Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable sits down with Dr. John-Mark Staude the President and CEO of Riverside Resources (TSX.V RRI | OTC: RVSDF) to discuss the 5 C’s Copper, Cecilia, Cash, Canada,and Capital Structure.
Proven ProbableCategory: Exclusive Interviews
Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable sits down with Anthony Milewski the CEO and Director of Cobalt 27 Capital Corp. (TSX.V KBLT | OTCQX: CBLLF)which is a leading electric metals investment vehicle that offers direct exposure to metals integral to key technologies of the electric vehicle and battery energy storage markets.
The Company owns 2,905.7 Mt of physical cobalt and has acquired a cobalt stream on Vale’s world-class Voisey’s Bay mine beginning in 2021. Cobalt 27 is also undertaking the friendly acquisition of Highlands Pacific to create a leading high-growth, diversified battery metals streaming company.
VIDEO
AUDIO
TRANSCRIPT
Cobalt, the Electric Vehicle, and Ways to Profit from Both
Contributed Opinion
Source: Maurice Jackson for Streetwise Reports (3/30/19)
In this interview with Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable, Anthony Milewski, chairman and CEO of Cobalt 27, discusses his streaming company’s prospects in the cobalt sector, as well as how the automobile and battery industries will affect the sector.
Maurice Jackson: Joining us for conversation is Anthony Milewski, chairman, CEO and director for Cobalt 27 Capital Corp. (KBLT:TSX.V; CBLLF:OTC; 27O:FSE), which is a leading electric metals investment vehicle that offers exposure to metals integral to key technologies of the electric vehicle and battery energy storage markets.
Glad to have you with us today to share the unique value preposition of Cobalt 27, which is a successful cobalt royalty and streaming company, in addition to providing shareholders a proxy to the metal. To really appreciate the context of today’s interview, Anthony, I believe it may be best that we provide a basic overview on the global demand for electric vehicles, in which cobalt is an essential metal.
Anthony Milewski: I think we have to take a step back and look at what I consider to be two of the most important industries on earth, which are now sitting at the precipice of one of the biggest disruptions they’ve seen potentially in the last hundred years—namely the energy industry and the automobile industry. Today, 60% of crude is actually used in automobiles and in the automobile industry. Not only are you talking about a shift away from ICE [internal combustion engines] to electric, but you’re also talking about structural changes in ownership, with a ride-hailing services, autonomous vehicles, and a bunch of changes. These changes are dramatic and impacting a whole host of companies across a lot of different parts of our societies globally.
At the heart of this change is the electric vehicle (EV). And the reason is that the electric vehicle has the sensors and the technology on it to put forward the platform for the next generation of changes inside of the automobile industry, namely autonomous driving and some of the other safety features being rolled out. To put in perspective that change, I believe we should remember where we’ve come from. And a few short years ago EV sales were effectively zero. I mean, literally, they were just this novelty item that you probably couldn’t even ride in if you wanted to.
When we IPO’d about two years ago, we talked about 7% penetration in 2025 and even then we got push back. Now analysts are predicting as high as 20% to 30% penetration in 2025. Canaccord’s numbers are even higher than that in 2030. You’re seeing a dramatic increase in the rates of adoptions the analysts are looking at.
To help get specific, 10% of car sales in November in California were electric vehicles, with similar numbers in Canada. That was driven, in part, by Tesla Model 3 deliveries. But the point is the acceleration of adoption has really happened in the last 18 months. And we’re seeing the automobile companies heavily push these vehicles, not only for the environmental aspects—namely cleaner air in large urban environments—but also because of the future of automobiles and the future of the automobile industry around autonomous driving and around automation.
Maurice Jackson: This all bodes well for cobalt demand. Sticking with demand, cobalt is an essential metal in the manufacturing of batteries. What has Cobalt 27 excited about the battery demand?
Anthony M.: Well, each one of these cars has a battery. The cobalt market is anywhere from 105,000 to 130,000 metric tons of metal equivalent. And half of that demand today is actually batteries. Your laptop computer, iPad, just about any device that you plug into the wall and recharge it with the cord and then walk away has cobalt than it. That demand already exists.
But the demand that has us excited is really the demands from the electric vehicle. If I told you the market for cobalt today is about 135,000 metric tons, then let’s assume, at 20% penetration, you’re going to need something like 250,000 to 300,000 metric tons of cobalt just for electric vehicles. What you see is that as adoption happens, the actual use of cobalt grows exponentially. We’re seeing that happen as we speak with the adoption rates in sales of these vehicles.
Maurice Jackson: In the U.S., investors are aware of Tesla’s gigafactory, but Tesla isn’t alone. How many mega factories are in construction?
Anthony M.: Well, that number is interesting, because it’s changing all the time. In 2017 I think that number was 17. A few months ago it was 70, and even a few more gigafactories have been announced in the last few weeks. So the number is over 70 now. And even as recently as this month Tesla announced the construction of a gigafactory in China.
But all of these automobile makers and battery makers have these factories slated to be built globally. One of the things about these battery producers is they aren’t particularly keen to be shipping them long distances. And so, unlike an automobile, which is highly consolidated in where it’s manufactured, what you’re seeing is a lot of different gigafactories being built globally around the world at a very quick pace. The pace is almost monthly.
Maurice Jackson: Let’s move on to supply, to see how these factories will meet production. There are some concerning challenges on the supply side of cobalt, which really makes the value proposition exciting for Cobalt 27. Where and how is supply currently being satisfied?
Anthony M.: It’s interesting. The geology of the world is such that over 70% of cobalt comes from Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). And by the way, it doesn’t come from the Congo. It comes from one little tiny area in the Congo. So one of the problems with cobalt is simply concentration risk. It comes from the Congo, where there are alleged human rights violations associated with mining it. And it’s tough.
That’s part of the story and the balance of the story is that it comes from nickel outside of the Congo. So in the Congo it’s copper, and in the rest of the world it comes from nickel—in Canada and Australia, in particular, but also places like Russia and Cuba. Those nickel projects—not all of them, but many of them—are nickel laterite projects with enormous capex overruns.
Now in the Congo it’s slightly different. One of the things that we’ve seen is the ability to have artisanal cobalt. The price of cobalt ran up to $44 and has now eased off, and it’s eased off in large part because of artisanal mining. Artisanal mining can mean different things to different people. It typically means that an individual is showing up and shoveling cobalt. That, in some cases, is actually legal in Congo. It’s not illegal, per se, although most of the time it is highly environmentally damaging. However, what the problem is in the Congo—or the allegations are—is that often child labor is used for that, in just not Congo.
You have concentration risk and then you have supply chain risk, and you really have a need now from the automakers and the consumers and the battery makers to secure the supply chain and really be able to communicate to the consumers of automobiles that when they buy that car, the cobalt was ethically sourced and produced.
Maurice Jackson: You referenced that 70% of cobalt comes from the DRC. From an off-take standpoint, how can manufacturers confidently rely on the DRC to meet their production needs?
Anthony M.: I think it’s a real challenge. Obviously, there are companies like Glencore International Plc (GLEN:LSE) that are perfectly capable counterparties for the battery makers and cathode makers. But it’s a wider issue—and it’s an issue that’s being addressed and is going to have to be addressed going forward—which is how do you secure clean cobalt? I don’t think you can, if you are actually sourcing artisanal cobalt.
But I think there are solutions that could be put in place to actually do that. I think today, if you are an end user, a consumer of cobalt, you really need to source that cobalt from outside of the Congo or from a mechanized minor. There was a great Wall Street Journal article about this last year. If you’re getting it from artisanal miners, I think it’s tainted. That artisanal supply’s aggregated at refineries and while one of the 25 sources may or may not be clean, if any of the sources are unclean, it’s all mixed and it taints all of it. I don’t think those challenges have been fully addressed, and I think if an automaker wants to actually be able to ensure that it can say its cobalt and its basic material pipeline are ethically sourced, they’re going to have to, for the time being, buy directly from mechanized minors or go outside the Congo going forward. They’re going to have to consider whether or not they’re prepared to invest directly into mining companies or create pretty different environments around the artisanal mining in the Congo.
Maurice Jackson: You alluded to it, but just for confirmation, does Cobalt 27 have any offtake and or holdings in the DRC?
Anthony M.: No, we absolutely do not invest in the Congo. We don’t buy cobalt out of the Congo. We don’t have streams or royalties in the Congo. From our perspective, we sit and we watch some of these large mining companies have problems in the Congo, and with multibillion-dollar market caps, and if they’re unable to successfully navigate that environment, I think it would be a challenge for us to think we could do that. So we’ve steered completely clear of it. I think that’s one of the offerings of Cobalt 27—conflict-free cobalt.
Maurice Jackson: From a sovereign standpoint, which countries have a strategic stockpile of cobalt?
Anthony M.: Historically speaking, the U.S. and China did, but the U.S. government sold down its stockpile over the last decade. Today China has the key sovereign stockpile—there are different numbers about how large that is. I think it’s a pretty material stockpile, but it’s not used for batteries. Cobalt is critical in the aerospace industry. And so the cobalt that the Chinese government has stockpiled is likely earmarked for jet engines and missiles and that type of thing, as opposed to batteries.
Maurice Jackson: Now, from a manufacturing standpoint, which automakers have a stockpile of cobalt?
Anthony M.: I’m not aware of any. I suspect there could be, but I don’t think publicly there are any.
Maurice Jackson: Now, cobalt is a byproduct, primarily of nickel and copper mining. So how does the spot price of nickel and copper affect cobalt?
Anthony M.: Well, over time nickel and cobalt have actually been fairly correlated. If you look, although that’s not been the case, certainly in 2019 as nickel was up 20-something percent and cobalt is down. But I think the key correlation is that over time, in order to get increased cobalt production, you’re going to need to see higher nickel prices and probably copper prices.
Maurice Jackson: What is the current spot price of cobalt, and how is that in relation to the historic prices?
