Puma hits copper in New Brunswick (December 20, 2010)

Early results from Puma Exploration’s (PUM-V) Turgeon copper-zinc 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 on Nov. 24.

The zones hit by the company break down as follows: 1.02% copper, 0.14% zinc and 0.8 gram silver over 68 metres; 1.04% copper, 2.43% zinc and 8.9 grams silver over 20.3 metres; and 0.24% copper over 23.6 metres.

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

The hole went down to a depth of 594 metres, and at 303.8 metres it cut a mineralized fault zone grading 1% copper 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 5 km south of the deepwater port of Belledune and 25 km north of Bathurst, N.B.

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 of 0.53 gram gold, 0.7% lead, 1.43% zinc and 95 grams silver for more than 1 million oz. silver, 11 million lbs. zinc, 5 million lbs. lead and 6,200 oz. gold.