Southern Arc defining wide zone in Indonesia

On what was another tough day on the market for miners, Southern Arc Minerals (SA-V) defied the trend and managed to make a solid gain on the back of its latest drill results.

The results came out of Southern Arc’s key exploration asset – the West Lombok project, which is a complex of several gold-rich copper porphyries and epithermal gold vein prospects on Indonesia’s Lombok Island – and they sent the company’s shares up 15¢ or 9% to $1.76 on 411,000 shares traded.

Southern Arc says the assays demonstrate down dip continuity of both grade and width and that they confirm high-grade epithermal gold mineralization remains below the 250 metres level.

The best hole, PLD003 returned16.55 metres grading 5.5 grams gold and 3.7 grams silver from a depth of 232.95 metres.

The hole intersected high-grade mineralization over 250 metres vertically below surface and 100 metres below a previous high-grade intercept.

With the greater depth confirmed, Southern Arc has a mineralized zone on its hands that is exposed at surface and remains open below 250 metres.

Hole PLD003 was drilled in the same cross-section as three other previous holes that returned highlight intercepts of 10.70 metres grading 2.93 grams gold and 20 grams silver; 4.85 metres grading 7.11 grams gold and 18.5 grams silver and 17.25 metres grading 5.73 grams gold and 11.7 grams silver.

Another hole from the latest batch, PLD008, intersected the same style of mineralization 50 metres southeast of those same three holes. Mineralization was struck 90 metres below surface and returned two broad mineralized intervals of 11.55 metres grading 9.80 grams gold and 31.1 grams silver and 11.80 metres grading 1.40 grams gold and 9.2 grams silver.

And further away, some 150 metres southeast of the zone, a hole returned a highlight intercept of 10.95 metres grading 2 grams gold and 34 grams silver.

All of the latest results come out of the first five diamond drill holes of the 2011 program that is focusing on the Pelangan prospect at West Lombok.

The area where the drilling was done, an area called the Central Raja zone, represents less than 10% of Pelangan’s current strike length.

Southern Arc says drilling will continue to step out on 50 metres spaced sections at Raja to identify further high-grade shoots for aggressive infill drilling.

Pelangan is located at the northwest end of the West Lombok Mineralized Structural Corridor, a 13-km long by 7-km wide northwest trending mineral belt containing both epithermal gold and porphyry copper and gold mineralization within Southern Arc’s licence.

The company says it has outlined 5-km aggregate strike length of outcropping gold mineralization.

The 2011 program targeting the gold mineralization has commenced with three drill rigs testing the deeper portions of the 400 m long Central-Lode portion of the Raja MSB Target.