Silver Standard Signs Option Agreement with Eskay Mining to Explore the SIB Project in British Columbia

Silver Standard Resources Inc. (NASDAQ: SSRI) (TSX: SSO) (“Silver Standard”) is pleased to announce it has signed an option agreement (the “Agreement”) with Eskay Mining Corp. (“Eskay Mining”) (TSXV: ESK) to acquire up to a 60% undivided interest in the SIB project, located in British Columbia, Canada.
Highlights:

• Underexplored, high grade gold-silver base metal target in a prolific district. Š
• Numerous gold-silver occurrences over 4 kilometers, within the same volcanic rocks that host the precious metal enriched volcanogenic massive sulphide (“PME-VMS”) deposits mined at the Eskay Creek mine.
• Historic drill results at the Lulu zone on the SIB project include 14.3 meters at a grade of 14.4 g/t gold and 1060 g/t silver, and 24.8 meters at a grade of 10.8 g/t gold and 766 g/t silver. 1, 2 Š
• Potential at depth for PME-VMS deposits below a regional, gently easterly-dipping fault confirmed by previous drilling, which intersected prospective volcanic rocks with encouraging gold-silver grades.
• Historic drill results from a footwall setting include 25.4 meters at a grade of 2.12 g/t gold, 4.0 g/t silver, 0.17% zinc and 0.13% lead at 488 meters depth, 30 meters below the fault. 3 Š
• In-house technical expertise to optimize Mineral Resources discovery potential.

Carl Edmunds, Chief Geologist at Silver Standard said:

“The SIB project is a very exciting exploration target in Northern Canada due to it’s higher grade drill results, the fact that these types of PME-VMS deposits often occur in clusters and this property is kilometers along strike from the prolific Eskay Creek mine, which produced over 3 million ounces of gold and nearly 160 million ounces of silver between 1994 and 2008.
Previous work from the 1990’s discovered PME-VMS at the Lulu zone, on SIB, near surface, and later attempts for further exploration were hindered by the presence of a fault potentially displacing the extension to mineralization. Subsequent work by Eskay Mining discovered the extension of the Lulu and Eskay Creek host felsic volcanic rocks below this fault, opening a large area for exploration by drilling. At Silver Standard, we remain disciplined with our greenfields exploration activities and this agreement demonstrates we are ready to act when an extraordinary opportunity arises.”

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