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  Joint Venture Partner Pediment has signed an agreement with Inmet Mining Corp. that will allow Inmet to explore for copper gold porphyry deposits. Inmet Mining is a Canadian-based global mining company that produces copper, zinc and gold. Inmet owns and operates mining operations in Turkey, Finland and Canada and has interests in a mining operation in Papua New Guinea, a major development project in Spain and a pre-development project in Panama. Inmet's objective in 2007 is to produce 83,000 tonnes of copper, 87,000 tonnes of zinc and over 249,000 ounces of gold. Pediment has granted Inmet an option to earn up to 70% of the Caborca copper project in return for payments of $250,000 and exploration expenditures of $5,000,000 over four years. (For more information on the agreement please refer to the news release dated December 04, 2006). Project description The 14,000 hectare Caborca project is located south of the town of Caborca. The city is the regional business and population centre for northwest Sonora State. Highways, electrical power and waterlines cross through the holdings, and railhead is within 10 km of the holdings.
The Lista Blanca zone is a sub-vertical, tabular zone of replacement mineralization hosted by Cambrian aged conglomerate along its fault contact with limestone. The fault was a conduit for the mineralizing fluids so that higher grades are generally expected to be located adjacent to the fault. The replacement zone can be traced for 1.7 km of strike and remains open on-trend, has a surface vertical extent of up to 80 meters above the valley floor. Thickness ranges from 15 to nearly 100 meters. A 1964 report written by Mexican government agency Consejo de Recursos Minerales indicates that in the 1950s over 500 meters of underground and open-cut workings were developed on the Lista Blanca zone in an attempt to produce copper using a 300-ton per day flotation plant. That production attempt failed because the system could not recover copper from the oxidized mineralization. The report further indicates that 15,000 tonnes grading 3.6% copper were direct shipped from Lista Blanca, and estimated a possible resource of 520,000 tonnes grading about 2% copper in the workings area. This estimate is a historical reference only that does not comply with nor conform to the requirements of NI 43-101, and Pediment does not in any way consider it a valid resource estimate. Initial work by Pediment has included partially mapping surface exposures of the zone and collecting 35 reconnaissance rock samples, including several from old dumps. Surface exposures show leaching of copper, so most effective sampling to estimate grades can only be done where old workings expose mineralization below surface. Copper near surface is largely in the secondary mineral chrysocolla that typically exhibits favorable metallurgy leach characteristics. Copper sampling results varied from trace in the leached capping to 3.59%; 13 of the 35 samples returned +1% copper. Gold analysis varied from trace to 3.87 g/t gold. In a 120 metre long section of the zone southeast of the main workings a total of nine samples also returned a mean average 1.42 g/t gold. Related to the Lista Blanca zone, the Caborca project also recognizes two porphyry targets that were identified by a recent completed Reconnaissance Induced Polarization (RIP) survey. RIP is a broad area IP type sampling looking for anomalous sulfide zones. The RIP survey located two areas separated by the Lista Blanca Fault zone. RIP target "Lista Blanca", adjacent to the Lista Blanca Replacement Zone, is 3 km long by 1.5 km across, and flanks a regional magnetic low along most its length. The connected RIP target "San Juan", located further to the southeast of the Lista Blanca Replacement Zone, is about 2 km across and is roughly centered over a regional aeromagnetic low. Exploration Update Based on an agreement between Pediment and Inmet the company has recently begun a grid based induced polarization (IP) survey with the objective to investigate anomalies indicated by the 2006 reconnaissance IP survey. The results of this current survey will be used to target drill holes that will test for a potential large porphyry type copper-gold deposit. The 40-kilometre survey will use a dipole-dipole line array with an initial dipole spacing of 200 metres. In 2006 Pediment conducted the first ever drill test of the Lista Blanca zone, which was designed to test its potential contained resource, and to determine whether it may indicate the presence of a related porphyry copper-gold system in adjacent pediment-covered areas. The mineralization encountered is in oxide form with minor bornite. Drilling results identified higher gold mineralization than anticipated. Current results seem to show that shorter intervals of higher grades are closer to surface while longer intervals of lower grades are seen at depth.
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