Anthony M.: Today cobalt is in the mid-teens. There are different types of cobalt. There’s metal. Even within metal there’s a high grade and low grade, and there’s a hydroxide. And so there’s a bunch of different products. But I would say it’s in the mid teens. It’s actually—right now—cheap. On the inflation-adjusted 20-year average, cobalt price is closer to $22. So cobalt is actually looking like a pretty strong buy as a metal at the moment.
Maurice Jackson: For readers, we now see the value proposition we have before us in cobalt. Let’s discuss the value proposition we have in Cobalt 27 and how you may profit. Mr. Milewski, please introduce us to Cobalt 27.
Anthony M.: Cobalt 27 is really a proxy for the adoption of the electric vehicle. I don’t know who the ultimate winner’s going to be among automobiles—if it’s Tesla, Ford, or Beijing Auto. Maybe you should own a chipmaker—Nvidia. I don’t really know, but what I do know is if there is a winner, basic materials will be winners, and among those basic materials, we think cobalt would be particularly positioned to be a winner.
Cobalt 27 gives investors access to those price movements and the cobalt spot price in three primary ways. The first way is just we have 2,900-metric-ton stockpile of cobalt sitting in LME-bonded warehouses. The second is a basket of royalties on nickel-cobalt projects globally—large-scale projects that give the investor optionality. And then third, we have a stream on Voisey’s Bay in Canada, on its nickel-cobalt mine. We’re also in the process of completing a recent transaction on Highland Pacific to own a joint venture interest in the Ramu nickel mine.
We’re not miners, nor are we going to be. You’re not subject to capex in the same way that you are with a mining company. Instead, what we try to give investors is really the maximum torque to that adoption and price move in the coming months, days, years, as the adoption of electric vehicles rolls out.
Maurice Jackson: Now, were you able to procure your cobalt previously through streaming deals or how was that accomplished?
Anthony M.: Cobalt 27’s streams and royalties are all financially settled, whereas with the physical, that was actually stationary. It is stationary so that was a purchase. But the nature of a stream is that you typically sell the material into the market as it comes in and then you take that cash flow and you pay a dividend, you buy back more shares, or maybe you make another investment.
Maurice Jackson: Is the ultimate goal to set up offtake agreements with EV in battery manufacturers with your physical storage?
Anthony M.: Look, I think there are two different kind of avenues that are being pursued. I think the first is just to look like a traditional streaming and royalty company. Look like a Franco Nevada or Wheaton Metals or Sandstorm, which is a very well-trodden path in Canada. You can get a multiple, in some cases, of over two times NAV. Today we traded a fraction of that.
A second avenue, of course, is we’re building a supply chain for cobalt and to a lesser extent nickel, outside of the Congo, and through the cycle that’s going to be attractive to automobile makers, battery makers and other end users of these products. And so one could foresee the cycle, how we would get approached by individuals in different capacities to try to transact on what is clean material.
Maurice Jackson: Switching gears, Cobalt 27 has strategically position itself for the upside potential in the clean air revolution in EVs and batteries. But equally important are the people that are responsible for increasing shareholder value. Mr. Milewski, please introduce us to your board of directors.
Anthony M.: Cobalt 27’s lead director is Nick French. Nick spent his career, since the early ’80s, late ’70s, trading cobalt. One of the most knowledgeable traders probably alive on the cobalt industry. And so he’s on the board.
Frank Estergaard, a former KPMG partner, really adds a lot to the audit committee.
Candace MacGibbons is a mining executive. She’s highly involved in the mining industry and understands a lot of the different aspects and concerns and transactions.
Phil Williams, a banker—former banker who also runs a royalty company—is excellent in terms of just being able to look at transactions and financings and add to the conversation.
Justin Cochrane, who is also the president and COO, spent a decade as a banker and in the streaming and royalty business, and then later went on to actually be one of the earliest team members of Sandstorm, and was critical there and ran the business development. Mr. Cochrane has been in the streaming and royalty business for his entire career. So Cobalt 27 has a really a strong board.
Maurice Jackson: Tell us more about Anthony Milewski and what makes him qualified for the task at hand.
Anthony M.: I think, in a lot of ways, one of the most important things that I can do it to help create value is make sure that we have the right team in place and the right strategy so that all the team members able to execute on that strategy. And so I really see myself as someone who puts forward that strategy, and facilitates Justin and Martin and the team members executing on that growth strategy, and executing on our strategy to really be a critical part of the cobalt and nickel supply chain going forward.
Maurice Jackson: Who is on your management team?
Anthony M.: So the key members of the management team include myself, Justin Cochrane and Martin Vydra. Martin Vydra spent over 30 years at Sherritt, ran a bunch of different aspects of that business, and is incredibly knowledgeable on nickel, and nickel and cobalt. He sits on the LME cobalt committee, and he’s really industry veteran that adds a lot of insight for the business.
Maurice Jackson: Let’s get into some numbers. Please share your capital structure.
Anthony M.: We have around 85 million shares outstanding and no preferred shares. We’ve never had a financing with an attached warrant. We have some options outstanding to the management team. And then we have a revolver in place for $200 million USD, but we’ve not drawn to any of it. So it’s a pretty simple cap structure and that’s intentional. We try to keep it straight forward and simple.
Maurice Jackson: How much in cash and cash equivalents do you have?
Anthony M.: Approximately $50 million.
Maurice Jackson: How much debt do you have?
Anthony M.: We have zero debt.
Maurice Jackson: Who are your major shareholders and what is their level of commitment?
Anthony M.: Well, I couldn’t speak to the level of commitment except that our shareholders have all been extremely supportive over the last couple of years and financings. One of them is Paula Investments, [others are] CI Harbor, BlackRock, Fidelity, and Neuberger Berman on the register. We have a pretty wide range of institutional investors who have been very supportive over the last year and a half, two years since since the IPO.
Maurice Jackson: Are you a shareholder and if so, how many shares do you own and when was the last time you purchased?
Anthony M.: I own around 400,000 shares and I purchased shares as recently as January and February. So big believer in the company and also in buying shares myself when the share price is priced as it is today.
Maurice Jackson: Multilayered question—what is the next unanswered question for Cobalt 27? When can we expect a response and what determines success?
Anthony M.: I think the next big moment for us is closing the Highland Pacific transaction. That’s anticipated later this spring. I think that will be a catalyst, that closing it will show that we were able to transact. It’ll also bring in a substantial asset, a producing nickel-cobalt asset. So I think that’s definitely the next big catalyst. That’s a few months away. And that’s heavily driven by regulatory matters in terms of court dates and voting and that sort of stuff. I think once we’re through that, the next big moment we’ll be thinking about cash flow and dividends and that sort of thing. I would say in the immediate term, the big moment for us is getting through the Highland Pacific transaction.
Maurice Jackson: Mr. Milewski, last question. What did I forget to ask?
Anthony M.: I think you covered it. You did a great job covering it, so I really appreciate your time.
Maurice Jackson: Anthony, if investors want to get more information about Cobalt 27 please share the website address.
Anthony M.: It’s Cobalt27.com.
Maurice Jackson: For direct inquiries, please call (647) 846-7765 or you may e-mail info@cobalt27.com. Cobalt 27 trades on the TSX.V: KBLT, and on the OTCQX CBLLF. Last but not least, please visit provenandprobable.com for Mining Insights and Bullion Sales. You may reach us at contact@provenandprobable.com.
Maurice Jackson is the founder of Proven and Probable, a site that aims to enrich its subscribers through education in precious metals and junior mining companies that will enrich the world.
Glad to have you with us today to share the unique value preposition of Cobalt 27, which is a successful cobalt royalty and streaming company, in addition to providing shareholders a proxy to the metal. To really appreciate the context of today’s interview, Anthony, I believe it may be best that we provide a basic overview on the global demand for electric vehicles, in which cobalt is an essential metal.
Anthony Milewski: I think we have to take a step back and look at what I consider to be two of the most important industries on earth, which are now sitting at the precipice of one of the biggest disruptions they’ve seen potentially in the last hundred years—namely the energy industry and the automobile industry. Today, 60% of crude is actually used in automobiles and in the automobile industry. Not only are you talking about a shift away from ICE [internal combustion engines] to electric, but you’re also talking about structural changes in ownership, with a ride-hailing services, autonomous vehicles, and a bunch of changes. These changes are dramatic and impacting a whole host of companies across a lot of different parts of our societies globally.
At the heart of this change is the electric vehicle (EV). And the reason is that the electric vehicle has the sensors and the technology on it to put forward the platform for the next generation of changes inside of the automobile industry, namely autonomous driving and some of the other safety features being rolled out. To put in perspective that change, I believe we should remember where we’ve come from. And a few short years ago EV sales were effectively zero. I mean, literally, they were just this novelty item that you probably couldn’t even ride in if you wanted to.
When we IPO’d about two years ago, we talked about 7% penetration in 2025 and even then we got push back. Now analysts are predicting as high as 20% to 30% penetration in 2025. Canaccord’s numbers are even higher than that in 2030. You’re seeing a dramatic increase in the rates of adoptions the analysts are looking at.
To help get specific, 10% of car sales in November in California were electric vehicles, with similar numbers in Canada. That was driven, in part, by Tesla Model 3 deliveries. But the point is the acceleration of adoption has really happened in the last 18 months. And we’re seeing the automobile companies heavily push these vehicles, not only for the environmental aspects—namely cleaner air in large urban environments—but also because of the future of automobiles and the future of the automobile industry around autonomous driving and around automation.
Maurice Jackson: This all bodes well for cobalt demand. Sticking with demand, cobalt is an essential metal in the manufacturing of batteries. What has Cobalt 27 excited about the battery demand?
Anthony M.: Well, each one of these cars has a battery. The cobalt market is anywhere from 105,000 to 130,000 metric tons of metal equivalent. And half of that demand today is actually batteries. Your laptop computer, iPad, just about any device that you plug into the wall and recharge it with the cord and then walk away has cobalt than it. That demand already exists.
