Southern Silver Exploration Corp. reported that it has received all approvals from the New Mexico Mining and Minerals Division, the New Mexico State Land Office, and the Bureau of Land Management to conduct an approximate 4,000-metre diamond drilling program to test several copper porphyry and skarn targets at its wholly owned Oro property, located in southwestern New Mexico, USA. The property consists of patented land, New Mexico State leases, and Federal/BLM mineral claims acquired by purchase, staking and lease over the past several years.

Several historic mines produced copper, lead, zinc, silver, and gold from discrete portions of the amalgamated property. The property covers a large, well-zoned Laramide-age mineral system consisting of a ring of Carbonate Replacement Deposits (CRDs) around a core of intense sericite-pyrite alteration, which clay mineralogy indicates is the lithocap overlying an unexposed porphyry centre. Targeting for copper mineralization is based upon 3D modelling of data generated by geologic mapping, historic drill holes, geochemical zoning studies, alteration clay zoning studies, and geophysical surveys.

A 6-hole (4,000-metre) diamond drill program will focus on porphyry and skarn targets and is expected to commence early in February. Surrounding the CRD zone are distal-disseminated, sediment-hosted, gold showings, such as at the Stockpond target, where the Company has conducted limited exploratory drilling. The drilling encountered strongly oxidized, disseminated gold mineralization beneath shallow gravel cover that was limited by a post-mineral fault which buried potential extensions beneath thick gravel cover and which remains open for further exploration.

Southern Silver also expanded the property by staking 40 new unpatented lode claims to cover a gold + copper geochemical anomaly in soils along the projection of the gold zone under gravel cover south of the Stockpond target where gravity geophysics indicates that the gravel is shallow. The new claims increase the size of the property to approximately 26 square kilometers. The soil sampling was conducted in early September, with follow-up soil lines added in October which verified the soil anomaly.

In other news, geological mapping and sampling at the Company's recently acquired Hermanas Gold/Silver property is expected to be completed in early February. Following receipt of assays, Southern Silver will select drill sites and begin permitting an initial drilling program, planned for Fourth Quarter 2022 or First Quarter 2023.