VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 13, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Island Passage Exploration Limited (IPX or the “Company”) is excited to host a webinar with renowned geologists John Robins and Dr. Quinton Hennigh on Wednesday, November 18, 2026 at 4:00pm EST. Join IPX President Patrick Highsmith in a technical conversation and brainstorming session with two of the most prolific and practical “ore finders” in the junior mining sector. The trio will review the latest results from the EL02 Project on Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea, where IPX has identified a new porphyry copper-gold system through systematic sediment, soil, and rock sampling in combination with geologic mapping and an extensive trenching campaign. The Company has also just commenced a historic core drilling program. Island Passage will provide registration and login details for the webinar on Monday morning, November 16 via social media and posting to its website (https://www.islandpassage.ca/).
Island Passage has completed the second hole of its core drilling campaign at the Pivi prospect within the large Bara – Tangka porphyry copper-gold target. The drill core from the first two holes confirms the presence of a mineralized quartz-diorite dike swarm cutting hornfels and skarn altered sedimentary rocks, very similar to the rocks encountered in the channel and trench samples.
The team continues to prospect and develop additional targets in the Bara-Tangka area and across the 250 km license (See Figure 1). These efforts have pushed known copper mineralization well to the east from Pivi at new prospects Derasi Creek and Angkaraku Creek, where new channel samples revealed significant copper, including:
- 55m at 0.56% Cu, including 10m at 1.69% Cu, at Derasi; and
- 12m at 0.57% Cu, including 3m at 1.40% Cu, at Angkaraku.
The Siroo skarn prospect has also advanced to a phase 1 drill target. Senior leaders from the IPX technical team visited the newly discovered skarn at Siroo and have located a drill collar to test the high-grade mineralization reported there in October 2026 (23m at 0.69% Cu and 0.82 g/t Au, including 7m at 1.24% Cu and 1.46 g/t Au). The potential at Siroo is expected to grow as the area exhibits widespread mineralization, extending at least 250 metres farther east to the Ampatori Hill prospect.
IPX is also advancing beyond the Idi and AK prospects to the northwest with new soil sampling, mapping, and sampling. In addition to another 1 km of extended soil geochemistry coverage,
Figure 1- Copper in Rock Sampling from the EL02 Project (Recent Samples Labeled)
Company geologists located a new outcrop of mineralized porphyry with visible copper oxides at a new prospect called Komparia Creek (assays pending).
Patrick Highsmith, IPX Co-Founder and President commented on the progress of the drilling campaign and ongoing target development, “We began our drill program at the Pivi prospect on the west end of this huge Bara-Tangka target. We are two holes into a sizeable program, and the whole team is alive with energy. Our landowner company partners are conducting nearly continuous awareness meetings in the community, and our field teams have safely and efficiently moved the drill rig onto three collar locations so far. We are essentially seeing less-weathered versions of the rock already encountered in channel and trench sampling. We shall extract a lot of geochemical and mineralogical information from these fresher rocks. From here, the drill will move farther east and north into new targets, but the drill will remain near Pivi for the next few weeks.”
Highsmith continued in reference to the newest results from sampling and mapping, “The latest rock chip samples from Derasi Creek and other targets around Pivi are reinforcing the scale of this system. Since we now know that young volcanic ash obscures soil and trench sampling results in some areas, the team is following up in several areas where the soil geochemistry suggested only isolated copper. This strategy has yielded important new findings from newly discovered outcrop at Derasi Creek and around the newly identified skarn at Siroo. The pattern of these widespread occurrences appears to validate our strategy to conduct relatively shallow drilling at many different sites across this broad anomaly rather than a few deep holes under the highest-grade samples. We are excited to discuss more of the developing geology picture at the EL02 project in our webinar on November 18 with John Robins and Quinton Hennigh, key members of our supporting advisory and technical team.”
New Results and Geological Details from Bara Area
As previously reported, Pivi is host to significant copper-gold-molybdenum mineralization in stockwork veining in a quartz-diorite dike swarm cutting through hornfels-altered sedimentary rocks. Channel and trench samples at Pivi include continuously mineralized intervals such as (see Company news releases dated December 22, 2025 and October 9, 2026):
- 55m at 0.55% copper and 0.63 g/t gold, including 6m at 0.67% copper and 0.95 g/t gold;
- 30m at 0.23% copper and 0.15 g/t gold, including 6m at 0.41% copper and 0.24 g/t gold; and
- 25m at 0.22% copper and 0.27 g/t gold, including 7m at 0.35% copper and 0.67 g/t gold.
