Cardero Receives Final Preliminary Economic Assessment (“PEA”) for Carbon Creek Metallurgical Coal Deposit, BC

Base Case Economic Assessment Returns

Base Case $752M Post-Tax NPV8% & 29.3% IRR

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA–(Marketwire – Jan. 5, 2012) – Cardero Resource Corp. (“Cardero” or the “Company”) (TSX:CDU)(NYSE Amex:CDY)(FRANKFURT:CR5) announces it has received the final Preliminary Economic Assessment (“PEA”) technical report from Norwest Corporation (“Norwest”) relating to the Carbon Creek Metallurgical Coal deposit (“Carbon Creek”). The report has been uploaded to SEDAR (www.sedar.com) and is available for download from the Company’s website (www.cardero.com).

Cardero, through Cardero Coal Ltd., currently has 75% interest in the Carbon Creek Metallurgical Coal deposit, situated in northeast BC, Canada. Results of the preliminary economic assessment (all in USD) indicate that on a 75% basis and using a base case coal sale price of $185/t, the project returns a post-tax $752 million Net Present Value (“NPV”) at an 8% discount rate and a 29.3% Internal Rate of Return (“IRR”).

These results, together with higher and lower coal sale price assumptions, are outlined in Table 1, which also summarizes sensitivity of the project to operating and capital cost increases. Due to the scale of the project, it is economically robust and not especially sensitive to cost increases.

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