Boston drilling exceeds expectations

Vancouver — Good news follows bad for Miramar Mining‘s (MAE-T) wholly owned Hope Bay gold project, near Bathurst Inlet in Nunavut: little more than three weeks after being notified of a delay in permitting for the Doris North deposit, the company has reported impressive gold values in drill results from the Boston deposit.

Eight of a planned 15 infill holes have been drilled at Boston, where the measured and inferred resource was last estimated to be 1.4 million tonnes grading 15.4 grams gold per tonne. Highlights include the following:

— Hole 304 — 6.6 metres (from 410.6 metres) averaging 21.7 grams gold per tonne, including 2.9 metres of 47.4 grams gold;

— Hole 308 — 23.4 metres (from 304.4 metres) grading 7.3 grams gold, including two separate 1.4-metre sections of 33.9 and 21.1 grams gold;

— Hole 309 — 12.4 metres (from 374.4 metres) of 9.3 grams gold, including 5.6 metres of 18.7 grams;

— Hole 300W — 5.8 metres (from 918.7 metres) grading 7.1 grams gold, including 1.3 metres of 17.6 grams;

— Hole 301 — 2.8 metres (from 1,099.7 metres) averaging 32.7 grams gold, including a section of 1.8 metres grading 50 grams (visible gold was abundant in the core, and this hole will be used for drilling of multiple offsets);

— Hole 310 — 10.3 metres (from 664.5 metres) grading 8.7 grams, including 9 metres of 9.9 grams.

The results demonstrate the depth extent of the gold-mineralizing system at Boston, as well as the potential for extending the resource below its current boundary.

Elsewhere on the Hope Bay project, the company has offloaded its exploration effort on the Twin Peaks and Eastern Contacts areas.

Maximus Ventures (MXV-V) has agreed to earn up to a 75% interest in the projects in return for spending $7.5 million over three years. Miramar has a back-in right to reacquire half of the project, and operatorship, by refunding to Maximus 150% of its expenditures. Maximus will also be issuing up to 9 million shares to Miramar.

The Twin Peaks and Eastern Contacts areas have several occurrences of high-grade, vein-hosted gold mineralization with multi-ounce-per-ton grab samples. They also have large-scale bulk-tonnage potential.

The Hope Bay project comprises more than 1,000 sq. km on the Arctic coast and consists of three deposits, Doris, Madrid and Boston, with a combined resource of 5.4 million oz. gold. Permitting is under way on Doris North, with production anticipated in 2006.

Miramar has 152 million shares outstanding.