Lero Gold has received a resource estimate for its Karchiga Copper Project in Kazakhstan of 4.75 million indicated tonnes @ 2.46% copper and 2.81 million inferred tonnes @ 1.81% copper.

The NI 43-101 compliant resource at a 0.50% copper cut-off incorporates the 1879m of confirmation diamond drilling completed by Lero in the final quarter of 2007 and 86 historical Soviet diamond drillholes and trenches totalling 10,330m.

Karchiga Central lodes contain 4.75 million tonnes @ 2.46% copper of the resource within sulphide (indicated) and 0.71 million tonnes @ 1.49% copper within oxide (inferred) material at a 0.50% copper cut-off. The balance of the resource is contained within an inferred sulphide resource at Karchiga north-east.

Lero chairman Dr Sergey V Kurzin says: “These results, indicating that Karchiga contains in excess of 258 million pounds of high-grade copper metal, give us a solid foundation for undertaking pre-feasibility and scoping studies in the immediate future, which, if prove positive, would allow Lero to fast track the project to construction and production within three years.”

The north-eastern lodes, which are blind to surface, are 200 metres across strike and lie 150 metres stratigraphically above the Karchiga Central mineralized zone.
The mineralization is within a series of stacked shallow-dipping massive and disseminated sulphide bodies, primarily consisting of chalcopyrite-pyrrhotite and pyrite mineralization. The lodes have a strike of more than 1km and are intersected at depths reaching 200 metres.

The majority of the high grade sulphide mineralization is concentrated within 100 metres from surface. Indication of the presence of easterly-plunging higher grade copper shoots is evident from the modelling completed to date and follow-up drilling is planned to evaluate the down dip potential during the 2008 field season.

Lero CEO Dr Alexander Yakubchuk says: “We are pleased to receive such positive results from our initial resource calculation, generally in line with the historical estimate and exceeding it in terms of tonnage. Not many current exploration projects worldwide return such high copper grades, amenable to potential open pit extraction. In addition, only 5% of the entire licence territory was explored by Lero to date and we still have a lot of further exploration potential based on geochemical and geophysical anomalies within the territory.”

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