Junior Miner Announces Significant Gold, Copper, Zinc Strike

By: AllPennyStocks.com News

January 15, 2010
One of the wonderful things about the search for valuable metals is that various regions of the world are so rich in these treasures. While the landscape and surrounding geography makes finding these metals all the more challenging, they also make these discoveries that much more lucrative. And this applies to not only gold, but some of the less sexy metals that industry values as well.

Toronto-based Nautilus Minerals Inc. (TSX:NUS) got the small cap world’s attention soon after folks started coming back from their Christmas vacations, when, in mid-January, it announced the discovery of five high-grade Seafloor Massive Sulphide ("SMS") systems, in the Western Bismarck Sea off Papua New Guinea, in the South Pacific.

The finds, dubbed Solwara 12, 13, 14, and 16, reported grab samples which promised copper grades up to 32.4% and zinc grades up to 52.6%. Final assays on samples collected from Solwara 12 and 13 also indicated gold up to 39.7 grams per ton (g/t) and silver up to 682 g/t. NUS also made a further high-grade discovery at Solwara 11 (11i) in the Western Bismarck Sea. The 2009-10 exploration campaign defined 18 SMS systems in the Bismarck Sea, along with numerous zones of hot water venting, smaller chimney fields, and barite-rich zones.

NUS claims to be the first company to explore commercially the seafloor for massive sulphide systems, a potential source of high-grade copper, gold, zinc and silver. Nautilus is developing a production system using existing technologies adapted from the offshore oil and gas industry to enable the extraction of these high grade Seafloor Massive Sulphide ("SMS") systems on a commercial scale.

NUS is developing the world's first seafloor copper-gold project, Solwara 1, employing technologies from the offshore oil and gas, dredging and mining industries. The final Environmental Permit for the development of the Solwara 1 Project was received on December 29 from the Department of Environment and Conservation of Papua New Guinea for a term of 25 years, getting the New Year off to a promising start for the company.

The news on January 14 sent NUS stock up by more than 11% to the $2.37 mark, on volumes of more than 485,000 shares. Prices peaked earlier in the week at $2.76, after a 52-week gulch of 93 cents, plumbed in the third week of January last year. A finder and developer of such diversified metals certainly deserves a whole lot of scrutiny as its discoveries get hotter and the weather gets warmer.

Copyright © 2010 AllPennyStocks.com. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of AllPennyStocks.com's content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of AllPennyStocks.com. AllPennyStocks.com shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.