But the demand that has us excited is really the demands from the electric vehicle. If I told you the market for cobalt today is about 135,000 metric tons, then let’s assume, at 20% penetration, you’re going to need something like 250,000 to 300,000 metric tons of cobalt just for electric vehicles. What you see is that as adoption happens, the actual use of cobalt grows exponentially. We’re seeing that happen as we speak with the adoption rates in sales of these vehicles.
Maurice Jackson: In the U.S., investors are aware of Tesla’s gigafactory, but Tesla isn’t alone. How many mega factories are in construction?
Anthony M.: Well, that number is interesting, because it’s changing all the time. In 2017 I think that number was 17. A few months ago it was 70, and even a few more gigafactories have been announced in the last few weeks. So the number is over 70 now. And even as recently as this month Tesla announced the construction of a gigafactory in China.
But all of these automobile makers and battery makers have these factories slated to be built globally. One of the things about these battery producers is they aren’t particularly keen to be shipping them long distances. And so, unlike an automobile, which is highly consolidated in where it’s manufactured, what you’re seeing is a lot of different gigafactories being built globally around the world at a very quick pace. The pace is almost monthly.
Maurice Jackson: Let’s move on to supply, to see how these factories will meet production. There are some concerning challenges on the supply side of cobalt, which really makes the value proposition exciting for Cobalt 27. Where and how is supply currently being satisfied?
Anthony M.: It’s interesting. The geology of the world is such that over 70% of cobalt comes from Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). And by the way, it doesn’t come from the Congo. It comes from one little tiny area in the Congo. So one of the problems with cobalt is simply concentration risk. It comes from the Congo, where there are alleged human rights violations associated with mining it. And it’s tough.
That’s part of the story and the balance of the story is that it comes from nickel outside of the Congo. So in the Congo it’s copper, and in the rest of the world it comes from nickel—in Canada and Australia, in particular, but also places like Russia and Cuba. Those nickel projects—not all of them, but many of them—are nickel laterite projects with enormous capex overruns.
Now in the Congo it’s slightly different. One of the things that we’ve seen is the ability to have artisanal cobalt. The price of cobalt ran up to $44 and has now eased off, and it’s eased off in large part because of artisanal mining. Artisanal mining can mean different things to different people. It typically means that an individual is showing up and shoveling cobalt. That, in some cases, is actually legal in Congo. It’s not illegal, per se, although most of the time it is highly environmentally damaging. However, what the problem is in the Congo—or the allegations are—is that often child labor is used for that, in just not Congo.
You have concentration risk and then you have supply chain risk, and you really have a need now from the automakers and the consumers and the battery makers to secure the supply chain and really be able to communicate to the consumers of automobiles that when they buy that car, the cobalt was ethically sourced and produced.
Maurice Jackson: You referenced that 70% of cobalt comes from the DRC. From an off-take standpoint, how can manufacturers confidently rely on the DRC to meet their production needs?
Anthony M.: I think it’s a real challenge. Obviously, there are companies like Glencore International Plc (GLEN:LSE) that are perfectly capable counterparties for the battery makers and cathode makers. But it’s a wider issue—and it’s an issue that’s being addressed and is going to have to be addressed going forward—which is how do you secure clean cobalt? I don’t think you can, if you are actually sourcing artisanal cobalt.
But I think there are solutions that could be put in place to actually do that. I think today, if you are an end user, a consumer of cobalt, you really need to source that cobalt from outside of the Congo or from a mechanized minor. There was a great Wall Street Journal article about this last year. If you’re getting it from artisanal miners, I think it’s tainted. That artisanal supply’s aggregated at refineries and while one of the 25 sources may or may not be clean, if any of the sources are unclean, it’s all mixed and it taints all of it. I don’t think those challenges have been fully addressed, and I think if an automaker wants to actually be able to ensure that it can say its cobalt and its basic material pipeline are ethically sourced, they’re going to have to, for the time being, buy directly from mechanized minors or go outside the Congo going forward. They’re going to have to consider whether or not they’re prepared to invest directly into mining companies or create pretty different environments around the artisanal mining in the Congo.
Maurice Jackson: You alluded to it, but just for confirmation, does Cobalt 27 have any offtake and or holdings in the DRC?
Anthony M.: No, we absolutely do not invest in the Congo. We don’t buy cobalt out of the Congo. We don’t have streams or royalties in the Congo. From our perspective, we sit and we watch some of these large mining companies have problems in the Congo, and with multibillion-dollar market caps, and if they’re unable to successfully navigate that environment, I think it would be a challenge for us to think we could do that. So we’ve steered completely clear of it. I think that’s one of the offerings of Cobalt 27—conflict-free cobalt.
Maurice Jackson: From a sovereign standpoint, which countries have a strategic stockpile of cobalt?
Anthony M.: Historically speaking, the U.S. and China did, but the U.S. government sold down its stockpile over the last decade. Today China has the key sovereign stockpile—there are different numbers about how large that is. I think it’s a pretty material stockpile, but it’s not used for batteries. Cobalt is critical in the aerospace industry. And so the cobalt that the Chinese government has stockpiled is likely earmarked for jet engines and missiles and that type of thing, as opposed to batteries.
Maurice Jackson: Now, from a manufacturing standpoint, which automakers have a stockpile of cobalt?
Anthony M.: I’m not aware of any. I suspect there could be, but I don’t think publicly there are any.
Maurice Jackson: Now, cobalt is a byproduct, primarily of nickel and copper mining. So how does the spot price of nickel and copper affect cobalt?
Anthony M.: Well, over time nickel and cobalt have actually been fairly correlated. If you look, although that’s not been the case, certainly in 2019 as nickel was up 20-something percent and cobalt is down. But I think the key correlation is that over time, in order to get increased cobalt production, you’re going to need to see higher nickel prices and probably copper prices.
Maurice Jackson: What is the current spot price of cobalt, and how is that in relation to the historic prices?
Anthony M.: Today cobalt is in the mid-teens. There are different types of cobalt. There’s metal. Even within metal there’s a high grade and low grade, and there’s a hydroxide. And so there’s a bunch of different products. But I would say it’s in the mid teens. It’s actually—right now—cheap. On the inflation-adjusted 20-year average, cobalt price is closer to $22. So cobalt is actually looking like a pretty strong buy as a metal at the moment.
Maurice Jackson: For readers, we now see the value proposition we have before us in cobalt. Let’s discuss the value proposition we have in Cobalt 27 and how you may profit. Mr. Milewski, please introduce us to Cobalt 27.
Anthony M.: Cobalt 27 is really a proxy for the adoption of the electric vehicle. I don’t know who the ultimate winner’s going to be among automobiles—if it’s Tesla, Ford, or Beijing Auto. Maybe you should own a chipmaker—Nvidia. I don’t really know, but what I do know is if there is a winner, basic materials will be winners, and among those basic materials, we think cobalt would be particularly positioned to be a winner.
Cobalt 27 gives investors access to those price movements and the cobalt spot price in three primary ways. The first way is just we have 2,900-metric-ton stockpile of cobalt sitting in LME-bonded warehouses. The second is a basket of royalties on nickel-cobalt projects globally—large-scale projects that give the investor optionality. And then third, we have a stream on Voisey’s Bay in Canada, on its nickel-cobalt mine. We’re also in the process of completing a recent transaction on Highland Pacific to own a joint venture interest in the Ramu nickel mine.
We’re not miners, nor are we going to be. You’re not subject to capex in the same way that you are with a mining company. Instead, what we try to give investors is really the maximum torque to that adoption and price move in the coming months, days, years, as the adoption of electric vehicles rolls out.
Maurice Jackson: Now, were you able to procure your cobalt previously through streaming deals or how was that accomplished?
Anthony M.: Cobalt 27’s streams and royalties are all financially settled, whereas with the physical, that was actually stationary. It is stationary so that was a purchase. But the nature of a stream is that you typically sell the material into the market as it comes in and then you take that cash flow and you pay a dividend, you buy back more shares, or maybe you make another investment.
Maurice Jackson: Is the ultimate goal to set up offtake agreements with EV in battery manufacturers with your physical storage?
Anthony M.: Look, I think there are two different kind of avenues that are being pursued. I think the first is just to look like a traditional streaming and royalty company. Look like a Franco Nevada or Wheaton Metals or Sandstorm, which is a very well-trodden path in Canada. You can get a multiple, in some cases, of over two times NAV. Today we traded a fraction of that.
A second avenue, of course, is we’re building a supply chain for cobalt and to a lesser extent nickel, outside of the Congo, and through the cycle that’s going to be attractive to automobile makers, battery makers and other end users of these products. And so one could foresee the cycle, how we would get approached by individuals in different capacities to try to transact on what is clean material.
Maurice Jackson: Switching gears, Cobalt 27 has strategically position itself for the upside potential in the clean air revolution in EVs and batteries. But equally important are the people that are responsible for increasing shareholder value. Mr. Milewski, please introduce us to your board of directors.
Anthony M.: Cobalt 27’s lead director is Nick French. Nick spent his career, since the early ’80s, late ’70s, trading cobalt. One of the most knowledgeable traders probably alive on the cobalt industry. And so he’s on the board.
Frank Estergaard, a former KPMG partner, really adds a lot to the audit committee.
Candace MacGibbons is a mining executive. She’s highly involved in the mining industry and understands a lot of the different aspects and concerns and transactions.
Phil Williams, a banker—former banker who also runs a royalty company—is excellent in terms of just being able to look at transactions and financings and add to the conversation.
Justin Cochrane, who is also the president and COO, spent a decade as a banker and in the streaming and royalty business, and then later went on to actually be one of the earliest team members of Sandstorm, and was critical there and ran the business development. Mr. Cochrane has been in the streaming and royalty business for his entire career. So Cobalt 27 has a really a strong board.
Maurice Jackson: Tell us more about Anthony Milewski and what makes him qualified for the task at hand.
