Almaden Minerals Ltd. (AAU) recently announced that Apex Silver Mines Ltd. has begun a diamond drilling program on Almaden’s wholly owned Viky silver lead zinc project located in western Coahuila State, Mexico. Almaden is a mineral exploration and development company and currently has an interest in 22 properties under active exploration. Under the terms of a February 2007 agreement between the companies, Apex Silver can earn a 60% interest in the property by making expenditures totaling US $5.6M and cash payments of US $1.35M over 5 years from the date of signing.

Almaden received a 43-101 compliant technical report from Apex Silver outlining the first year of work and its plans for the current drill program. The drilling program will consist of a minimum of 2,000 meters designed to target responses at depth and significant silver, lead and zinc values in rock chip and soil samples taken at surface. The 2007 Apex Silver program was reviewed by Bob Blakestad, vice president of exploration for Apex Silver and a person qualified for National Instrument 43-101, the standards for disclosure of mineral projects. The company has employed a qualified control program which included the analysis of duplicates samples of coarse reject material at a separate laboratory.

The company also announced its acquisition of a 100% interest by staking in the Caldera project, located as a result of the company’s ongoing regional exploration program. The Caldera property is located in Puebla State less than 150 kilometers from the company’s Caballo Blanco project. An exploration program of Caldera prospect has begun and includes geologic and alteration mapping, rock, soil and stream sediment geochemical sampling and IP geophysical surveys.

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