Monday, December 14, 2009
VANCOUVER, British Columbia: Bell Copper Corporation (TSXV: BCU) has initiated drilling of hole K-8 on its Kabba porphyry copper-molybdenum project located midway between the operating Bagdad and Mineral Park copper mines in northwestern Arizona. The
Diamond cored tail of drillhole K-7A was completed to a depth of 388 meters, encountering oxidized, fluorite-rich granite beneath 366 meters of cover rocks. The Kabba drill program is targeting a faulted, major copper-molybdenum porphyry system beneath 100 to 500 meters of cover.
A recent geological reinterpretation of the direction of slip on the main fault that truncated and offset the porphyry copper system has led in the past two weeks to the discovery of previously unmapped porphyry outcrops containing strongly anomalous arsenic, lead, zinc, and copper levels. These outcrops extend in a northwesterly direction beyond the northern end of the newly reinterpreted target area. Also discovered in the same general area were drill cuttings from a 500 meter deep water well. Cuttings from the bottom of the well consisted of sericitized porphyry and pyritic granite, further supporting the concept of a large porphyry system in the new target area. Porphyry-related features including dikes and mineralized veinlets are now known to extend over 40 square kilometres in the targeted hangingwall block of the system. Consistent vein-filling mineral sequences including early lead-zinc sulfides and sulphosalts followed by iron-rich carbonates and terminated by the zeolite mineral laumontite are observed across a north-south distance of 10 kilometers, suggesting that these widely separated observations are all genetically related products of a single very large hydrothermal system.
Drillhole K-7A is interpreted to have intersected fluorine-enriched wallrock granite just west of the outer pyritic fringe of the porphyry target. Induced polarization responses beneath the K-7A drill site are believed to have been caused by thin clayey beds in the cover rocks rather than by disseminated sulfide mineralization in bedrock. Drillhole K-8 is being drilled using an airlift percussion drill on what is believed to be the eastern pyritic fringe of the decapitated porphyry system. The 2.7 kilometers between these two drillholes is expected to span much of the width of the target. Ongoing permitting for a subsequent drillhole, to be designated K-9, will allow the core of the target area to be tested upon the completion of K-8.
Timothy Marsh, PhD, P.E., the Company's VP of Exploration and a Qualified Person continues to oversee the drilling operation. No mineral resource has yet been identified on the Kabba Project. There is no certainty that the present exploration effort will result in the identification of a mineral resource or that any mineral resource that might be discovered will prove to be economically recoverable.
About Bell CopperBell Copper is focused on the exploration and development of copper assets in the Americas through internal efforts and via strategic partnerships.
More information on Bell Copper:
www.bellcopper.netOn behalf of the Board of Directors of
Bell Copper Corporation"Brian Leeners"Brian Leeners, CFO & DirectorFor further information please contact the Company
Tel: 604 669-1484 or email:
info@bellcopper.net
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http://www.bellcopper.net/s/News_Releases.asp?ReportID=377037