Pacific Ridge Exploration Ltd. announced that it is increasing the size of the diamond drill program at its 100% owned Kliyul copper-gold project ("Kliyul" or the "Project"), located in the prolific Quesnel Trough in north-central British Columbia, from 7,000 m to 9,000 m. This will be the largest ever drill program to take place at Kliyul. The Company is reallocating the Chuchi copper-gold project ("Chuchi") 2023 exploration budget ("Chuchi Budget") to fund the expanded drill program at Kliyul. The 2023 B.C. wildfire season is already the worst on record and the planned 2,000 m diamond drill program at Chuchi had to be cancelled due to fires - an Area Restriction order is in place for the Nation Lakes area, where Chuchi is located.

While most of the Chuchi Budget will be reallocated to Kliyul, the Company plans to use some of it for an Induced Polarization ("IP") survey at the Onjo copper-gold project ("Onjo"), which adjoins the western boundary of Centerra Gold Inc.'s ("Centerra") Mount Milligan Mine. The RDP copper-gold project ("RDP"), under option to Antofagasta Minerals S.A. ("Antofagasta"), a wholly owned subsidiary of Antofagasta PLC, is unaffected by fires and the planned 1,800 m diamond drill program is expected to commence in August. Two diamond drill rigs are on site and Pacific Ridge has completed 3,160 metres of the planned 9,000 m drill program.

The two main objectives of this year's drill program at Kliyul: 1. Test for extensions of the Kliyul Main Zone to the southeast and into adjacent fault blocks to the north, east and southwest. These targets are defined by known mineralization from previous drilling combined with modelled geophysical signatures, including a Magnetic Vector Inversion (MVI) aeromagnetic high anomaly with coincident resistivity- and chargeability-high anomalies; and, 2. Test several high priority targets that occur mainly along the Divide Lake Fault Trend, a highly prospective 6-km-long northwest-trending alteration and mineralization corridor, including Ginger (1.4 km northwest of KMZ), Parish Hill (1 km southeast of KMZ), M-39 (3.5 km southeast of KMZ), and Ginger South (1.2 km west of KMZ), which occurs along the east-northeast Valley Fault Trend. These targets are interpreted porphyry centres derived from aeromagnetic data and MVI modelling, IP survey inversions, geological mapping, and surface geochemical sampling.

100% owned by Pacific Ridge, Onjo adjoins the western boundary of Centerra's Mount Milligan Mine and has exploration targets that are within 16 km of the processing plant. Onjo is over 12,350 hectares in size and can be accessed via a network of forestry roads. Pacific Ridge's 2022 exploration program at Onjo identified three new porphyry copper-gold targets: Gingla, Chica, and Yazi zones.

These targets are defined by ZTEM conductivity and aeromagnetic features, surface geochemistry and geological mapping (Chica). All three target zones are aligned along an interpreted ENE-trending cross-arc structural linear (Heidi Lake Trend) that extends westward from the open pit at Mount Milligan (MBX Main zone) through the western brownfield mine expansion area, and then continues westward through the Heidi greenfield target at Mount Milligan and onto Onjo. Onjo hosts skarn occurrences and alkalic porphyry copper-gold mineralization associated with dioritic to monzonitic phases of the Witch Lake Diorite ("WLD") pluton, a satellite pluton of the Hogem batholith and plutonic suite which lies 6-10 km to the northwest.

The WLD pluton spatially coincides with a large (9 x 3.5 km) east-southeast trending Total Magnetic Intensity (TMI) aeromagnetic high anomaly that underlies Late Triassic to Early Jurassic volcanic rocks of the Takla Group and Chuchi Lake Succession and crosses an interpreted unconformity between these two host successions. The primary exploration target, the Chica zone, lies at the southeastern margin of this magnetic high anomaly where it occurs with the Early Jurassic host rocks and is less than 2 km from the unconformity. It should be noted for comparison that the nearby Mount Milligan porphyry Cu-Au deposit is Early Jurassic in age and lies at the southern margin of a large (11 x 3.5 km) north-northwest trending aeromagnetic high anomaly.

2023 exploration at Onjo will comprise up to 10 line-km of IP geophysical survey in two reconnaissance lines (4-5 line-km each) across two target areas, Chica and Gingla: One IP line will be run across the Chica target area where 2022 mapping identified a crowded plagioclase monzodiorite porphyry that is quartz-sericite and locally K-feldspar and actinolite altered with trace chalcopyrite (up to 1320 ppm Cu); surface sampling of rocks returned an 800 x 500 m multi-element porphyry pathfinder anomaly. A second IP line will be run across the Gingla target area which has similar scale and basin-edge relationship as the historical MBX Main zone at Mount Milligan, now the open pit. The Gingla target features a shallow-to-deep (360 Hz to 30 Hz) continuous ZTEM conductivity anomaly with anomalous porphyry pathfinder geochemistry in historical and recent surface rock sampling despite there being an obscuring blanket of till overburden.

The style of copper-gold mineralization returned in historical drilling, combined with the presence of nearby skarn occurrences, leads Pacific Ridge to believe that past operators at Onjo encountered the upper and/or peripheral levels of an alkalic porphyry system, and that this may be a moderately eastward tilted system like the Mount Milligan silica-saturated alkalic porphyry Cu-Au deposit. As such, there is excellent potential for the discovery of a similar type of porphyry deposit. Drilling in 2022 produced the best-ever drill result from RDP.

Drill hole RDP-22-005 at the Day target returned 107.2 m of 1.45% CuEq (0.63% Cu, 1.10 g/t Au, and 2.91 g/t Ag) within 497.2 m of 0.68% CuEq (0.37% Cu, 0.40 g/t Au, and 1.6 g/t Ag). 2023 exploration plans include 1,800 m of diamond drilling, a 16 line-km IP survey at the Day, Porcupine, and Bird targets, rock sampling at the Porcupine target, and soil sampling at the Bird target. The 2023 exploration program is being funded by Antofagasta who can earn a 75% interest in RDP by spending $10,000,000 on exploration over eight years and delivering a preliminary economic assessment report.

Pacific Ridge is the operator and will support the program from the Kliyul camp, located 40 km to the east. Drilling is expected to commence sometime in August.