EXPLORATION CONTINUES AT LAOS COPPER/SILVER PROJECT
November 3, 2009. – Amanta Resources Ltd, “the Company” is pleased to report on recent progress at the Luang Namtha copper-silver exploration area, in northern Laos. The Company is exploring and evaluating several large occurrences of high grade copper-silver mineralization which it has discovered within the 200 km² concession area.
The Pakieng area. Presently, most of the work is concentrated on the Company’s main exploration target, the centrally located Pakieng area, where reconnaissance sampling has uncovered large areas with outcropping high grade copper-silver mineralization. The major part of the Pakieng area is underlain by Paleozoic volcanic rocks with minor red beds. It is mainly in the volcanics that the high grade copper-silver mineralization occurs. Outcropping mineralization has been identified over an area covering some 10 km2. From this area, rock chip samples have yielded assay values of up to 6% Cu and 13 oz/t Ag, as well as molybdenum values of up to 0.8%, with minor associated gold.
Line cutting for a sampling grid covering this area has been completed and surveyed, in preparation for systematic rock and soil sampling programme. A total of about 1,000 samples will be collected and prepared on-site before being assayed at the MAS assay laboratory in Bangkok, Thailand. The Company expects this program to be completed by January 2010.
The basic grid within the survey area has a line spacing of 500 meters, within which a detailed grid covering an area of 3.2 km² has a line spacing of 100 meters. The Vietnamese geological contractor, Intergeo, will provide field crews for mapping and sampling along the grid lines. An Induced Polarization, IP, geophysical survey will also be completed over the same grid. This survey is expected to start by the middle of November and will also be completed by January 2010.
The combined geological, geochemical and geophysical data will allow the Company to confirm targets for the initial exploration drilling program, commencing in early 2010.
Other significant discoveries. Ongoing reconnaissance and exploration activities by the Company’s geologists and contractors, has led to the discovery of several other significant zones of mineralisation within the concession area, while some locations have yet to be examined due to the difficult terrain in parts of the concession area.
In the western part of the concession area, which is underlain by Triassic intrusive rocks and volcano-sedimentary formations, outcropping rocks exhibit a different style of mineralisation to that in the Pakieng area. Company geologists, following up on stream sediment survey results, have discovered massive lead-zinc-copper-gold-silver mineralization in outcrop several tens of meters wide. One sample assayed 16% zinc, 4% lead, 0.6g/t gold, 15g/t silver and 0.2% copper.
From the same area, quartz vein material returns gold values up to 15 g/t. A gridding, mapping and sampling program covering this zone is now underway and is expected to be completed by the end of December 2009.
In the eastern part of the concession, recent discoveries include a 100-meter long outcropping zone of stockwork and sheeted veins in an andesitic host, with copper-gold-silver mineralization. Outcrop samples return 0.5 to 1% copper, 15 to 35 g/t silver and 0.1 to 0.3 g/t gold. Further and more detailed work is planned at this new zone.
Also, in the northern part of the area, significant copper mineralisation has been discovered in the Nam An - Muang Long zone, with assay grades in excess of 1% copper. The zone is in close proximity to the large northern strike-slip fault and geographically near the main road from Luang Namtha to the village of Long. Intergeo crews located a total of 13 outcrops, with pyrite-chalcopyrite occurring in altered “broken” zones of dacitic-andesitic rocks and in stockworks and veins. The zone has been intruded by early Triassic grano-diorites. Systematic exploration in this zone has not yet commenced.
Work completed to date within the concession area indicates a number of similarities between the Luang Namtha area and similar copper-silver occurrences in the Luang Namtha-Yulong mineralized belt, particularly those mined by Chinese companies in the Yongping–Lincang zone, Yunnan Province, where several chalcosite-in-dacite porphyry deposits are reported, often occurring in close proximity of each other. Amanta’s exploration area appears to contain similar indications of multiple mineralized zones.
Amanta Resources Ltd. is focused on the development of its copper interests in the Lao PDR. The Company is currently developing the Luang Namtha copper project under a Joint Exploration Agreement with Japan Oil, Gas and Metal National Corporation (JOGMEC).
On behalf of the board of
AMANTA RESOURCES LTD.
“Gerald D. Wright”
Gerald D. Wright, President and Chief Executive Officer
Neither 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.
For more information please contact Catherine Forrest at 604-730-9505 or by email at
info@amantaresources.com