As the drill continues to undercut this outcropping mineralization in weathered rocks, the geology team is following up on nearby prospects. The Company is adding detail to its geologic mapping and improving its understanding of geochemical zonation across a target corridor that covers an area of approximately 4.5 by 2 kilometres. Among the most important learnings is that isolated copper-in-soil anomalies (1- or 2-point anomalies of 200 to 1,000 ppm Cu) may be indicative of much larger and higher-grade copper enrichment in the rocks than first thought. This is due to the impact of a post-mineral layer of volcanic ash that sometimes prevents soil sampling from reaching residual soils. The new results from Derasi Creek are a prime example of this (Figure 2).
Field investigations turned up quartz-sericite-chlorite altered diorite porphyry outcrop in the creek banks at Derasi. The fractures and veins hosted “fly speck” manganese (neotocite) and variable copper oxides over more than 50 metres. The outcrop did not extend out of the creek bank, so there is no estimate of the true thickness of the mineralized zone yet. The structurally controlled veins and fractures strike nearly east-west and dip moderately to the south.
Geologists collected quite a few channel samples in the area. The newly identified copper results are directly on strike (nearly due east) from the Pivi prospect. These east-west structural corridors are not veins but appear to be structurally controlled dike swarms or blocks of mineralized porphyry. Outcrop is limited in the area, so mapping, interpretation, and target development are ongoing. Initial sampling results from Derasi include channels and select channels as follows:
- 50m at 0.56% Cu and 24 g/t Ag, including 10m at 1.69% Cu, which includes 2m at 3.3% Cu;
- 5m at 0.34% Cu;
- 5m at 0.12% Cu; and
- 6m at 0.11% Cu.
The east-west structure at Derasi Creek appears to intersect with north-south trending structures. The north-south fabric is also mineralized at another prospect approximately 750 metres north of Derasi, Angkaraku Creek. At this new showing, there is a significant strike length of north-south quartz veins. There are crosscutting fractures and veins at Angkaraku that host 12 metres of 0.57% Cu and 0.10 g/t Au, including 3 metres of 1.40% Cu, in clay-silica-chlorite-epidote-magnetite altered quartz diorite porphyry. These new areas of mineralization at Derasi and Angkaraku are anomalous in Au, Ag, and Mo, but the levels of these pathfinder elements are lower than at Pivi and the prospects farther north near Tangka.
Figure 2 - Activity at New Prospects in Bara-Tangka Target Area
More persistent follow-up has upgraded the Siroo prospect to a first-tier drill target. Mineralized hornfels and skarn are ubiquitous over at least 250 metres in the east-west trending canyon between Siroo and Ampatori, upstream from the initial sampling, which is summarized below:
- 23m of 0.67% Cu and 0.79 g/t Au, including 7m of 1.24% Cu and 1.46 g/t Au;
- 22m of 0.29% Cu and 0.32 g/t Au;
- 20m of 0.11% Cu and 0.04 g/t Au;
- 10m of 0.16% Cu and 0.13 g/t Au; an
- 10m of 0.12% Cu and 0.20 g/t Au.
The mineralized corridor appears likely to connect with the Ampatori Hill prospect, where earlier sampling encountered 27m of 0.22% Cu and 0.12 g/t Au and 6m of 6.4 g/t Au. IPX has located a drill site that should facilitate an initial test into the third dimension of the skarn. Even as the drill program advances, IPX geologists have already extended the channel sampling at Siroo up the valley to the east. While there is no way to assess the volume of skarn mineralization in the area until it is drilled, senior IPX geologists have mapped a significant block of limestone a few kilometres south of Siroo near the western margin of the intrusive complex. Skarns form when limestone reacts and is altered by the extreme heat and chemistry of intruding magmas, such as porphyry copper deposits.
