Oro Copper Porphyry Property Is Fully Permitted With Drilling Commencing In Upcoming Weeks

VANCOUVER - Southern Silver Exploration Corp. has received all approvals from the New Mexico Mining and Minerals Division, the New Mexico State Land Office, and the Bureau of Land Management to conduct an approximate 4,000-meter diamond drilling program to test several copper porphyry and skarn targets at its wholly owned Oro property, located in southwestern New Mexico. The property consists of patented land, New Mexico State leases, and Federal/BLM mineral claims acquired by purchase, staking and lease over the past several years. Several historic mines produced copper, lead, zinc, silver, and gold from discrete portions of the amalgamated property. The property covers a large, well-zoned Laramide-age mineral system consisting of a ring of Carbonate Replacement Deposits (CRDs) around a core of intense sericite-pyrite alteration, which clay mineralogy indicates is the lithocap overlying an unexposed porphyry centre. Targeting for copper mineralization is based upon 3D modeling of data generated by geologic mapping, historic drill holes, geochemical zoning studies, alteration clay zoning studies, and geophysical surveys. A 6-hole (4,000-meter) diamond drill program will focus on porphyry and skarn targets.

Surrounding the CRD zone are distal-disseminated, sediment-hosted, gold showings, such as at the Stockpond target, where the Company has conducted limited exploratory drilling. The drilling encountered strongly oxidized, disseminated gold mineralization beneath shallow gravel cover that was limited by a post-mineral fault which buried potential extensions beneath thick gravel cover and which remains open for further exploration.

Southern Silver also expanded the property by staking 40 new unpatented lode claims to cover a gold + copper geochemical anomaly in soils along the projection of the gold zone under gravel cover south of the Stockpond target where gravity geophysics indicates that the gravel is shallow. The new claims increase the size of the property to approximately 26 square kilometers. The soil sampling was conducted in early September, with follow-up soil lines added in October which verified the soil anomaly.

President, Lawrence Page Q. C., said, "Oro is a large district play that we have been systematically consolidating and advancing for several years, and we feel this is an opportune time to test the copper targets and potentially develop a copper resource. For several years our financing and exploration and development efforts have been concentrated at our Cerro las Minitas property in Durango Mexico where the mineral inventory of silver, lead and zinc has been increased to Indicated 137Mozs AgEq or 2.3Blbs ZnEq: 42.1Mozs Ag, 358Mlbs Pb, and 895Mlbs Zn; and Inferred 198Mozs AgEq or 3.3Blbs ZnEq: 73.6Mozs Ag, 500Mlbs Pb, and 1,009Mlbs Zn(1) with a Preliminary Economic Assessment currently being conducted by an independent consultant. Addition of a significant copper resource to our global mineral inventory, assuming success in our exploration program, would add a component to an inventory of metals which are increasingly in demand by manufacturers in the emerging energy storage and transmission industries."