Vancouver, B.C. and Lima, Peru, January 21st, 2008. Panoro Minerals Ltd. (the Company) is pleased to announce that it has started the first of four drill programs planned for 2008. The four projects to be drilled are El Rosal, Antilla, Cotabambas and Kusiorcco.
The contractor has arrived at the first project to be drilled, the El Rosal Project in Northern Peru, where all necessary permitting steps have been completed and a Water Use Permit has been obtained. Starting this drill program also ensures the availability of an additional drill rig earmarked to become a second drill rig for one of the other projects (most likely Antilla) in the Company's program for 2008.
The El Rosal project in Lambayeque and Cajamarca Departments, north-western Peru, is a porphyry Cu-Au prospect with related Cu-Zn-Ag and Cu-Au skarn mineralization. The Company has acquired a one hundred percent clear interest in the property. It consists of eleven mineral concessions that encompass an area of fifty-seven square kilometres. The property is seventy-five kilometres east of the major city of Chiclayo.
The El Rosal -Project is characterized by two principal targets with associated large tonnage potential, the El Rosal and La Ramada Targets. The mineralized systems identified by Panoro's work represent a new discovery of this type of system in this area of northern Peru.
The El Rosal Target, with an overall footprint of 2 kilometres by 2.5 kilometres for the system, contains copper -zinc -silver mineralization of a type called "skarn" mineralization and, significant for its tonnage potential, porphyry style alteration/mineralization, as well as polymetallic veins. Geological mapping, trenching and sampling, detailed ground geophysical surveys and two prior drill campaigns (in 2000 and 2004) have focused the attention on a deep target of intrusive rock below a 50 -200m zone of thermal alteration and silicification with increasing rock geochemical values of zinc and copper.
The La Ramada Target is represented by a structurally more complex system with an overall footprint of 2.5 kilometres by 1 kilometer. The copper-skarn occurrences of the La Ramada system contain a gold component of 0.5 to 1.0 grams gold per tonne associated with copper values of 0.5 to 1.0% copper. A diatreme breccia zone of a type often associated with the lateral flanks of porphyry systems contains fragments of skarn and porphyry style mineralization observed in prior drill holes and surface trenches. The system is also characterized and defined by prior geophysical surveys, soil geochemical signatures and geological and assay information from drill holes of the 2004 program.
The Company intends this 2,500 metres drill program to be a decisive test of the two targets on this project.
Of the other projects scheduled for drill programs in 2008, the Antilla project is the most advanced in the permitting process, with the Community Agreement, the Water Use Permit and the acceptance of the Environmental Impact Study in hand. The final Class C permit from the Ministry of Mines is expected in time to allow commencement of the second drill program in the first quarter of this year.
Efforts to obtain the agreements with the affected rural communities in the areas of the Cotabambas and Kusiorcco project are under way. The Environmental Impact Study for the Cotabambas Project, where a Class-C Permit will also be required, has been completed for some time.
With $7 million in the treasury the Company is well funded to embark on this and the other drilling programs planned for 2008.
On behalf of the Board of
Panoro Minerals Ltd.
Helmut H. Wober, P. Eng., President and Director
ABOUT PANORO
Panoro Minerals Ltd. is a Canadian mineral exploration company trading on the TSX Venture Exchange (PML) and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (PZM, WKN 914959) and on the Junior Board of the Lima Exchange. Panoro's strategic focus is on exploring for large-potential gold and copper/gold deposits in countries with the corresponding geological potential and where the right political and economic conditions are present. For investor inquiries please call 604-684 4246, or send an e-mail to info@panoro.com or visit the company's website at www.panoro.com.
This release was prepared by management of the Company who takes full responsibility for its contents. The TSX Venture Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.