In all, the IPX team is developing new targets on the west end of the Bara-Tangka target that span an area of more than 2 by 2 kilometres, and the surface mineralization at these targets remains open in all directions.
New Soil Sampling and Prospecting Near Idi and AK Targets
The recently announced trenching results from the Idi and AK prospects lie near the edge of the Bara-Tangka soil sampling grid. Many of the samples at this northern edge of the soil grid remain strongly enriched in copper, molybdenum, and gold, so IPX field crews are now extending the soil grid to the north and northwest at 100-metre spacing. Approximately 1km of sampling has been added to the 12km so far and results are pending.
During the mapping and prospecting that accompanies soil sampling in new areas, IPX geologists uncovered an outcrop of mineralized quartz-diorite porphyry cut by a low to moderate density of quartz-sulphide veins with accompanying copper oxides (Figure 3). The new mineralized outcrop, called Komparia Creek, is approximately 500 metres north of highly mineralized trench IDTR003 (241m of 0.37% Cu, including 33m of 0.33% Cu). Assays are pending for the new sampling.
Figure 3 - Altered Quartz-Diorite Porphyry at Komparia Creek Showing Copper Oxides (right)
The IPX team is building drill pads in the Idi and AK prospect areas in order to drill test beneath the broad areas of porphyry-style veining that have been identified in the trenches and other rock sampling. The Company expects to drill 8 to 12 core holes in this part of the target corridor during the first phase of drilling.
Come together with the Island Passage team on Wednesday, November 18 at 4:00pm EST as John Robins of the Discovery Group hosts IPX president Patrick Highsmith and special guest Dr. Quinton Hennigh to discuss these latest results and the growing exploration program at the EL02 project in Bougainville. Webinar details will be posted to the Company’s website and via social media.
Exploration for a porphyry copper-gold deposit is a highly technical endeavor. Tune in as these deeply experience professional geologists break down the technical jargon and results, discussing the practical implications of the early days of a copper-gold discovery in an area where almost no exploration has ever been conducted before.
The IPX team maintains strict chain of custody for all samples. All the samples from trenching, soil, and prospecting campaigns are stored securely in IPX-IRHL field camps until transport in Company vehicles to the field office in Arawa, where they are sorted and organized for shipment to the laboratory.
IPX or IRHL team members transport the samples to an air freight facility in Buka, where the packages are transported by a commercial air carrier to Lae, PNG. At the Lae air freight terminal, laboratory personal from Intertek Testing Services Pty Ltd PNG (“Intertek”) retrieve the samples and log them into their system at the laboratory for sample preparation and gold determinations.
The IPX Team employs rigorous quality assurance protocols, including the collection of field duplicates and the blind insertion of blanks and certified reference materials into the sample stream. In total, quality control samples number more than 10% of the samples submitted to the laboratory. No QA/QC issues were identified in the analytical jobs reported herein.
During sample preparation, the samples are dried, crushed to -2 mm, split and pulverized into pulps (75% passing 75 um). Intertek Lae performs gold by fire assay of 50 gm aliquots with finish by AAS or ICP-AES. Intertek ships a split of the pulp to ALS Laboratories in Brisbane, Australia for multielement analyses (Cu, Ag, Mo, etc.) by four-acid digestion ICP-AES (method ME-ICP61).
Intertek is accredited under ISO/IEC 17025 for its gold analytical procedures in Australia, and its laboratory in Lae utilizes procedures that are consistent with its overarching global ISO17025 management systems. ALS Laboratories is a leading international provider of assay and analytical data to the mining industry. All ALS geochemical hub laboratories, including the Brisbane facility, are accredited to ISO/IEC 17025:2017 for specific analytical procedures.
Patrick Highsmith, Certified Professional Geologist (AIPG CPG # 11702) is a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, but as president, he is not independent of the Company. Mr. Highsmith has supervised the exploration program, reviewed and approved all the technical data, and prepared this news release.
About Island Passage Exploration Ltd. A private Canadian company purpose built in 2022 to facilitate the finance, technical, commercial, and business development expertise that will be necessary to drive exploration and development on Bougainville. The Company is founded on the principle of responsible resource development in partnership with indigenous and customary landowners, and its leadership has a long track record of success on multiple such ventures.
Photos accompanying this announcement are available at:
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