Arena Minerals Drills 300 Metre Gravel Aquifer at Sal de la Puna Project

Arena Minerals Inc. (“Arena” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce it has completed the drilling of its first diamond drill hole (DD-02) at the Sal de la Puna Project (“SDLP Project”) located in the Pastos Grandes basin within Salta province, Argentina. The diamond drill hole is located on the Almafuerte claim and intersected a continuous brine column from 140 meters to the total drilled depth of 646 meters. The entire sampled brine column averaged 496 milligrams per liter (“mg/l”) lithium (“Li”).

An uninterrupted gravel aquifer was intersected between 334 meters and 634 meters downhole, representing the thickest gravel sequence drilled in the basin. The gravel aquifer averaged 503 mg/l Li with grades as high as 557 mg/l Li at 550 meters below the surface. Gravel and sand aquifers typically have favorable effective porosity values and high flow rates, which translate to highly productive wells. DD-02 was completed as an observation well with a 2-inch diameter blank and screened PVC casing to 450 m depth.

William Randall, President & CEO of Arena, stated, “This first drill hole completed by Arena exceeds our expectations. The coarse gravel aquifer, where higher flow rates are typically found, appears to be thicker at our end of the Pastos Grandes basin with high-grade lithium values and favorable geochemistry. We kept the drill turning past our target depth to determine the total thickness of this gravel sequence; however, the brine column remains open at depth for future potential resource expansion.” He added, “We have now mobilized an additional drill rig to ensure we meet our development timelines.”

Depth-specific brine sampling was carried out in DD-2 over the entire brine column using double and simple packer sampling systems. The brine column-averaged magnesium to lithium ratios of 4.5 to 1 and sulphate to lithium ratios of 15 to 1.

Eduardo Morales, Executive Chairman of Arena, added, “In addition to excellent lithium grades, we are very pleased with the brine geochemistry. The magnesium and sulphate ratios are within those currently used in our pilot facilities giving us great confidence that our objective of producing technical-grade lithium chloride (6% Li) is achievable from the drilled aquifers.”

Mobilization of two additional drills

The Company is also pleased to announce that two additional drill rigs have been mobilized to the site. One diamond drill rig is currently set up at DD-01, located on the Graciela claim, and has a target depth of 550 meters. The depth of the hole may be extended if favorable lithologies are encountered, as happened in DD-02 in the adjacent Almafuerte claim.

A second rotary drill is scheduled to mobilize in three weeks to Almafuerte to drill a production well (P-1) 15 meters away from DD-02. The well has a target depth of 450 meters and looks to test the productive capabilities of the gravel aquifer intersected in DD-02 by completing pumping tests using the neighboring DD-02 as a monitoring well.

Arena is operating the drill program on behalf of Sal de la Puna Holdings Ltd., which is jointly owned by Arena (65%) and Ganfeng New Energy Technology Development (Suzhou) Co., Ltd.

The drill program is focused on the Almafuerte and Graciela blocks which border Lithium America’s (TSX: LAC; NYSE: LAC) Pastos Grandes project to the south and south-east and consists of 3,000 meters with the objective of both increasing the category of the current resource and increasing the SDLP Project’s resource base.

The drill program is jointly designed and supervised by the Company and Atacama Water consultants. All brine samples are sent to SGS Laboratories, Salta, Argentina, an independent and fully international accredited laboratory for analysis for lithium multi-element Induction Coupled Plasma Spectroscopy. Arena has a regimented Quality Assurance, Quality Control program where at least 10% duplicates, blanks, and standards are inserted into each sample shipment.

Corporate Matters

The Company has engaged Digitonic Limited to provide investor awareness services for USD216,000. Digitonic Limited is based in Glasgow, Scotland, and operates under the direction of Mr. Neil Reynolds.

About Arena Minerals Inc.

Arena owns 65% of the Sal de la Puna Project covering approximately 11,000 hectares of the Pastos Grandes basin located in Salta, Argentina. The claims are highly prospective and share the basin with two advanced lithium brine projects. In addition to Sal de la Puna, the Company owns the Antofalla lithium brine project in Argentina, consisting of four claims covering a total of 6,000 hectares of the central portion of Salar de Antofalla, located immediately south of Albemarle Corporation’s Antofalla project. Arena has developed a proprietary brine processing technology using brine-type reagents derived from the Antofalla project with the objective of producing more competitive battery-grade lithium products.

Arena also owns 80 percent of the Atacama Copper property within the Antofagasta region of Chile and 5.8 million shares of Astra Exploration. The projects are at low altitudes, within producing mining camps in infrastructure-rich areas, located in the heart of Chile’s premier copper mining district.