Anthony M.: I think, in a lot of ways, one of the most important things that I can do it to help create value is make sure that we have the right team in place and the right strategy so that all the team members able to execute on that strategy. And so I really see myself as someone who puts forward that strategy, and facilitates Justin and Martin and the team members executing on that growth strategy, and executing on our strategy to really be a critical part of the cobalt and nickel supply chain going forward.
Maurice Jackson: Who is on your management team?
Anthony M.: So the key members of the management team include myself, Justin Cochrane and Martin Vydra. Martin Vydra spent over 30 years at Sherritt, ran a bunch of different aspects of that business, and is incredibly knowledgeable on nickel, and nickel and cobalt. He sits on the LME cobalt committee, and he’s really industry veteran that adds a lot of insight for the business.
Maurice Jackson: Let’s get into some numbers. Please share your capital structure.
Anthony M.: We have around 85 million shares outstanding and no preferred shares. We’ve never had a financing with an attached warrant. We have some options outstanding to the management team. And then we have a revolver in place for $200 million USD, but we’ve not drawn to any of it. So it’s a pretty simple cap structure and that’s intentional. We try to keep it straight forward and simple.
Maurice Jackson: How much in cash and cash equivalents do you have?
Anthony M.: Approximately $50 million.
Maurice Jackson: How much debt do you have?
Anthony M.: We have zero debt.
Maurice Jackson: Who are your major shareholders and what is their level of commitment?
Anthony M.: Well, I couldn’t speak to the level of commitment except that our shareholders have all been extremely supportive over the last couple of years and financings. One of them is Paula Investments, [others are] CI Harbor, BlackRock, Fidelity, and Neuberger Berman on the register. We have a pretty wide range of institutional investors who have been very supportive over the last year and a half, two years since since the IPO.
Maurice Jackson: Are you a shareholder and if so, how many shares do you own and when was the last time you purchased?
Anthony M.: I own around 400,000 shares and I purchased shares as recently as January and February. So big believer in the company and also in buying shares myself when the share price is priced as it is today.
Maurice Jackson: Multilayered question—what is the next unanswered question for Cobalt 27? When can we expect a response and what determines success?
Anthony M.: I think the next big moment for us is closing the Highland Pacific transaction. That’s anticipated later this spring. I think that will be a catalyst, that closing it will show that we were able to transact. It’ll also bring in a substantial asset, a producing nickel-cobalt asset. So I think that’s definitely the next big catalyst. That’s a few months away. And that’s heavily driven by regulatory matters in terms of court dates and voting and that sort of stuff. I think once we’re through that, the next big moment we’ll be thinking about cash flow and dividends and that sort of thing. I would say in the immediate term, the big moment for us is getting through the Highland Pacific transaction.
Maurice Jackson: Mr. Milewski, last question. What did I forget to ask?
Anthony M.: I think you covered it. You did a great job covering it, so I really appreciate your time.
Maurice Jackson: Anthony, if investors want to get more information about Cobalt 27 please share the website address.
Anthony M.: It’s Cobalt27.com.
Maurice Jackson: For direct inquiries, please call (647) 846-7765 or you may e-mail info@cobalt27.com. Cobalt 27 trades on the TSX.V: KBLT, and on the OTCQX CBLLF. Last but not least, please visit provenandprobable.com for Mining Insights and Bullion Sales. You may reach us at contact@provenandprobable.com.
Maurice Jackson is the founder of Proven and Probable, a site that aims to enrich its subscribers through education in precious metals and junior mining companies that will enrich the world.
1) Maurice Jackson: I, or members of my immediate household or family, own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: None. I personally am, or members of my immediate household or family are, paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None. My company has a financial relationship with the following companies mentioned in this article: None. Proven and Probable disclosures are listed below.
2) The following companies mentioned in this article are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: Wheaton Precious Metals. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees.
3) Statements and opinions expressed are the opinions of the author and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. The author is wholly responsible for the validity of the statements. The author was not paid by Streetwise Reports for this article. Streetwise Reports was not paid by the author to publish or syndicate this article. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports requires contributing authors to disclose any shareholdings in, or economic relationships with, companies that they write about. Streetwise Reports relies upon the authors to accurately provide this information and Streetwise Reports has no means of verifying its accuracy.
4) This article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports’ terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports.
5) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the interview or the decision to write an article until three business days after the publication of the interview or article. The foregoing prohibition does not apply to articles that in substance only restate previously published company releases. As of the date of this article, officers and/or employees of Streetwise Reports LLC (including members of their household) own shares of Wheaton Precious Metals and Franco-Nevada, companies mentioned in this article.
Proven and Probable LLC receives financial compensation from its sponsors. The compensation is used is to fund both sponsor-specific activities and general report activities, website, and general and administrative costs. Sponsor-specific activities may include aggregating content and publishing that content on the Proven and Probable website, creating and maintaining company landing pages, interviewing key management, posting a banner/billboard, and/or issuing press releases. The fees also cover the costs for Proven and Probable to publish sector-specific information on our site, and also to create content by interviewing experts in the sector. Monthly sponsorship fees range from $1,000 to $4,000 per month. Proven and Probable LLC does accept stock for payment of sponsorship fees. Sponsor pages may be considered advertising for the purposes of 18 U.S.C. 1734.
The Information presented in Proven and Probable is provided for educational and informational purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this forum is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice or any other advice. The Information on this forum and provided from or through this forum is general in nature and is not specific to you the User or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investments, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this forum without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or competent financial advisor. You understand that you are using any and all Information available on or through this forum at your own risk.
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Matt Gili the CEO, President, and Director of Nevada Copper (TSX: NCU | OTC: NEVDF) sits down with Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable to discuss the value proposition of Nevada Copper, which is on target for U.S. production in Q4 2019. Mr. Gili, provides updates on the flagship Pumpkin Hollow Project, which hosts both an underground and open-pit deposits. We provide an overview on the supply an demand fundamentals on Copper, where a prudent speculator may position themselves to take advantage of the copper supply deficit.
VIDEO
AUDIO
TRANSCRIPT
Source: Maurice Jackson for Streetwise Reports (3/18/19)
Matt Gili, CEO of Nevada Copper, talks with Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable about his company’s progress in beginning copper production by the end of the year.
Pumpkin Hollow
Maurice Jackson: Joining us for a conversation is Matt Gili, president, CEO and director of Nevada Copper Corp. (NCU:TSX), which is on target to U.S. copper production by Q4 2019.
Nevada Copper has a number of successes to share with reader. But, before you share the unique value preposition of Nevada Copper, Mr. Gili, for readers who may not be familiar with the supply and demand fundamentals regarding copper, please provide us with a 10,000-foot overview.
Matt Gili: When you look at the copper fundamentals, we see a very steady and predictable increase in demand of copper, modest amount, 1.5% per year. We see the move towards electrification of vehicles consuming more copper. We see other things that are offsetting that, but overall, a steady predictable 1.5% increase in the global demand for copper. Where the story really gets exciting, from the Nevada Copper standpoint, is with regards to the supply for copper. What we’re seeing is a lot of restrictions in future supply. We’re seeing a lot of difficulties on bringing on a future supply and backed up by work done by Wood Mackenzie and others, we’re projecting that by 2025, the world will be in a supply deficit of upwards of 6 million tonnes of copper per year. This just really supports what we’re doing in Nevada Copper in setting up the next copper mine.
Maurice Jackson: Now that we have an overview of the supply and demand fundamentals for copper, Matt, let’s discuss how someone listening may position himself prudently as a beneficiary. For someone new to the story, can you give us a very quick overview of Nevada Copper?
Matt Gili: Certainly. Nevada Copper, who’s Nevada Copper? We have an asset in Nevada called Pumpkin Hollow. This is our chief asset. It consists of two deposits: an underground deposit and an open-pit deposit for copper. We’re currently in the construction phase for the underground project with production from that underground project coming online later this year. I think we’ll talk more about that later. Regarding the open pit, we’re currently in the process of wrapping up the prefeasibility study for the open pit. You’ll see that being published in April of this year. Then, we have a regional land package of well over 15,000 acres that we are looking at really understanding, really unlocking the full value from that land package. That’s really Nevada Copper, building a copper mine coming into production later this year, with a lot of expansion into an open-pit mine, as well as regional exploration.
Maurice Jackson: Let’s provide readers the latest updates on Nevada Copper, as the company has been very proactive on a number of fronts. Please provide us with an update on the construction progress. I would like to begin with the multi-million dollar question, are we on track to enter production in Q4 of this year?
Matt Gili: Yes, Maurice, we are on track to enter production in Q4 of this year. We are very proud of that. The team’s doing a fantastic job. We have construction activities both on surface with Sedgman building the process plants, as well as underground cementation, both sinking shaft and doing lateral development on our main shaft. All that’s coming together very nicely. We are absolutely on track for commissioning of the plant in the fourth quarter of this year.
Maurice Jackson: As Nevada Copper is preparing for production this year, have you increased your staffing to meet the growing demands?
Matt Gili: That’s a really good question and yes, we have. We’ve increased our staffing. It’s an operational readiness question that you’re asking. This is where I want to stress to you and readers that this concept of operational readiness is foremost in our thoughts and how we’re planning for really becoming, not just building a great mine, but operating a great mine. When you look at the staffing, so far, our staffing, by design, is quite modest. We’re looking at a total workforce of Nevada Copper employees of around 30. That is because this is our model, a very lean, efficient operation. We utilize high-quality, expert service providers as necessary, to make sure that we are operating very efficiently.
Maurice Jackson: Is Nevada Copper still actively recruiting and if so, what positions?
Matt Gili: Yes, we are actively recruiting. Most of our positions open are technical and specialist positions, and would be part of the management team. I absolutely encourage anyone interested in what we’re recruiting for to contact the Nevada Copper website. You’ll see the complete listing of opening jobs there, as well as information on how to apply for any of these positions if you’re interested.
