Balmoral Commences 2012 Winter Drill Program on Detour Gold Trend Projects

Friday, Jan 27, 2012

Balmoral Resources Ltd. ("Balmoral" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:BAR) announced today that its multi-rig winter 2012 drill program has commenced on the Company's Detour Gold Trend Project in Central Quebec. Follow-up drill testing of the Company's Grasset gold discovery has begun. Two additional drills are currently being mobilized and it is anticipated that expansion drilling, targeting the high-grade Martiniere West gold zone and several new high-grade gold discoveries in the Martiniere East area, will commence within the next 5-10 days. The Martiniere gold discoveries are located less than 45 kilometres from the Detour Gold Project which is currently under development.

"With the success of our summer/fall 2011 drill program we are obviously excited to begin the winter 2012 program on our Detour Gold Trend Properties," said Darin Wagner, President and CEO of Balmoral Resources Ltd. "With the high-grade Martiniere West Zone moving toward initial resource definition and a number of new gold discoveries slated for expansion drilling, our Detour Trend holdings are beginning to demonstrate their outstanding potential."

Winter 2012 Drill Program

Drilling has commenced on the Grasset gold discovery. Initial plans call for the completion of 12 to 15 drill holes (approximately 4,000 metres) in the Grasset area. Drilling will initially focus on expanding the Grasset gold discovery itself through broadly spaced drilling along the Sunday Lake Deformation Zone. Three additional targets in the Grasset area, including two prominent conductors identified by the airborne EM survey completed in late 2011, are also slated for testing.

Balmoral will commence expansion drilling of its high-grade Martiniere West Zone with 2 drills within the next 5-10 days. 2011 drilling traced the Martiniere West Zone for 380 metres along strike and to a depth of 170 metres with the Zone remaining open in all directions. Drilling will initially focus on potential extensions of the West Zone along strike at shallow depths, and then proceed to test the Zone below the 170 metre level. Initial testing of a 300 metre span which separates the West Zone from the historic Central Zone, which share strong geological similarities, will be a high priority in hopes of linking the two zones of gold mineralization and more than doubling the current strike extent of the system.

Drilling at Martiniere will also include follow-up testing of a number of new discoveries announced in December of 2011. These include the high-grade ME-16 discovery which returned 9.33 metres grading 12.93 g/t gold and a high-grade gold and silver bearing breccia which returned 76.40 g/t gold and 1390 g/t silver in hole ME-11-09 (see NR11-31, December 5, 2011). Balmoral hopes to complete approximately 12,000 metres of diamond drilling on the Martiniere Project during the current program.

Balmoral has engaged Equity Exploration Consultants Ltd. of Vancouver, B.C. to assist with project execution and management for the 2012 winter drill program on its Detour Gold Trend Project.

The Martiniere and Grasset properties form part of Balmoral's district scale Detour Gold Trend Project. The Project extends for over 80 kilometres along the regional gold-bearing Detour-Sunday Lake Deformation Zone, which hosts the multi-million ounce Detour Gold deposit currently under development adjacent to Balmoral's holdings.

Second Mining Analyst Initiates Coverage on Balmoral

Mr. Eric Lemieux of Laurentian Bank Securities in Montreal has recently initiated formal research coverage on Balmoral. He joins Mr. Marc Johnson of MPartners in Toronto in covering the Company. Contact details for Mr. Lemieux and Mr. Johnson are available on the Company's website. In addition, the Company has been added to the 2012 "watchlists" at Canaccord-Genuity Capital, Haywood Securities and Union Securities.

"We are pleased to see our efforts receiving broad based third party recognition in the investment community and hope to provide a great deal for the respective mining analysts to write about during 2012," said Mr. Wagner.

Quality Control and Assurance

Mr. Darin Wagner (P.Geo.), President and CEO of the Company, is the non-independent qualified person for the technical disclosure contained in this news release and has approved the disclosure herein. Mr. Wagner has supervised the initial work programs on the properties, visited the properties on multiple occasions, examined the drill core from the holes summarized in this release and reviewed the analytical and quality control results.

Source: Marketwire