Petaquilla Minerals Ltd. ("PTQ" or the "Company") today confirmed the Company's project ownership and its reserve and resource estimates.

Petaquilla Minerals Ltd. owns 52% of the copper/gold porphyry system in Panama known as the Minera Petaquilla S.A. project. Inmet Mining Ltd. ("Inmet") owns the remaining 48%. At present, Teck Cominco Limited ("Teck") holds no interest, but can acquire an effective 26% interest in the Minera Petaquilla S.A. project by funding PTQ's share of the cost of placing this project into production.

Based on a 1997 AMEC Engineering (formerly H.A. Simons) feasibility study completed for the joint venture partners under the direction of Teck, the Minera Petaquilla S.A. project contains a mineral reserve of 1.115 billion tonnes grading 0.50% copper, 0.09 g/t gold, 0.015% molybdenum, as well as recoverable silver. The recoverable metal content contained in these reserves totals at least 9.4 billion pounds of copper, 1.37 million ounces of gold, 24.1 million ounces of silver, and 131.1 million pounds of molybdenum. We perform an annual review of the data contained in the report and consider that the estimate of the mineral reserve from the 1997 feasibilty study is currently relevant and reliable. The estimate of mineral reserve in the feasibility study uses substantially the same terminology for "mineral reserve" as is required under National Policy 43-101.

On December 13, 2004 the Company announced the signing of a Letter of Intent ("LOI") with Teck and Inmet.

The LOI is an agreement in principle whereby PTQ may obtain 100% of all the precious metals within the Minera Petaquilla S.A. joint venture lands, subject to the Panamanian Government accepting a multi-phase mine development plan on terms acceptable to Teck, Inmet and PTQ.

The Company intends that the epithermal Molejon gold deposit will be the focus of the first phase of the mine development plan and it has commenced further exploration and development work on the project. A new camp at Molejon has been constructed for the 74 workers currently on site. A trenching program is under way and a drill program is planned for later this year.

Based on a 1995 report by SRK Consultants of Vancouver, BC, the Molejon deposit contains probable resources of 5,032,870 tonnes at a grade of 2.81 g/t for 454,803 ounces of gold and possible resources of 956,300 tonnes at a grade of 3.72 g/t for 114,386 ounces of gold. These resources, if reported by today's standards, would be defined as an inferred resource. We have reviewed the data from the report, and consider the estimate of the resource to be relevant and reliable. – Press Release