Maurice Jackson: Pumpkin Hollow is unique in that you have both an underground and an open-pit mine. Let’s discuss exploration and expansion potential. What initiatives is Nevada Copper taking to optimize the full potential of the Pumpkin Hollow project?
Matt Gili: We are in the process of constructing the underground, which has a large amount of upside potential. We’ll really only explore that upside potential when we’re underground, after we’re in production. We really look forward to updates on that front in 2020, and the reason for that is very simple. It’s just much more efficient to drill out the prospective areas of the underground from the underground; the holes are shorter. It’s just much easier. That’s really where the underground sits right now, in a holding pattern as far as expansion potential. When you look at the open pit, that’s where a lot of great energy is going into expanding the open pit, understanding the open pit better, really getting that ore body knowledge to allow you to build a world-class operation. That is part of the PFS, which is coming out in April of this year.
That PFS will include the drilling campaign that we completed in 2018, the 26 hole drilling campaign. It will include those results in the resource model. That’s going to give you an even better idea of the full potential of the open pit. The real excitement that we have is with regards to the region itself, a large region, relatively unexplored, but with large amounts of historical copper production, as well as great physical outcroppings of copper mineralization. This is really where we’re going to focus our efforts during 2019, to really get a chance, now that we’ve tied up this land package, to understand what we have.
Maurice Jackson: Speaking of the region, there was a regional survey conducted that led you to staking more land. Can you share the results with us?
Matt Gili: We staked a section a land that we refer to as the Teddy Boy Claims. This is about 5,700 acres of land to our northeast. We are very glad to have this in our portfolio. The criteria for that selection was we brought together experts on this region and experts in copper mineralization. They identified that as a really prospective area and where we should be really focused on. We’ve staked that land, secured it for our ability to explore over the next several years.
Maurice Jackson: Does Nevada Copper plan to drill the new area at some point this year?
Matt Gili: We plan on drilling this year. I really haven’t put out the entire drill program for 2019. We’re still pulling that together and analyzing where to best spend the monies we have available for exploration. We would like to drill that this year. Some more prospective holes, really not an in-depth blanket campaign, but probe a few really interesting areas over there and get a better idea for the drill campaign.
Maurice Jackson: It’s one thing to have tonnage and grade, but you must equally have astute business acumen to make the numbers work. Now, Nevada Copper is in discussions regarding an ECA-backed project finance facility to further optimize the balance sheet, as well as lining up a working capital facility and further offtake agreements to improve the economics of Pumpkin Hollow. Please provide us with the details.
Matt Gili: You kind of said it all. I can’t really provide you with any more details, but I can surely stress what you’ve just said, Maurice. We are in discussions with this export, credit agency style backed project financing. This is going to provide us the opportunity to substantially reduce the cost of our debt service, as well as attract strong and robust financial partners for potential future open-pit developments. Something we’re very excited about and it’s part of really creating Nevada Copper as a world-class company.
Maurice Jackson: Let’s get into some numbers. Please share your capital structure.
Matt Gili: The capital structure is well defined. We have $8 million in long-term debt. We have $153 million of cash or cash equivalents. When you look at the financing package specifically for the underground, we’re fully financed, including the working capital facility to take us through operation ramp up. The inputs into that are an equity raise that we did in the middle of last year, as well as a streaming deposit with regards to a stream arrangement on the precious metals strictly from the underground deposit. We also have a $25-million subordinated debt package. Really a standby loan facility that we can use if necessary.
Maurice Jackson: In closing, I have a multilayered question. What is the next unanswered question for Nevada Copper? When can we expect a response? What determines success?
Matt Gili: I would not classify our successful completion of underground construction and bringing them in operation as an unanswered question. That is going to happen, and I’m very proud of the activities that have happened so far. The real unanswered question for the investors out there, is what is the true potential of the open pit? There’s been a lot of great work done, a lot of exploration done, last year. That’s all been incorporated. I’m really going to be excited when the PFS is released and we can share the details of the open pit potential with the public. They are going to be very impressed and they’re going to see the picture. They’re going to see what we see when we get so excited about Nevada Copper.
Maurice Jackson: Speaking of the prefeasibility study, give us a timeline on that, sir.
Matt Gili: We’ll release that in April. I’m being careful. I don’t want to be too specific. It will be in April of this year. Next month.
Maurice Jackson: Mr. Gili, last question. What did I forget to ask?
Matt Gili: Maurice, forget to ask? You’re always very thorough, so I wouldn’t say you forgot to ask anything. What I would say is I want to reiterate something that we at Nevada Copper have been thinking about over the last month. Unfortunately, for the world, the last month has been a month marred with tragedies, with risk and with unexpected events. What we’re really stressing, with Nevada Copper, is the risk management of Nevada Copper. We are an operation that is on private land. We’re not waiting for any permits. We’re not waiting for records of decision. We’re utilizing EPC contractors, who have that fixed price nature, reduced risks. We’re building a dry stack tailing facility. We’ll never have a wet tailing storage facility at Pumpkin Hollow. We’re doing this all with a proven, experienced team of mine builders and operators. Really wrapping that up, that concept of low risk, risk mitigation. We are going to build and operate the next mine and there’s very little risk to that execution.
Maurice Jackson: Matt, if investors want to get more information about Nevada Copper, please share the website address.
Matt Gili: Absolutely, www.nevadacopper.com. We love to get your input. You’ll see our investor presentationsthere in our latest news. Let us know what you think.
Maurice Jackson: For our audience, we wish to remind you that Nevada Copper trades on the TSX symbol, NCU, and on the OTC symbol NEVDF. For additional inquiries, please contact Richard Matthews at (877) 648-8266 or you may email RMatthews@nevadacopper.com. Nevada Copper is a sponsor and we are proud shareholders for the virtues conveyed in today’s message.
Last but not least, please visit our website, provenandprobable.com, for mining insights and bullion sales. You may reach us at contact@provenandprobable.com.
Matt Gili of Nevada Copper, thank you for joining us today on Proven and Probable.
Maurice Jackson is the founder of Proven and Probable, a site that aims to enrich its subscribers through education in precious metals and junior mining companies that will enrich the world.
Disclosure:
1) Maurice Jackson: I, or members of my immediate household or family, own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: Nevada Copper. I personally am, or members of my immediate household or family are, paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None. My company has a financial relationship with the following companies mentioned in this article: Nevada Copper is a sponsor of Proven and Probable. Proven and Probable disclosures are listed below.
2) The following companies mentioned in this article are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: None. Click herefor important disclosures about sponsor fees.
3) Statements and opinions expressed are the opinions of the author and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. The author is wholly responsible for the validity of the statements. The author was not paid by Streetwise Reports for this article. Streetwise Reports was not paid by the author to publish or syndicate this article. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports requires contributing authors to disclose any shareholdings in, or economic relationships with, companies that they write about. Streetwise Reports relies upon the authors to accurately provide this information and Streetwise Reports has no means of verifying its accuracy.
4) This article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports’ terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports.
5) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the interview or the decision to write an article until three business days after the publication of the interview or article. The foregoing prohibition does not apply to articles that in substance only restate previously published company releases.
Proven and Probable LLC receives financial compensation from its sponsors. The compensation is used is to fund both sponsor-specific activities and general report activities, website, and general and administrative costs. Sponsor-specific activities may include aggregating content and publishing that content on the Proven and Probable website, creating and maintaining company landing pages, interviewing key management, posting a banner/billboard, and/or issuing press releases. The fees also cover the costs for Proven and Probable to publish sector-specific information on our site, and also to create content by interviewing experts in the sector. Monthly sponsorship fees range from $1,000 to $4,000 per month. Proven and Probable LLC does accept stock for payment of sponsorship fees. Sponsor pages may be considered advertising for the purposes of 18 U.S.C. 1734.
The Information presented in Proven and Probable is provided for educational and informational purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this forum is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice or any other advice. The Information on this forum and provided from or through this forum is general in nature and is not specific to you the User or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investments, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this forum without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or competent financial advisor. You understand that you are using any and all Information available on or through this forum at your own risk.
Images provided by the author.
Nevada Copper has a number of successes to share with reader. But, before you share the unique value preposition of Nevada Copper, Mr. Gili, for readers who may not be familiar with the supply and demand fundamentals regarding copper, please provide us with a 10,000-foot overview.
Matt Gili: When you look at the copper fundamentals, we see a very steady and predictable increase in demand of copper, modest amount, 1.5% per year. We see the move towards electrification of vehicles consuming more copper. We see other things that are offsetting that, but overall, a steady predictable 1.5% increase in the global demand for copper. Where the story really gets exciting, from the Nevada Copper standpoint, is with regards to the supply for copper. What we’re seeing is a lot of restrictions in future supply. We’re seeing a lot of difficulties on bringing on a future supply and backed up by work done by Wood Mackenzie and others, we’re projecting that by 2025, the world will be in a supply deficit of upwards of 6 million tonnes of copper per year. This just really supports what we’re doing in Nevada Copper in setting up the next copper mine.
Maurice Jackson: Now that we have an overview of the supply and demand fundamentals for copper, Matt, let’s discuss how someone listening may position himself prudently as a beneficiary. For someone new to the story, can you give us a very quick overview of Nevada Copper?
Matt Gili: Certainly. Nevada Copper, who’s Nevada Copper? We have an asset in Nevada called Pumpkin Hollow. This is our chief asset. It consists of two deposits: an underground deposit and an open-pit deposit for copper. We’re currently in the construction phase for the underground project with production from that underground project coming online later this year. I think we’ll talk more about that later. Regarding the open pit, we’re currently in the process of wrapping up the prefeasibility study for the open pit. You’ll see that being published in April of this year. Then, we have a regional land package of well over 15,000 acres that we are looking at really understanding, really unlocking the full value from that land package. That’s really Nevada Copper, building a copper mine coming into production later this year, with a lot of expansion into an open-pit mine, as well as regional exploration.
