VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, Jan 18, 2010 -International PBX Ventures Ltd. (the “Company”) (TSX VENTURE:PBX) is pleased to announce that it has acquired an additional 2,100 hectares (21 sq.kms) in the prolific Chilean copper-molybdenum porphyry belt. The Huatacondo claims are located 8kms west of the Company’s wholly-owned Copaquire Copper-Molybdenum-Rhenium property.
Both the Huatacondo and Copaquire claims are located in the Quebrada Blanca district of the copper-moly porphyry belt. In some districts of the porphyry belt, there is more than one deposit, thus defining a cluster. The Quebrada Blanca cluster consists of four copper-moly deposits: Teck Resources’ Quebrada Blanca, Xstrata/Anglo American’s Collahuasi Ujina and Collahuassi Rosario and PBX’s Copaquire (“The Geology of Chile” Published by The Geological Society of London). The copper-moly deposits in this cluster are distributed transversely (E-W) to the Domeyko fault. The Huatacondo claims are situated in this East-West trend.
George Sookochoff, President and CEO, said that “While the Huatacondo claims are early stage, we believe they represent quality exploration targets at low entry costs in a region known to host numerous copper-moly porphyries.”
PBX recently completed a positive independent Preliminary Assessment (PA) on the Copaquire project. The National Instrument 43-101 (“NI 43-101”) compliant study completed by AMEC International (Chile) S.A (“AMEC”) suggests a mine capable of producing approximately 785.4 million lbs of copper and 166.4 million lbs of molybdenum over a 24-year mine life at an operating cost of $7.15 US$/t.