Mindoro Mining"s annual general meeting gathering on July 7 was told that patience would be needed waiting on the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (the DENR) to release the company"s Exploration Permit for the Calo porphyry copper-gold prospect, which has been signed and approved by the underlying Mines and Geoscience Bureau.

Mindoro Mining CEO Tony Climie told the meeting: "We won't drill until we have that permit in hand. The permit has met all legal and regulatory requirements, but there is a new secretary for the DENR and he is apparently reviewing all permits prior to releasing them.

"Our best guess is that we may be drilling within two months time, but it could be earlier (or later!), it just depends where our permit is in the stack being reviewed."

Last year two holes were drilled into the Calo porphyry copper-gold prospect intersecting significant, but low grade, copper-gold mineralization.

"We said that we thought we'd drilled into the outer edge of the porphyry system. Based on geophysical surveys carried out during our due diligence evaluation of the area, we now realize that Pica itself is actually the outer edge of the much more intense and much larger Calo system, covering an area of about 6 km by 3-4 km," Tony Climie said.

"We are most excited by the potential of Calo - the geophysical expression is extra-ordinarily strong and large, and we see many epithermal copper and gold showings in the area which we are confident are above one or more porphyry copper-gold systems.

"We are initially planning a minimum of 6 widely-spaced drill holes to allow us to target mineralization centres for more rigorous drilling evaluation.

"Unfortunately, the tailings spill of Lafayette in the Philippines earlier this year has caused the entire industry to come under the microscope, and the DENR is being extra cautious that all requirementsare met before releasing permits."

Tony Climie also spoke at the AGM about the encouraging drill results from the Kay Tanda and adjacent Pulang Lupa epithermal gold zones.

The outlook for Kay Tanda / Pulang Lupa is excellent. Mindoro has drilled about 20 more holes during July and this will be followed by approximately two months to complete an NI 43-101 resource estimate, and then commissioning a scoping study, with the objective of putting Kay Tanda / Pulang Lupa into production.

The Agata nickel laterite prospect was also discussed at the meeting. BHP has now indicated that Agata does not meet their grade requirements, believed to be about 1.7% nickel and does not justify direct shipping of ore to their refinery in Queensland , Australia .

The BHP drilling intersected a considerable amount of material grading in the 1% nickel range.

"We are currently carrying out a resource calculation. With nickel now over an incredible $12 per pound, and with 1% nickel deposits finding markets in Asia , we believe we have the potential to find local markets for Agata nickel.

"In fact, we have been contacted by both Korean and Chinese interests who are looking to acquire nickel deposits in this grade range. We will be following up on these enquiries in the days to come, and we feel confident that we have good potential to market our nickel laterite."
The initial drill testing of several of Mindoro 's 20 porphyry copper-gold prospects on is Batangas and Surigao projects were also outlined.

"In this regard, it is important to remind us that it took Anglo American six drill holes to make the Boyongan porphyry copper-gold discovery in the Philippines . It's great to make a discovery on the first hole, but in real life, it usually takes a few more tries than that. So as we progress through the drill programs this year, you may find it helpful to keep this in mind," Tony Climie said.