Venture rises in Feb. 28 to March 4 period

Vancouver – Continued unrest in the Middle East and rising commodity prices helped the S&P-TSX Venture composite index up 64.21 points between Feb. 28 and March 1 to close at 2,439.83.

Trading volumes remained strong, averaging 189 million shares daily. In a good week for Venture stocks, 126 companies reached 52-week highs, while 34 hit new lows.

Bear Creek Mining jumped $2.53 to $11.65 after signing construction and engineering contracts for its Santa Ana silver project in Peru, making it the trading week’s biggest value gainer. The company plans to begin construction of the heap-leach mine in late 2011, with production targeted for the latter half of 2012. First, however, the company needs environmental approval, which it hopes to receive in the middle part of this year. On Feb. 23, Bear Creek successfully completed the public audience portion of the required environmental and social impact assessment process, an important milestone in the permitting process.

Manganese explorer Reunion Gold became the biggest percentage gainer on the index after releasing excellent trenching results from its historic Matthews Ridge project in Guyana. The company plans to drill around 24,000 metres at the past-producing property in 2011 to follow up on the trenching results, which included 64 metres of 20.5% manganese.

Shares of Manitou Gold rose 111% after drilling exceptionally high gold grades on its Kenwest property in northwestern Ontario. The results, including a staggering 0.55-metre intercept grading 53,700 grams gold per tonne, helped the stock rise to an intraday high of $1.13 from 71 cents. The Kenwest property hosts the historic Big Master mine, which last saw production in the 1940s. Gold mineralization at the site has been identified in two parallel shear zones 40 metres apart, with the Big Master mine on one gold structure and the recent bonanza-grade drill results found on the other. Shares of Manitou drifted downward toward the latter half of the trading period, closing at 72 cents on Friday, March 4.

Also gaining on high-grade drill results was Vancouver-based Roxgold, the most active stock on the TSX-V for the period with 29.4 million shares traded. Roxgold intersected six metres of 24.62 grams gold at its recently optioned Yaramoko project in Burkina Faso, adjoining Semafo’s Mana gold mine. Roxgold is earning a 60% interest in Yaramoko and two other gold properties from fellow Burkina Faso explorer Riverstone Resources. The joint venture partners say the drilling at Yaramoko has triggered a “gold rush” of local artisanal miners, an unknown number of whom have since flocked to the site.

Lastly, Northern Abitibi Mining dropped 33.3% following the release of a maiden resource estimate for its Viking gold property in Newfoundland. Northern Abitibi shares dropped 12.5¢ to 13¢, making it one of the largest percentage losers for the trading period. An independent resource estimate for Viking pegged the resource around 123,242 inferred gold oz. at a cut-off of 0.61 gram gold.