Russian Government Certifies

RNS Number : 0747R

Amur Minerals Corporation

23 April 2009

 



23 April 2009

Amur Minerals Corporation

('Amur' or 'the Company')

Russian Government Certifies Kun-Manie Discovery

Amur Minerals Corporation (AIM: AMC) is pleased to announce that the Russian Federal Agency for Resources ('Rosnedra') has issued the final certificate of discovery for the Kun Manie nickel-copper sulphide project located in the Russian Far East.  This Certificate allows the Company, through its ZAO Kun-Manie subsidiary, to apply for a mining permit on the presently drilled reserves.  

The certificate of discovery follows the previously announced approval of Kun-Manie's reserves by the State Committee on Reserves. The certified reserves are located within the Vodorazdelny and Ikenskoe deposits. In the near future, the Company plans to file for inclusion of the reserves in the Maly Krumkon area as well. Russian law requires that the certificate of discovery confers an exclusive right to negotiate a 20 year mining licence in the area of the discovery. ZAO Kun-Manie is currently preparing an application for this licence.  

Recent Russian legislation considers the Kun-Manie deposit as strategic. The Russian government may decline a mining licence application to a foreign controlled entity in line with this legislation. However, under compensation rules approved by the Russian government, the government is required to refund Kun-Manie's exploration expenses, plus a bonus of 40% if the mining licence application is declined on the grounds of foreign control over a strategic resource. To date, the Company has capitalised over 279 million RUR (US$8.3 million, at current exchange rates) in exploration expenditures at Kun-Manie.  

Financing Update

The Company continues to negotiate with a number of potential investors. The Company's cost-cutting and cash saving efforts have allowed it to continue progressing towards a transaction with one or more of the potential local investors in order to provide the necessary Russian component to the ownership of the reserves at Kun-Manie.  The directors remain confident that a deal can be finalised, however, there can be no assurance until a definitive and binding agreement is reached.  

The Company intends to announce its 2008 financial results in June.  

Robin Young, Amur's Chief Executive Officer, commented:

'We are very pleased to have been issued with the final certificate of discovery for Kun-Manie. This allows us to progress to the next stage of the approval process, the application for a mining permit. We continue to pursue our ultimate objective of bringing Kun-Manie, one of the world's largest new open-pitable nickel sulphide discoveries, into production.'

The information contained in this announcement has been reviewed and approved by the CEO of Amur, Robin Young.  Mr. Young is a Geological Engineer (cum laude) and is a Qualified Professional Geologist, as defined by the Toronto and Vancouver Stock Exchanges.

Enquiries: 

Company Amur Minerals Corp.	Nomad and Broker RBC Capital Markets	Public Relations Lothbury Financial
Robin Young	Martin Eales	Michael Padley
CEO		Libby Moss
[phone]	[phone]	[phone]

Notes to Editors'

About Amur Minerals

Amur's principal asset is the 100% owned Kun-Manie exploration licence, a nickel-copper deposit located in the Amur Province in the far east of the Russian Federation.  The Kun-Manie licence area is approximately 950 km² and is located 700 km northeast of the capital city of Blagoveshchensk and is 750km north of the Chinese border.  In April 2004 ZAO Kun-Manie, a wholly owned subsidiary of Amur, was granted a licence to explore for nickel and related metals, including copper and platinum, in respect of the Kun-Manie licence.  

Work carried out to date on the Kun-Manie licence including diamond core drilling, trenching and geological mapping has identified four mineralised targets; the Vodorazdelny, Ikenskoe, Maly Krumkon and Falcon zones have been drilled to varying extents.  The drilled zones are located within a 15 km long segment of the 40 km long Krumkon Trend. This trend is the primary exploration target within the licence area. An additional three targets identified as Chornie Ispelene, Yan Hegd and Kubuk (also referred to as Ata) have been identified as additional drill targets. Chornie Ispelene and Kubuk lie within the trend whilst Yan Hegd is located approximately 8 km to its north and a couple of geological wildcat holes have been completed. Approximately 50% of the Krumkon Trend remains to be examined by reconnaissance work where existing Soviet data indicates potential exists to identify additional drill targets. 

Exploration drill results have been utilised by SRK Consulting to calculate resources. These include resources of the Measured, Indicated and Inferred categories which have been estimated for the deposits of Vodorazdelny, Ikenskoe and Maly Krumkon. Effective January 2008, the independently compiled Resource Estimate, which has now been approved by Rosenedra for both the Ikenskoe and Vodorazdelny deposits, consists of a total of 68.5 Mt at a mean grade of 0.50% nickel and 0.14% copper containing 341,000 tonnes of nickel; and 95,500 tonnes of copper.  The limits of three of the drilled zones have not been defined and potential for resource expansion is very promising.  The currently defined resource is summarised in the following table.

SRK Consulting's 2007 Year End Resource Report

Orebody	Tonnage  (Mt)	Ni  (%)	Ni (t)	Cu (%)	Cu  (t)
Vodorazdelny
Indicated	5.9	0.71	41,800	0.20	11,800
Ikenskoe
Measured	3.7	0.61	22,700	0.16	5,800
Indicated	26.8	0.42	111,300	0.12	32,700
Sub-total	30.5	0.44	134,000	0.13	38,500
Inferred	5.9	0.49	28,700	0.13	7,500
Total Ikenskoe	36.4	0.45	162,700	0.13	46,000
Maly Krumkon
Indicated	15.0	0.49	73,700	0.13	19,900
Inferred	11.2	0.56	62,800	0.16	17,800
Total Maly Krumkon	26.2	0.52	136,500	0.14	37,700
Total Resource
Total Measured	3.7	0.61	22,700	0.16	5,800
Total Indicated	47.7	0.48	226,800	0.13	64,400
Total Inferred	17.1	0.54	91,500	0.15	25,300
Grand Total	68.5	0.50	341,000	0.14	95,500

In addition, Amur has completed an independently compiled a positive prefeasibility study on the Kun-Manie Project which after only five seasons of drilling and less than 20,000 metres of core The results.  The discovery cost per pound of nickel is among the industry's lowest at 0.023 US dollars.

ENDS

 

END

 

 

DRLBUGDSDDDGGCX