Black Fire Minerals gains momentum at Pilot Mountain tungsten copper project

(MENAFN- ProactiveInvestors - Australia) Black Fire Minerals' (ASX: BFE) recent definition of an initial Resource for its Desert Scheelite Deposit has been a strong catalyst for substantial exploration progress being made at the Pilot Mountain Tungsten-Copper Project. The company has discovered extensive historic project data at the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology in Reno. Importantly, this will allow for acceleration of activities at the Garnet and Gunmetal Deposits and reduce the amount of new drilling required to bring these deposits into JORC compliancy. The two deposits have a current exploration target of 3 to 4 million tonnes at 0.36 to 0.41% tungsten. Incorporation of this new information into the project database has been completed with new drill sections prepared confirming the significant potential of these two deposits to deliver high grade mineralisation. Along with this new project information, Black Fire has found a number of new maps of the historic 1950s era underground workings at both Gunmetal and Garnet. This has allowed the company to successfully enter and investigate the historic workings, and using UV lights has identified large areas of tungsten (scheelite) mineralisation. A number of samples of this material were collected and have been submitted along with the Desert Scheelite samples for metallurgical test work. The access to the historic data and the underground workings for sampling will have a dual impact of speeding up the evaluation of these deposits as well as reducing the required assessment costs. Meanwhile, metallurgical work test work to support the historic Union Carbide Feasibility Study has begun with samples collected from the Desert Scheelite, Garnet and Gunmetal Deposits being submitted for testing. At Desert Scheelite, samples have been composited from diamond drill core from the recent resource drilling program, while underground samples were collected for Garnet and Gunmetal. International mining consultants, Coffey Mining, have been engaged to supervise the planned work, with results expected during the December quarter 2012. Desert Scheelite Tungsten Resource Last month Black Fire delivered a 36% higher than expected maiden JORC Resource for its Desert Scheelite Prospect. The Indicated and Inferred JORC Resource is 6.79 million tonnes at 0.31% tungsten trioxide, 22.8 grams per tonne (g/t) silver and 0.17% copper, using a 0.2% tungsten trioxide cut-off. Importantly, 90% sits in the higher confidence Indicated category. This Resource well and truly exceeds the original exploration target for Desert Scheelite of 4 to 5 million tonnes at 0.3 to 0.33% tungsten trioxide. The Desert Scheelite Resource falls within a broader Indicated and Inferred Resource, using a lower cut-off of 0.1% tungsten trioxide, of 12.99 million tonnes at 0.23% tungsten trioxide, 17.2g/t silver and 0.12% copper. Around 84% of this Resource is in the Indicated category. Due to the strong results, Black Fire has updated the exploration target across the three primary deposits to 10.8 to 12.5 million tonnes at 0.32 to 0.35% tungsten trioxide. This includes the 3 to 4 million tonnes at 0.36 to 0.41% tungsten trioxide at the Garnet and Gunmetal Deposits.