Cash Minerals touts 'exciting' results

Nash Minerals Ltd. and its joint venture partner Mega Uranium Ltd. may have a tiger by the tail, but the beast these explorers are tracking is metallic in nature.

Unveiling the most promising results to date from four years of exploring the Wernecke Uranium District in northern Yukon Territory, Cash Minerals Jan. 23 said it is moving into the resource definition stage at its Igor property with a goal of developing a resource estimate for the iron oxide copper-gold-uranium (IOCG-U) prospect by this summer.

Igor is the most advanced exploration property among 20 properties held by Cash Minerals that encompass 1,200 square kilometers in the Wernecke district. About 227 square kilometers of ground has been staked in and around Igor to cover additional prospective targets.

Under-explored and virtually ignored since 1982, the area last attracted a C$10 million exploration program by Chevron Canada Ltd., Aquitaine Mining of Canada, and Eldorado Nuclear in the 1970s and early 1980s, according to Cash Minerals.

During its 2007 exploration program, the Vancouver, B.C.-based junior spent $17 million on an aggressive drilling program in the Yukon, turning its attention almost exclusively to Igor as the season progressed. The reason: Pursuing an intriguing gravimetric anomaly at depth on the mountainous property, Cash Minerals began to retrieve very encouraging drill samples.

Company officials Jan. 23 said the results from the drilling "excited" and "impressed" them beyond their expectations.

"I've been with Cash Minerals since its inception two or three years ago, Chairman Stan Bharti told analysts and investors in a conference call Jan. 23. "I can tell you from the broad picture as an executive and an investor in Cash Minerals … that in Igor, we've confirmed an IOCG uranium-type target. We also see that the target is at least 600 meters long but more interestingly the target is open to the north at depth and the thickest intersection that we've got is to the north. So we think the better grades are to the north."

The drilling also encountered additional occurrences of mineralization in outcropping 300 meters to the southwest.

A total of 9,042 meters in 31 holes was completed at Igor in 2007.

Among the drill results:

• Hole IG07-22: 140 meters of 0.042 percent U3O8, 0.76 percent copper and 0.05 grams per metric ton gold, including 7 meters of 0.417 percent U3O8, 7.37 percent copper and 0.33 g/t gold;

• Hole IG07-06: 64.7 meters of 0.090 percent U3O8, 1.18 percent copper and 2.25 g/t silver; and

• Hole IG07-12: 50 meters of 0.026 percent U3O8 and 0.54 percent copper, including 6.9 meters of 0.152 percent U3O8, 2.31 percent copper, 0.05 g/t gold.

Most exciting exploration results

Cash Minerals President and CEO Basil Botha said exploration results from 2005 and 2006 warranted a return to Igor in 2007. One hole drilled in 2005, in fact, returned an intersection that averaged 1.7 percent copper.

Of the 2007 results, Botha said, "These are significant intersections and some of the most exciting results of all the drilling done in Canada all year."

"In addition to putting the final elements in place for the 2008 exploration program, management remains focused on delivering on its objective of defining a uranium resource at the Igor property," Botha said. "We anticipate achieving this milestone in the second quarter of this year and then building on this number as we move ahead. The positive assay numbers, coupled with mineralized zones being encountered close to surface from 10 meters to 283 meters, bode very well with respect to the potential definition of an economic resource."

Cash Minerals officials say the copper-gold-uranium mineralization encountered on the property is similar in style to the iron oxide copper-gold-uranium mineralization at the Olympic Dam (Gawler Craton) and Ernest Henry (Mt Isa Inlier) deposits in Australia, characteristics that first attracted the company to explore the Wernecke district.

The giant Olympic Dam Mine, which is owned by BHP Billiton, is the world's largest uranium deposit and Australia's largest underground mine. It also boasts the world's fourth largest remaining copper and fifth largest gold deposits in a large number of discrete ore zones over several square kilometers ranging in depth from 350 meters to about one kilometer.

Australia's Ernest Henry Mine is another large copper-gold property with resource of 89 million metric tons averaging 1 percent copper and 0.53 g/t gold.

Cash Minerals is awaiting results from five more drill hole samples taken in 2007. All of the results will be used to develop the resource estimate for the property, Botha said.

Return to Igor in 2008

Drill testing the extension of the 650-meter zone at Igor to the north and southwest will be the focus for drilling in 2008.

Michael Carew, newly appointed chief geologist at Cash Minerals, said the company aims to expand the resource at Igor with the results of its 2008 exploration program.

Though 2008 exploration plans are still being finalized, the company has signed on four drill rigs to return to the Igor property in June.

"We will use two drill rigs in the north and drill some deeper holes to 500 meters," Carew said Jan. 23.

Botha said the company has cleared up access concerns by obtaining a permit from the Yukon government to use a road to reach the Igor property this year.

The Yukon government said Jan. 22 it would grant a permit for Cash Minerals to build the controversial 178-kilometer, or 110-mile road, in the Wind River Valley area, but it also denied permission to build an airstrip along the route.

The government's decision was based on recommendations from the Yukon Environmental and Socio-Economic Assessment Board, which approved both the road and airstrip.

Environmental groups had asked Yukon officials Jan. 21 to block the road's construction.

The lands branch of the Yukon Department of Energy, Mines and Resources said information about the proposed airstrip was too vague to ensure it would not have an adverse impact on wilderness tourism activity in the region.

Other targets cited for 2008

Drilling also will be conducted at the Odie and Lumina properties, following up on positive results during the 2007 drill program.

Cash Minerals began its 2007 drill exploration program last March with two drills at the Odie property, about 25 kilometers northwest of Igor. It covers more than 200 square kilometers.

Early results from Odie, an IOCG target, intersected visible copper (as native copper), in two intersections, and demonstrated the benefits of applying advanced modeling technology to geophysical data.

Cash Minerals also explored its Lumina property, a vein-controlled target located about 50 kilometers southeast of Igor, continued to add value to the company's portfolio of uranium exploration projects.

Drilling at Lumina in 2007 demonstrated a continuity of uranium mineralization discovered in 2006 and extended the known subsurface uranium mineralization about 130 meters to the southwest.

Under an agreement with Mega Uranium, Cash Minerals has an option to earn a 75 percent interest in the Wernecke uranium prospects. The company has until Jan. 31 to decide on which of the Wernecke properties it will exercise the option, Botha said.

Cash Minerals also plans to do additional drilling in 2008 to fulfill terms of an arrangement it entered in April 2007 with Signet Minerals Inc. to acquire three other highly prospective uranium properties - Curie and Murphy in the Yukon and Aura in British Columbia.

Cash Minerals is also exploring for uranium in the Central Mineral Belt of Labrador and is engaged in exploring and developing coal properties in southwest Yukon Territory.