Maurice Jackson: Let’s provide readers the latest updates on Nevada Copper, as the company has been very proactive on a number of fronts. Please provide us with an update on the construction progress. I would like to begin with the multi-million dollar question, are we on track to enter production in Q4 of this year?
Matt Gili: Yes, Maurice, we are on track to enter production in Q4 of this year. We are very proud of that. The team’s doing a fantastic job. We have construction activities both on surface with Sedgman building the process plants, as well as underground cementation, both sinking shaft and doing lateral development on our main shaft. All that’s coming together very nicely. We are absolutely on track for commissioning of the plant in the fourth quarter of this year.
Maurice Jackson: As Nevada Copper is preparing for production this year, have you increased your staffing to meet the growing demands?
Matt Gili: That’s a really good question and yes, we have. We’ve increased our staffing. It’s an operational readiness question that you’re asking. This is where I want to stress to you and readers that this concept of operational readiness is foremost in our thoughts and how we’re planning for really becoming, not just building a great mine, but operating a great mine. When you look at the staffing, so far, our staffing, by design, is quite modest. We’re looking at a total workforce of Nevada Copper employees of around 30. That is because this is our model, a very lean, efficient operation. We utilize high-quality, expert service providers as necessary, to make sure that we are operating very efficiently.
Maurice Jackson: Is Nevada Copper still actively recruiting and if so, what positions?
Matt Gili: Yes, we are actively recruiting. Most of our positions open are technical and specialist positions, and would be part of the management team. I absolutely encourage anyone interested in what we’re recruiting for to contact the Nevada Copper website. You’ll see the complete listing of opening jobs there, as well as information on how to apply for any of these positions if you’re interested.
Maurice Jackson: Pumpkin Hollow is unique in that you have both an underground and an open-pit mine. Let’s discuss exploration and expansion potential. What initiatives is Nevada Copper taking to optimize the full potential of the Pumpkin Hollow project?
Matt Gili: We are in the process of constructing the underground, which has a large amount of upside potential. We’ll really only explore that upside potential when we’re underground, after we’re in production. We really look forward to updates on that front in 2020, and the reason for that is very simple. It’s just much more efficient to drill out the prospective areas of the underground from the underground; the holes are shorter. It’s just much easier. That’s really where the underground sits right now, in a holding pattern as far as expansion potential. When you look at the open pit, that’s where a lot of great energy is going into expanding the open pit, understanding the open pit better, really getting that ore body knowledge to allow you to build a world-class operation. That is part of the PFS, which is coming out in April of this year.
That PFS will include the drilling campaign that we completed in 2018, the 26 hole drilling campaign. It will include those results in the resource model. That’s going to give you an even better idea of the full potential of the open pit. The real excitement that we have is with regards to the region itself, a large region, relatively unexplored, but with large amounts of historical copper production, as well as great physical outcroppings of copper mineralization. This is really where we’re going to focus our efforts during 2019, to really get a chance, now that we’ve tied up this land package, to understand what we have.
Maurice Jackson: Speaking of the region, there was a regional survey conducted that led you to staking more land. Can you share the results with us?
Matt Gili: We staked a section a land that we refer to as the Teddy Boy Claims. This is about 5,700 acres of land to our northeast. We are very glad to have this in our portfolio. The criteria for that selection was we brought together experts on this region and experts in copper mineralization. They identified that as a really prospective area and where we should be really focused on. We’ve staked that land, secured it for our ability to explore over the next several years.
Maurice Jackson: Does Nevada Copper plan to drill the new area at some point this year?
Matt Gili: We plan on drilling this year. I really haven’t put out the entire drill program for 2019. We’re still pulling that together and analyzing where to best spend the monies we have available for exploration. We would like to drill that this year. Some more prospective holes, really not an in-depth blanket campaign, but probe a few really interesting areas over there and get a better idea for the drill campaign.
Maurice Jackson: It’s one thing to have tonnage and grade, but you must equally have astute business acumen to make the numbers work. Now, Nevada Copper is in discussions regarding an ECA-backed project finance facility to further optimize the balance sheet, as well as lining up a working capital facility and further offtake agreements to improve the economics of Pumpkin Hollow. Please provide us with the details.
Matt Gili: You kind of said it all. I can’t really provide you with any more details, but I can surely stress what you’ve just said, Maurice. We are in discussions with this export, credit agency style backed project financing. This is going to provide us the opportunity to substantially reduce the cost of our debt service, as well as attract strong and robust financial partners for potential future open-pit developments. Something we’re very excited about and it’s part of really creating Nevada Copper as a world-class company.
Maurice Jackson: Let’s get into some numbers. Please share your capital structure.
Matt Gili: The capital structure is well defined. We have $8 million in long-term debt. We have $153 million of cash or cash equivalents. When you look at the financing package specifically for the underground, we’re fully financed, including the working capital facility to take us through operation ramp up. The inputs into that are an equity raise that we did in the middle of last year, as well as a streaming deposit with regards to a stream arrangement on the precious metals strictly from the underground deposit. We also have a $25-million subordinated debt package. Really a standby loan facility that we can use if necessary.
Maurice Jackson: In closing, I have a multilayered question. What is the next unanswered question for Nevada Copper? When can we expect a response? What determines success?
Matt Gili: I would not classify our successful completion of underground construction and bringing them in operation as an unanswered question. That is going to happen, and I’m very proud of the activities that have happened so far. The real unanswered question for the investors out there, is what is the true potential of the open pit? There’s been a lot of great work done, a lot of exploration done, last year. That’s all been incorporated. I’m really going to be excited when the PFS is released and we can share the details of the open pit potential with the public. They are going to be very impressed and they’re going to see the picture. They’re going to see what we see when we get so excited about Nevada Copper.
Maurice Jackson: Speaking of the prefeasibility study, give us a timeline on that, sir.
Matt Gili: We’ll release that in April. I’m being careful. I don’t want to be too specific. It will be in April of this year. Next month.
Maurice Jackson: Mr. Gili, last question. What did I forget to ask?
Matt Gili: Maurice, forget to ask? You’re always very thorough, so I wouldn’t say you forgot to ask anything. What I would say is I want to reiterate something that we at Nevada Copper have been thinking about over the last month. Unfortunately, for the world, the last month has been a month marred with tragedies, with risk and with unexpected events. What we’re really stressing, with Nevada Copper, is the risk management of Nevada Copper. We are an operation that is on private land. We’re not waiting for any permits. We’re not waiting for records of decision. We’re utilizing EPC contractors, who have that fixed price nature, reduced risks. We’re building a dry stack tailing facility. We’ll never have a wet tailing storage facility at Pumpkin Hollow. We’re doing this all with a proven, experienced team of mine builders and operators. Really wrapping that up, that concept of low risk, risk mitigation. We are going to build and operate the next mine and there’s very little risk to that execution.
Maurice Jackson: Matt, if investors want to get more information about Nevada Copper, please share the website address.
Matt Gili: Absolutely, www.nevadacopper.com. We love to get your input. You’ll see our investor presentationsthere in our latest news. Let us know what you think.
Maurice Jackson: For our audience, we wish to remind you that Nevada Copper trades on the TSX symbol, NCU, and on the OTC symbol NEVDF. For additional inquiries, please contact Richard Matthews at (877) 648-8266 or you may email RMatthews@nevadacopper.com. Nevada Copper is a sponsor and we are proud shareholders for the virtues conveyed in today’s message.
Last but not least, please visit our website, provenandprobable.com, for mining insights and bullion sales. You may reach us at contact@provenandprobable.com.
Matt Gili of Nevada Copper, thank you for joining us today on Proven and Probable.
Maurice Jackson is the founder of Proven and Probable, a site that aims to enrich its subscribers through education in precious metals and junior mining companies that will enrich the world.
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Ross McElroy the COO and Chief Geologist for Fission 3.0 (TSX.V: FUU | OTCQB: FISOF) sits down with Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable to discuss the value proposition of Fission 3.0 and their Property Bank. In this interview Mr. McElroy provides the macro economics for uranium and how one may allocate their uranium holdings in a Uranium Project Generator with a Property Bank with projects located in high-grade uranium districts, with proven management and technical team that has a 20 year history of delivering success to shareholders.
VIDEO
AUDIO
TRANSCRIPT
Original Source: https://www.streetwisereports.com/article/2019/03/16/prospect-generator-in-position-for-uranium-turnaround.html
Maurice Jackson: Joining us for a conversation is Ross McElroy, the COO and chief geologist for Fission 3.0 Corp. (FUU:TSX.V; FISOF:OTC.MKTS): A Uranium Project Generator and Property Bank. Ross McElroy, glad to have you back on the program to share the value proposition of Fission 3.0. Before we begin, Ross, I’d like to begin with some basic fundamentals regarding uranium. For someone new to the uranium sector, what is uranium, and where is it used?
Ross McElroy: Uranium is really all about energy. The way we use uranium is for nuclear fuel. That’s basically the fuel that runs reactors.
Globally nuclear power constitutes between 15% and 20% of the electrical requirements. That’s really where the majority of the uranium is used. There is some uranium that’s used for strategic purposes on a country by country basis, more for the Department of Defense reasons. But really, the vast, vast majority of uranium is used to fuel nuclear reactors.
Maurice Jackson: Provide us with some metrics on how abundant uranium is in the Earth’s crust, and correlate that to the average grade that is found versus the grade that is needed to define an ore deposit in a future mine?
Ross McElroy: Well, uranium is actually one of the most abundant elements in the Earth. It’s kind of ubiquitous. You’ll see it throughout the Earth’s crust; there is trace amounts of uranium present primarily in volcanic and igneous rocks and sedimentary rocks.
On a deposit level, there’s actually a number of uranium deposits around the world, in every continent on the planet and in many countries. On a global basis, the average grade of a uranium deposit worldwide is around 0.1 to 0.15% U308.
