Liberdade Copper Project

The Liberdade Copper Project comprises an exploration license of 8,491 hectares in area, located in the Municipality of São Felix do Xingú, Pará State, at the western end of the prolific Carajás Mineral Province.

The following map shows the location of the project in relation to Lara’s other projects, and the main mines and development projects in the district:

Codelco do Brasil Mineração Ltda., a subsidiary of Chilean State-owned copper miner Codelco, earned an initial 51% interest in the property by incurring US$3.67 million in exploration expenses and can elect to earn a further 24% interest from Lara by sole-funding such additional exploration works as are necessary to define a resource containing at least 500,000 metric tons of copper equivalent metal, independently reported under Canadian National Instrument (“NI”) 43-101 guidelines.

Regional geophysical and geochemical surveys executed by Codelco identified several Iron Oxide Copper Gold (“IOCG”) targets within the Project area. Diamond drilling on just one of these, the Fortuna target (see Company news releases of March 7, 2011, March 1, 2013, and October 7, 2013, for details), intersected significant copper and gold mineralization from near surface, indicating potential to outline a large mineralized system, consistent with the style and scale of other well-known copper-gold deposits being mined in the Carajás mineral province. The best sulphide (chalcopyrite) intercepts are summarized in the following table:

The Liberdade exploration license was originally published on October 19, 2010, and valid for three years. It was transferred to Codelco on March 21, 2011, under the terms of the option agreement between Lara and Codelco, with Codelco by law having the right to renew the license for up to a further three years. Codelco completed several exploration and drill programs (see the Company’s news releases of March 7, 2011, March 1, 2013, and October 7, 2013, for details) within the license period and then requested the standard three-year renewal on July 12, 2013. The Brazilian Mining Agency (“ANM”) delayed analysis of the renewal, forcing Codelco to file a lawsuit with the Federal Courts in Brasilia to safeguard its rights (see Company news release of May 26, 2015, for detail). In 2022, the court ruled in favor of Codelco, and we now wait for the parties to exhaust the appeals process.