Puma hits copper in New Brunswick (November 24, 2010)

Early results from Puma Exploration (PUM-V) Turgeon project in New Brunswick look promising, even though the market didn’t react with initial enthusiasm.

The company announced that the first hole drilled in its 2010 campaign intersected three mineralized copper zones only to have the market send its shares price down 11% to 20¢ on 1.6 million shares traded.

The three zones hit by the company break down as follows: the first intercepted 1.02% copper, 0.14% zinc and 0.8 grams silver over 68 metres; the second intercepted 1.04% copper, 2.43% zinc and 8.9 grams silver over 20.3 metres; and the third zone graded 0.24% Cu over 23.6 metres.

The company says the three intersections correspond to three types of mineralization in three distinct zones, descending from surface those zones are: chalcopyrite stockwork; silver rich massive sulfides with disseminate copper and the deepest zone is simply disseminated copper.

The hole went down to a depth of 594 metres and at 303.8 metres the hole cut a mineralized fault zone grading 1% Cu over 3.7 metres. Further to this fault zone, the hole got into an important sequence of mafic dykes cross-cutting almost entirely the host rock of the mineralization.

The results were strong enough to encourage Puma to do more drilling at the beginning of December.

Turgeon extends over 24.5 sq. km. and sits five km south of the deepwater port of Belledune and 25-km north of Bathurst, New Brunswick.

Puma acquired the project in 2008 with an eye towards developing a mine that could be an additional source of zinc ore for its Nicholas-Denys Project, which is 20-km south of Turgeon.

Nicholas-Denys has an indicated resource of 364,000 tonnes grading 0.53 grams gold, 0.7% lead, 1.43% zinc and 95 grams silver for more than 1 million oz. of silver, 11 million lbs of zinc, 5 million lbs of lead and 6,200 oz. of gold.