Now, if you compare that to say, the deposits in Canada, they’re orders of magnitude higher grade in Canada. We’re talking orders of magnitude that are 10 to 20 times that of the global grade.
Although I’ve given you the average grade, most of those deposits at those lower grades, the average grades are really uneconomic deposits. We need grades that are generally much higher than the 0.1%–0.15% if it’s going to be an economic deposit. And that’s what Canada has. Canada has very high-grade deposits, so the economic metrics are just that much more attractive in Canada.
Maurice Jackson: Now that we’ve identified uranium’s utility, what can you share with us from a supply and demand perspective?
Ross McElroy: Well, it’s fairly simple to understand what the demand for nuclear energy is, in other words, uranium. We can just multiply the number of reactors around the world that are currently operating, and the known fuel consumption rate for a 1000 megawatt reactor is just under 500,000 pounds of uranium a year. If we look at the global reactors, there are around 450 reactors around the world. You can see that the need for uranium on an annual basis is around the realm of almost 200 million pounds of uranium.
Maurice Jackson: How does the nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan, fit into this narrative?
Ross McElroy: Japan historically, up until the Fukushima event in 2011, was one of the main users on a country basis worldwide. Japan I think consumed almost 20% of the world’s nuclear power, in other words, 20% of the world’s annual production of uranium was used to run the Japanese reactors.
In 2011, of course, we had the magnitude 9 earthquake followed by a tsunami, and that’s what damaged the Fukushima facility. Interestingly enough, even with that magnitude of an earthquake and the soon-to-follow tsunami, the reactor still did not breach. The housing that surrounded the reactor was damaged, and this is where some of the radiation leaks came from, but the reactor itself actually held, and so the damage was actually very, very limited and manageable.
What happened is overnight, Japan shut down all of its nuclear reactors, in other words, all 52 reactors I think they had working at that time, went offline. That caused disruption to the supply/demand situation globally.
What’s happened since then is Japan is slowly coming back on. Japan’s alternatives for power are pretty limited as the country doesn’t have very much of its own resources, if any at all. It imports whatever energy that it needs, be it in natural gas now, in nuclear.
It’s important for Japan to be able to operate these factories that they’re running. I mean, it’s an exporting country around the world, so it does have high energy requirements. It also has the requirements for inexpensive power.
Japan is coming back on to the scene as far as nuclear power. There are eight reactors that are currently back up and operating, and 17 reactors that are in the near-term licensing for approval to get them restarted again.
I think the bottom line is, prior to Fukushima, Japan depended on nuclear energy for at least 25% of its electricity demands. I think by the time 2030 approaches, Japan is supposed to be right back up to those same levels. The country is coming back on, it has always been an important major consumer of nuclear power. I think we’ll see it right back to the equation again in the very near future.
Maurice Jackson: Uranium, next to gold, is known as the other yellow metal, and here’s why. Ross, let’s step back to the bull market in uranium. If one was selective with the uranium holdings, they would’ve had generational changes in their portfolio. What was the spot price during the last bull market?
Ross McElroy: Well, in 2002, uranium was around, I don’t know, about $15 a pound. This is on the spot market. That’s what uranium was trading for.
In 2003–2004, we really saw the lift off of the price of uranium. In fact, it peaked at 2007 to around $140 a pound. It went almost a 10-fold increase in the price of the commodity between 2003 and 2007. The peak at 140 didn’t last particularly long, but it had a slower decline until about 2008—2009, it stabilized, and then it peaked back up again.
Really, it was holding steady. I guess this is the point I would want to make, is that we were starting to see a steady state price of between $50 to $70 a pound, and then the Fukushima event hit that we talked about in 2011, and that really threw the whole pricing structure right out the window. We’ve been working on our recovery ever since.
Maurice Jackson: What is the spot price for uranium today?
Ross McElroy: Currently we’re about $28 a pound for uranium. It has recovered; we’re off the bottoms of $17, $18 a pound just a couple of years ago. Uranium is making its way back.
Maybe the important point here to note is we’re still at prices that the majority of mines around the world are not profitable. Even the lowest cost producers are really not operating in an environment where they can make money with uranium prices what they’re at right now.
What we’ve seen is that the supply is starting to be restricted as the producers are taking a lot of that uranium off market; they’re not supplying it to the utilities at this cheap price, because it’s not a working business model to lose money in the long run on the mining of the commodity.
We are seeing an improvement in the price of uranium, and it’s been about a year and a half in the making. It’s gone up from the $18 that I mentioned to about $28 a pound, but it certainly has a lot more room to move upwards even before we can start to get production back online to meaningful levels.
Maurice Jackson: What is that spot price that companies right now, uranium companies I should say, for them to earn their cost of capital? Is the number around $60 for a spot price of uranium?
Ross McElroy: I believe you are correct. We’re seeing prices that globally, they have to be in the $60 to $70 a pound really to bring on any meaningful production.
One of the clues that I look at when we look at the best uranium mines out there, the lowest cost producers, those would be McArthur River deposit in Canada’s Athabasca Basin in Northern Saskatchewan. That is one of the best uranium mines in the world, certainly the largest highest-grade operating mine. Cameco took that offline because of the prices of uranium where they were at, they weren’t making any money on the mining of this deposit.
There are some indications that Cameco won’t turn that mine back on into being a producer until the price of uranium is somewhat north of $40, maybe $45. Something in that realm.
I don’t have an exact number there, but it does tell you that if you’re going to even bring back the best of those deposits, you really need prices that are something of $40 to $45. As we mentioned earlier, the price for many of the other deposits around the world are probably closer to $60 or $70. You can see, there’s still lots of room for improvement.
Maurice Jackson: The current price of uranium does not support the fundamentals. What correlations do you see today that may exceed the returns from the last bull market?
Ross McElroy: Well, it’s sort of an elastic situation. I think that the longer that we keep depressed prices, yet the demand is still there and growing, reactors are being built, the need to fuel these reactors, that’s not stopping.
In fact, it’s growing. You have the primary suppliers of uranium, i.e., the mines that are not supplying it, the longer that the prices are low, the more rapid that climb will be in the price of uranium when it does correct.
I think there’s a possibility, as I’ve heard some analysts call it, a violent reaction upwards to the price of uranium. I think we’re going to see some substantial price increases within some short vision of time, maybe a year or two or three. Something in that realm that I think will be quite meaningful.
We’ll see what happens, but the longer it stays depressed, the more likely and quicker the rise will be when it does come.
Maurice Jackson: Ross, you’ve provided a compelling case on the fundamentals for uranium. I know readers may be asking, how will all of this demand for uranium be met? Mr. McElroy, please introduce us to Fission 3.0.
Ross McElroy: Fission 3.0 is a uranium explorer. This is a company that we spun out of Fission Uranium Corp. (FCU:TSX; FCUUF:OTCQX; 2FU:FSE), our larger company, back in 2014 when we bought out our partner on the Patterson Lake project, and in so doing with that process from that arrangement, we spun out our non-core assets, the more grassroots exploration projects.
We’ve been able to build up an exploration portfolio, primarily focused in the Athabasca Basin. Remember, the Athabasca Basin is Canada’s only producing uranium field. That’s where the McArthur River deposit is, this is where Fission Uranium has the Triple R deposit. There’s some fantastic deposits out there.
That’s what we’re exploring for in Fission 3.0. We’re looking for the next high-grade uranium deposit in the Athabasca Basin.
Maurice Jackson: You referenced that you’re a project generator. There’s a lot of ambiguity regarding project generators. Please share the virtues and why Fission 3.0 took on the project generator business model?
Ross McElroy: Project generators are really all about sharing the risk. In our case, what we do very well is pick ground. We’ve been able to strategically stake ground in the Athabasca Basin, we’ve made discoveries on two of our properties, the first one in the company called Fission Energy that we made the discovery at our Waterbury Lake property, and later on in Fission Uranium Corp on our PLS property.
That have been situations where we’ve had joint-venture partners sharing the risks, sharing the costs with others. To use the model, what we do is we use our brands and other peoples’ money. That’s really what we’re good at, that’s basically the model that we have.
We have a very highly trained technical team that’s exceptional at picking out high-quality projects. We attract other people who are looking to get into the uranium business, looking to partner up with a team such as ours and join us for the ride to make a discovery.
It’s really all about sharing risk. That’s really what the project generator model does. It’s our land, and we partner with good quality people that can fund a project, and that’s how they earn into it as well.
Maurice Jackson: Do you currently have a joint-venture partner? If yes, who and what are the terms of the relationship?
Ross McElroy: We have had joint-venture partners in the past, and very successful ones. As I mentioned earlier on our Waterbury project, we had a partner with the Korean utility called KEPCO. It earned in by spending a certain amount of money on the property each year over the course of a three-year period.
What we did with that, we were able to make a discovery, using the money in that project, we made a discovery, built up the resource estimate on there, and eventually sold that asset. That was how our shareholders were able to take advantage of our monetizing on the property.
I guess we could say the same at the PLS project, which we now own 100% of it, but that was also a partnership. We shared in the risk early on and in the money early on with our partner. We eventually bought them out in 2014. That was another example of a successful joint venture partnership.
Each one of the deals would be a little bit different from each other. It is a model that we think works very well. I will note that in our property down in Peru as well, we have a partnership that we’re still looking to finalize the deal. This is one where another group has approached us, said it’s interested in the potential of a property down in Peru. It will spend a significant amount of money having us as the operator. Hopefully we’ll make a discovery down in Peru as well.
Maurice Jackson: Well, you’ve just alluded to my next question. Fission 3.0 has 18 projects in its project bank. Now, it is strategically located in premier, high-grade uranium districts in Canada and Peru. Mr. McElroy, introduce us to the Fission 3.0 Project Bank (click here).
Ross McElroy: We have 18 properties in the Athabasca Basin. Our properties, we think that everywhere in the Athabasca Basin has the potential to host high-grade uranium projects.
