Silver Standard arranges $44-million financing

Vancouver — Silver Standard Resources (SSO-V) has arranged a private placement of 2.95 million units at a price of $14.80 per unit for gross proceeds of $43.66-million.

Each unit consists of one common share and one-half of one common share purchase warrant. Each whole warrant is exercisable at a price of $18.50 into one common share for a period of two years. The completion of the private placement is subject to acceptance of the TSX Venture Exchange.

These funds will be added to Silver Standard’s coffers, which currently tally to $16-million. Some of the money will be put towards the completion of feasibility studies at its 50-per-cent-owned Manantial Espejo project in Santa Cruz province, Argentina, and the wholly owned Bowdens silver project in New South Wales, Australia. Another portion of the money will go towards Silver Standard’s share of anticipated capital costs at Manantial Espejo and for the accelerated exploration of Silver Standard’s recently announced silver discovery at La Pitarrilla project in Durango, Mexico. The remaining cash will be put towards new silver project acquisitions and for general working capital purposes.

At Pitarrilla, initial drill results from a 3,100 metre drill program prompted Silver Standard to keep drilling.

At last report, 22 holes were completed at the Cordon Colorado zone. The last six were drilled in a fence and scissor pattern 50 to 100 metres southeast of the initial 16 holes. The best results came in holes 19 and 20, which yielded 123.5 grams of silver over 75.2 metres and 176 grams of Silver over 101.6 metres, respectively.

Mineralization has been exposed over an area measuring 700 metres in diameter and is related to structures and breccias located on the perimeter of a collapsed caldera.

Based on these results, Silver Standard has resumed drilling with an aim of completing an additional 20 vertical holes totalling 2,500 metres. The objective is to complete sufficient infill drilling for a resource calculation over a 300-by-300 metre area at Cordon Colorado.

Silver Standard has also outlined two other promising zones on the property: 400 metres to the northeast, the Pena Dike zone covers an area of 350-by-30 metres. Trench samples over the zone returned 145 grams silver of 36 metres and will be drill tested during the current exploration program.