Bell Copper Corporation reported that it has initiated metallurgical testing of chalcocite-bearing porphyry core samples from its Big Sandy project. Big Sandy is a large, truncated porphyry copper-molybdenum target located in northwestern Arizona, approximately 30 kilometers south of the Company's Perseverance Project. Drilling and Metallurgical Testing: Drillhole BS-3, which was oriented to test a 2400 meter by 2100 meter area of high electrical conductivity that was detected in an earlier magnetotelluric survey, intersected pervasively hematitic leached capping in sericitized quartz porphyry at an inclined depth of 1192 meters.

The drillhole then passed into a supergene chalcocite blanket extending between depths of 1302 and 1589 meters. Coarse reject material that was generated during assaying of the core samples has been composited and shipped to SGS Lakefield metallurgical laboratory in Ontario to be subjected to a bank of metallurgical scoping studies. In one phase of the testing, chalcocite (copper sulfide) will be recovered via froth flotation employing standard reagents used in operating copper mills.

The purpose of this testing is to determine the percentage of copper that can be recovered using this common technique, to determine the copper grade of the resulting concentrate, and to assess the concentration of byproduct metals and deleterious elements in the concentrate. The resulting copper concentrates from the test work would then be available for discussions with copper smelting companies. Chalcocite reject material will also be subjected to acid leach testing in order to determine if the Big Sandy chalcocite might be amenable to solution mining extraction.

This testing will determine both the amount of copper that might be recoverable via acid leaching and the amount of acid that might be consumed through this process. A separate testing regimen will focus on the utility of froth flotation for recovering molybdenite from the Big Sandy material. This lab work will assess the percentage of molybdenum that can be recovered from the rock, and the potential molybdenum grade of the concentrate that can be produced using froth flotation.

Additionally, the rhenium content of any molybdenite concentrate will be determined to assess the potential for a credit at Big Sandy from this strategic metal. Molybdenite from drillhole BS-1, located 1.2 kilometers east of BS-3, was geochronologically dated at the Colorado State University Airie Laboratory using the rhenium-osmium dating technique. That dating exercise revealed an unusually high content of rhenium in the Big Sandy BS-1 molybdenite of 8713 ± 17 ppm to 9319 ± 25 ppm.

The metallurgical testing of any molybdenite concentrate from BS-3 will provide information on the variability of rhenium content over long distances in the Big Sandy porphyry system. Finally, high definition QEMSCAN technology will be used to image the BS-3 material and determine the identity, size, and microscopic texture of the minerals hosting the target metals. This imagery will assist in optimizing grind size, reagent selection, upgrading of concentrate, and the deportment of any potential byproduct or deleterious elements.