Almaden Minerals Ltd. (TSX:AMM) (NYSE Amex:AAU) and its Mexican subsidiary Minera Gavilan S.A. de C.V. (together referred to as "Almaden") are pleased to announce that a 3,000 meter preliminary diamond drilling program is now underway at the Tuligtic copper-molybdenum project, Mexico. The Tuligtic project is located twenty-one kilometres north of Puebla State, and covers a large area of alteration and mineralisation including intense sericite-quartz-pyrite alteration and stockwork veining and potassic alteration. The exposed alteration is interpreted to represent a quartz-sericite-pyrite cap to a large porphyry copper-molybdenum system.
Almaden is the operator of the current program. Antofagasta Minerals S.A. ("Antofagasta") can earn up to a 75% interest in 100% Almaden's owned property (for details of the agreement see Almaden news release of March 23, 2009). Antofagasta is a wholly owned subsidiary of Antofagasta plc, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE-100 index, with interests in mining, transport and water distribution. Its Chilean mining operations, which comprise Los Pelambres, El Tesoro and Michilla, produced 477,700 tonnes of copper in concentrate and cathode and 7,800 tonnes of molybdenum in concentrate in 2008. It is currently carrying out a brownfield expansion at Los Pelambres and developing the greenfield Esperanza project in Chile, which, when operational, are expected to increase total Group copper production to nearly 700,000 tonnes per year by 2011. Antofagasta also has exploration or feasibility programmes in Latin America, Asia and Africa.
