Arc gets IUP for Bima copper-gold project

Australia-listed mining firm Arc Exploration Limited announced on Thursday that the conversion of the Bima KP in West Nusa Tenggara to a Mining Business Licence (IUP) had been completed.

The Exploration IUP covering an area of 24,980 hectares was signed by the Bima regent on April 28, 2010 and is valid for 5 years, the company said in statement.

The Bima project is located about 230 km east of Newmont?s Batu Hijau porphyry copper-gold mine on the same segment of the Sunda-Banda magmatic arc. Targets in the tenement are gold and base metal-rich intermediate-sulphidation epithermal veins that are possibly related to buried porphyry copper-gold targets.

On Arpil 19, 2010, Arc announced encouraging results from preliminary soil and rock chip sampling at the northern end of the Kowo prospect.

Further results received from infill soil sampling on a 50m x 100m grid over Kowo have highlighted elevated coincident gold-lead-barium over mineralized and altered volcanic rock surrounded by barren younger cover.

Continuous rock chip samples from the area of gold in soils returned results as follows: 8.5 m at 0.14 g/t Au, 1335 ppm Pb & 7421 ppm Ba and 7 m at 0.15 g/t Au, 1024 ppm Pb & 4703 ppm Ba and 13 m at 0.2 g/t Au, 4 g/t Ag, 39 ppm Cu, 356 ppm Pb & 3332 ppm Ba.

These results are encouraging and support the potential for bulk tonnage gold-base metal sulphide deposits in the project area. The company plans to undertake further work at Bima in the second half of 2010 to prepare for possible scout drilling later in the year or in early 2011. (denny)