Southern Arc resumes drilling program at West Lombok Project

Minerals exploration firm Southern Arc Minerals announced on Tuesday the recommencement of drilling at its West Lombok exploration project, West Nusa Tenggara.

Five drill rigs have been moved onto the Waterfall target at the Mencanggah prospect and two more drill rigs are due on site shortly. Southern Arc expects to have seven rigs drilling at Mencanggah by the end of October, with additional rigs coming in November.

Mike Andrews, Southern Arc's President and CEO said,?Rock channel samples at Mencanggah have returned some fantastic results and the first two holes drilled in August showed encouraging intercepts and confirmed gold mineralization at depth. We have worked with the support of all levels of Indonesian authorities to implement our new security plan, and look forward to reporting drill results from Mencanggah as the exploration program unfolds."

Surface mapping and rock channel samples have identified 16 kilometres cumulative strike length of gold-bearing epithermal breccias at the Mencanggah prospect, with indications of near-surface and buried porphyry copper-gold mineralization. Southern Arc plans to test the epithermal breccias by drilling approximately 30 holes to an average depth of 300 metres. Follow-up drilling with the objective of completing a National Instrument 43-101 compliant resource estimate for Mencanggah will continue through the first half of 2012.

Southern Arc Minerals Inc. is a Canadian company which portfolio includes four exploration projects with epithermal gold and gold-copper porphyry prospects on the Lombok and Sumbawa islands, three of which are being advanced in partnership with major mining companies Vale and Newcrest. The Company's key exploration property is its West Lombok project, with several gold-rich copper porphyry and epithermal gold vein prospects.(alex)