CDB Attracts JV Interest Amid Colombia Copper HuntCanadian explorer Cordoba Minerals Corp. (CDB) is attracting interest from major mining companies as it hunts for copper and gold in northwestern Colombia, according to Chief Executive Officer Mario Stifano. Toronto-listed Cordoba will publish results for 2,000 meters (6,600 feet) of diamond drilling at its San Matias project next month, in what the company thinks is a “brand new copper and gold district,” about 100 miles (161 kilometers) from the border with Panama, Stifano said. “We’re finding mineralization so we’re pretty confident,” Stifano said in a phone interview from Toronto today. “We’ve had inquiries from almost every large mining company, wanting to come visit the site. A lot of them expressed interest in partnering with us, a joint venture or investment.” Cordoba has the management and expertise to explore alone, and won’t consider bringing in partners or selling the asset until more discoveries have been made and the company has calculated the resource, he said. The estimate of how much copper and gold the project contains could be ready in 2016. Dominated by coal and gold, Colombia’s mining industry reopened for concession applications in July 2013 after a 2 1/2-year hiatus, when the government attempted to clear a backlog of submissions. Since then, Cordoba has won rights to explore in an additional 200,000 hectares (494,000 acres) in the region in northwest Colombia, giving it almost total control over deposits there, Stifano said. The titles include a concession within BHP Billiton Ltd.’s nearby Cerro Matoso nickel project, where Cordoba thinks it may find copper and gold. “We more or less locked up this whole area, which is extremely rare for a” company Cordoba’s size, Stifano said. “There’s going to be a couple of big copper mines. Everywhere we look it’s mineralized.”