Mr. Timothy Marsh reports

BELL TEMPORARILY SUSPENDS BIG SANDY DRILLING, PRESENTS BIG SANDY SCIENCE IN ANAHEIM

Bell Copper Corp. has temporarily suspended diamond drilling operations on hole BS-4 at the company's 100-per-cent-owned Big Sandy porphyry copper project. Continuation of the hole is planned once additional financing is secured. The company is currently discussing opportunities for strategic investments with a number of major copper producers to finance further drilling. The project involves the exploration of a large, truncated porphyry copper-molybdenum deposit located in northwestern Arizona, approximately 30 kilometres from the company's Perseverance project.

The maximum depth achieved in hole BS-4 of 1,372 metres did not fully penetrate postmineral gravels due to setbacks occurring with stuck drill tooling. No bedrock has yet been encountered in BS-4, but encouraging mineralized gravel clasts including chalcocite, native copper and native silver have been observed.

The company's drilling of BS-4 follows up on the previous drill hole, BS-3, which had an intersection of 200 metres of chalcocite-bearing porphyry (see June 7, 2022, news release). Drill hole BS-3 cut 200 metres from 1,302 metres to 1,502 metres grading 0.42 per cent copper and 2.4 grams of silver per tonne as supergene chalcocite hosted in strongly pyritic, sericitized porphyry. The hole was terminated in strongly pyritic, sericitized porphyry at an inclined depth of 2,026.33 metres when the mechanical limits of the drill were reached. Metallurgical testing of the 200-metre BS-3 intersection showed that the copper was amenable to recovery through either froth flotation or acid leaching (see July 21, 2022, news release). Molybdenum and rhenium were also concentrated from the interval through froth flotation.

Bell Copper had been drilling BS-4 since March, 2023, from a new drill pad approximately 900 metres from the previous BS-3 drill site. A combination of mud motor drilling followed by core drilling was used to try to advance hole BS-4 through thick gravel and into expected porphyry bedrock; however, the obstacles encountered and lack of adequate financing have led the company to suspend the work until sufficient additional financing is secured. In the meantime, the company is working to extend drill permits for eight additional holes through October, 2025.

Drill hole BS-4 encountered the most encouraging gravel sequence yet seen at Big Sandy. Mineralized porphyry clasts carrying supergene chalcocite, native copper and trace native silver were found scattered through the gravel column over more than 600 metres. Exotic neotocite (copper-manganese oxide), native copper and native silver were observed in faults and in selectively mineralized sand strata. Cobble-sized clasts near the bottom of the hole included common pervasively sericitized leached capping stained with fertile, earthy red hematite and cut by quartz veinlets.

Big Sandy science

The Arizona Geological Surveyand the University of Arizona are studying Big Sandy drill cores to assess their role in addressing the United States' supply of critical elements, notably copper, molybdenum and rhenium. On Sept. 22, 2024, at the Anaheim, Calif., annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, the AGS in collaboration with UA and Bell Copper will present "Geochronologic and Mineralogic Constraints Connecting the Diamond Joe Porphyry Root to the Big Sandy Porphyry Copper Prospect, Northwestern Arizona, USA," in technical session T-5 "Linking Mineral Resources and Their Geologic Framework I: The USGS Earth Mapping Resources Initiative and Related Critical Minerals Research." Results of independent age dating of zircon from porphyry in Bell Copper's BS-3 porphyry intersection and zircon from the Diamond Joe porphyry root will be discussed. The results have broader implications for copper exploration at the company's Perseverance project 30 kilometres to the north.

"Bell Copper believes that we are delivering at Big Sandy and Perseverance the big, new copper discoveries in friendly jurisdictions required for the global transition to cleaner electrical energy. With conventional capital markets distracted away from critical minerals supply, Bell is turning to the most closely aligned investors to keep our Big Sandy drill turning -- the major copper miners. When our financing flows at a scale commensurate with the copper opportunity at Big Sandy, we will once again deploy downhole mud motors to rapidly put challenging gravel deposits behind casing and deliver the bedrock cores required for resource estimation. In the meantime, we expect our partner at Perseverance to initiate a Typhoon [induced polarization] survey late in third quarte to flesh out the eastern MT target identified in 2020," said Dr. Tim Marsh, Bell Copper president and chief executive officer.

Qualified person

The technical content of this release has been reviewed and approved by Dr. Timothy Marsh, PhD, PEng, the company's CEO and president. No mineral resource has yet been identified on the Big Sandy project. There is no certainty that the present exploration effort will result in the identification of a mineral resource or that any mineral resource that might be discovered will prove to be economically recoverable.

About Bell Copper Corp.

Bell Copper is a mineral exploration company focused on the identification, exploration and discovery of large copper deposits located in Arizona. Bell Copper is exploring its 100-per-cent-owned Big Sandy porphyry copper project and the Perseverance porphyry copper project, which is under a joint venture/earn-in.

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