largest historical workings, at La Virginia and Con Virginia, are still accessible and host mineralisation ranging from 1m to greater than 20m in thickness. The PAS claims will provide Silver Viper access to strike extensions and potential parallel mineralised structures, in addition to the upside of the 40km-long regional exploration property.