Willow Porphyry Copper Drilling Program

VANCOUVER - Abacus Mining & Exploration Corporation reported on the Willow porphyry copper drilling program in the Yerington copper camp, southeast of Reno, Nevada.

The program began in early July and the third drill hole has now been terminated, with approximately 1700 meters drilled. All holes to date have intersected the Luhr Hill porphyry, which is the host rock of the four known porphyry copper-molybdenum deposits in the Yerington camp. Previous drilling in 2018 also intersected this rock unit, marking the first new discovery of this rock unit and of a new potential copper-molybdenum porphyry deposit in the Yerington camp in over forty years.

The Company has decided to defer drilling the final hole of the program, as it cannot be completed prior to the onset of winter conditions on the property. This deferral will also allow time for logging and sampling of the holes to be completed, which is behind schedule due to various covid related delays. These delays included technical personnel availability and various supply chain issues.

Based on past work done by Abacus the target is at least 1.5 km by 1.5 km in size and is a blind target under later volcanics. In 2018 the drill contractor was only able to complete one of three holes to depth, but geochemical data was able to provide vectors for the current drilling. The 2021 program has added three more holes, but considering the size of the target, it remains poorly tested.

Copper porphyry-molybdenum deposits at Yerington occur at the contact of the Luhr Hill porphyry and surrounding volcanic rocks, or further into the volcanic package. Because the target at Willow is covered, prospecting by drill is the only effective means of trying to locate a porphyry center, and this often takes several drill campaigns to achieve. Each of the new 2021 drill holes have intersected the host Luhr Hill porphyry, and each will be extensively sampled to provide geochemical vectors to guide further drilling. Analytical results will be reported once received by the Company.

Abacus completed geological, geochemical and geophysical work on Willow beginning in 2017 and then undertook a short core drilling program. This drilling identified the Luhr Hill Granite on Willow with copper values in the 0.1% to 0.2% Cu range along with elevated Mo. This was a key new discovery, as there are no known instances of this granite in the camp without an associated porphyry. The Molybdenum values are a particularly strong indicator that you are close to a porphyry copper center.

Both drill programs were designed to test a very small portion of an extensive zone of intense silicic and advanced argillic alteration, marked by coincident geological, geochemical and geophysical signatures typical of a porphyry copper-molybdenum deposit. Porphyry copper systems are large in extent, and geochemistry collected from the 2018 drilling indicated that a likely porphyry center occurs north of the area initially drilled. The Company’s target is essentially identical to the two largest porphyry deposits in the Yerington camp, namely the past-producing Yerington mine and the undeveloped Ann Mason deposit.

Of the porphyries in the camp, Anaconda mined the Yerington porphyry between 1952 until 1978, producing 1.6 billion pounds of copper. The undeveloped Ann Mason porphyry deposit lies just east of Willow and is held by Hudbay Minerals. In early April of 2021, Hudbay announced an updated PEA on Ann Mason with a revised M&I resource of 2.2 billion tonnes at 0.34% Cu. Nevada Copper is in production at its Pumpkin Hollow skarn (P&P of 572 MT at 0.4% Cu). Quaterra Resources recently announced drilling to support the Prefeasibility Study that is ongoing on their MacArthur oxide copper project (M&I of 159MT at 0.212% Cu).