One of the keys that we seek to identify are deposits that will be shallow. In other words, the closer a deposit is to surface, the easier it is to build a case that this could be a project that could go into production. It’s an easier mine to develop the closer it is to the surface.
Really deep deposits are challenging. They still exist, but they’re challenging. Eventually they cost more money to find and cost more money to get out of the ground. They’re just another level of challenge.
If you look at our 18 properties, they’re all in and around the edge of the Athabasca Basin, where we’ve had a great deal of success finding near-surface mineralization.
Our PLS project that hosts the Triple R deposit in Fission Uranium is a great example of a near-surface deposit. The mineralization starts at 50 meters below the surface, so 150 feet below the present-day surface is where the high-grade mineralization starts. That makes it a potentially open-pit deposit, which is generally low cost and gives you a lot of flexibility.
This is the sort of thing that we’re looking for in Fission 3.0. We’ve got very good properties that are in known mining districts, conversely, we have a good portfolio of ground around the southwest side of the basin where our PLS project in Fission Uranium is hosted, and also NexGen’s Arrow deposit, it’s all in that same area. We have the significant land package that surrounds that area.
We also have a good strategic land package in and around the Key Lake area on the southeast side of the basin. This has been, and still currently is the hot bed of uranium mining in Canada right now. This is the side of the basin where the McArthur River and Cigar Lake deposits are located.
McArthur shut down for economic reasons waiting for higher uranium prices. It was an operating mine up until about a year ago, and Cigar still is in operation. You’ve also got the Key Lake mine.
It’s a strategic area to have a good land package. We think there’s lots of opportunities in and around land in that area to make a new discovery.
And probably third for us is the land package that’s up in the northwest side of the basin, in the old uranium city Beaverlodge district where uranium mining in Saskatchewan first got started back in the 1950s and was the going concern back in the ’50s and the ’60s, I think there were about 52 operating mines up in that area, pretty small scale most of them, but still lots of high-grade uranium. That’s an area where we think that there’s still plenty of exploration potential.
Between all those areas, we’re going to be active and we’re going to be looking for the next high-grade uranium deposit in Saskatchewan.
Maurice Jackson: Speaking of being active, is there active drilling going on right now in these projects?
Ross McElroy: There is active drilling. We did drill in the southwest side of the basin. We were drilling in January on our PLN project. That project is just immediately north of Fission Uranium’s PLS project.
You’re really talking about the same area where the latest discoveries have been found, where you’ve got the Triple R deposit, you’ve got NexGen’s Arrow deposit. These are two of the best new deposits that have been found in the Athabasca Basin in the last 15 years.
We have a package around there called PLN, and we did drill six holes in there earlier this year. It has the potential to host another one of these fantastic deposits, so we are going to continue looking there. We see all the signs present that tell us that this is where we’ll make that discovery.
As we’re speaking right now, we’re drilling over in the Key Lake area that I described earlier. This is over on the southeast side of the basin, about 200 kilometers to the east of the PLS drilling. That is a program where we’ll drill probably eight or nine holes, just south of the Key Lake Mill and the old historical Key Lake deposits. There’s areas of activity there. We’ll continue drilling throughout the rest of 2019 on a number of our projects.
Fission 3.0 is active. We were able to raise some significant money early in the year, in late 2018. We’re going to be active. This is how we’ve been successful in the past, is by being aggressive, looking in places where people probably haven’t looked for a while or never even thought to look, and putting our technical team to work. Yes, you’ll see pretty good news flow out of Fission 3 this year.
Maurice Jackson: Ross, let’s expand the narrative on the project bank portfolio and go south into Peru. What can you share with us there?
Ross McElroy: Peru is a really interesting area. Where our projects are is called the Macusani Plateau, located in southern Peru, near the Bolivian border. The Macusani Plateau has shown at least over 100 million pounds in near-surface uranium deposits.
There’s a company down there that’s quite dominant called Plateau Energy. Plateau has been able to stake a lot and consolidate a land package in the area, and consolidated all these old deposits. It has amassed around 100 million pounds of uranium in these uranium deposits.
However, even more significant, Plateau made a discovery of high-grade lithium in the same area, and in fact, that’s within five kilometers of our southern property boundary on our Macusani plains. Not only do we have the potential now to host near-surface uranium deposits, and we have shown in fact that we do have mineralization on our property for uranium, we’ve mapped it, we’ve drilled, we’ve trenched and found high-grade uranium, but now the potential’s there for hosting high-grade lithium.
This is really a new dimension that we have down in that area, that we wouldn’t have had say, two or three years ago when we were last down drilling. You’ve got uranium, and now we have lithium. It’s a very interesting up-and-coming area as well.
Maurice Jackson: Switching gears, Fission 3.0 has the right projects in the right place at the right time. But that’s only part of the story. Equally important are the people that are responsible for increasing shareholder value. Mr. McElroy, please introduce us to your board of directors.
Ross McElroy: Thank you, and I appreciate that. We do have a very successful team. Our founder of Fission 3.0 is also the same CEO and founder of Fission Uranium, and previously Fission Energy before that, and Strathmore.
Dev Randhawa has been involved in this company right from the get-go in its first iteration back in 1996, and also heading up Fission 3.0. Dev is the longest running CEO in the uranium sector.
Myself, I’ve been involved with Dev 12, 13 years now. We’ve had a great successful relationship. We’re able to raise money, raise attention, put that money to work, make discoveries, and basically build shareholder value right from the bottom up.
This is the group that I think, we’ve been able to deliver in the past, and we’re going to be able to deliver shareholder value as we move forward in this much improving uranium sector.
A lot of the same players that we’ve had all the way along, still keep also in the Fission 3 group.
Maurice Jackson: Who is on your management team?
Ross McElroy: The management team is composed of our CEO Dev Randhawa and chairman. I am the chief operating officer, and also the chief geologist. We have maintained the same structure that we have in Fission Uranium, is the same that we have in Fission 3.0. It’s a fairly lean team. Phil Morehouse is president of Fission 3.0. We kept a pretty lean mean machine in Fission 3.
Don’t forget, we’ve had up until just recently in the last six months, it’s been a very quiet company, there hasn’t been a lot of exploration activities in the uranium sector. I think as we start to ramp up, with our level of activity increasing, we’ll start to draw more and more people into roles and developing roles within the company as we begin to be active, get out and start marketing the story more, get on the ground and back that up with real results, we’re going to continue to build our team.
Maurice Jackson: Before we move on to your impressive technical team, in the natural resource basis, why is it wise to follow proven winners? Ross, you alluded to it earlier, you and CEO Dev Randhawa have a proven pedigree of success. How were shareholders rewarded as far as returns for their loyalty to sticking with your team?
Ross McElroy: Well, if you owned the original company at the beginning, which would’ve been Strathmore Minerals, and you’d held on it to all the way throughout, over the last 20 years since about 1996, 97, you’d probably own about five different companies right now.
What’s happened is we’ve moved on to a new phase, we’ve made discoveries, advanced projects, sold different projects to different groups. What we’ve been able to do is form new companies, split off new companies in what they call a butterfly transaction.
You have shares in the new company, still maintain your shares in the old company, so you would’ve received essentially what would look like dividends in the way of different shares for five different companies since that time. The shareholders that have been loyal and sticking with us would’ve succeeded quite handsomely all the way along.
Maurice Jackson: Your technical team is exceptional. I had an opportunity to meet them in the summer of 2016 at the site visit there. Please, introduce us to them.
Ross McElroy: We’re very, very proud of this group. This has been the team we’ve had, the same core group of people with us since 2010. With that same group, we were able to make our discovery on the Waterbury Lake project, and then followed up in 2012 with the discovery of PLS. It’s the same group that is very core and important to us in Fission 3.0.
I do head up the team and the technical group, so I would be the team leader or chief geologist for the technical team. My right hand guy is Raymond Ashley, he’s the VP of exploration. Ray is an excellent geoscientist who I’ve had the pleasure to work with for over 30 years in this sector, so we’ve been working pretty close together. Definitely a proven mine finder.
We’ve basically held the same group of people together on the project managers, all the structural scientists, geochemists. We’ve kept the same core group together over the last almost 10 years or so.
To me, that’s really the key. You want a team that works together well, good chemistry with each other, the ability and the environment to think outside of the box. Really, the goal for each and every one of us is to responsibly make world-class discoveries. That’s what we’re all about.
We’ve got an excellent team. All the key people are listed on the website. You’ll be able to go there and see the roles of the various groups there in the technical team, but there’s about seven or eight of us that have been able to be what I consider the core team for the last decade or so.
Maurice Jackson: Let’s get into some numbers. Please share your capital structure.
Ross McElroy: In Fission 3.0, we have 142 million shares outstanding. We were able to raise a significant amount. We have just under $7 million in the treasury right now, that’ll allow us to be active over the next two years or so.
Maurice Jackson: What is your burn rate?
Ross McElroy: The burn rate, because it’s exploration, it’s pretty discretionary spending. We have $7 million that we have in the treasury right now, that’ll certainly carry us over the next two to three years of pretty aggressive exploration spending on our key projects. We can dial that kind of number up, and we can dial it back as conditions warrant. That’s the benefit of being in exploration.
The burn rate is actually pretty minimal. In other words, we run a pretty lean shop as far as the number of management and corporate costs. Really, the majority of the costs are exploration spending, which is really entirely discretionary.
Maurice Jackson: How much debt do you have?
Ross McElroy: We have no debt. We’ve not taken on any debt. Basically, the money that we raise have been through equity share offerings. No debt in Fission 3.0.
Maurice Jackson: Who are your major shareholders? What is their level of commitment?
Ross McElroy: When we spun off Fission 3.0 back in December of 2014, it was the same shareholders that were shareholders of Fission Uranium, were the same shareholders in Fission 3.0. We would’ve had a lot of the same loyal, large shareholders, including JP Morgan, even investment from others that we’ve had along the way. It’s been the same loyal group.
We have significant new shareholders now with the financing that we did back in 2018, which was led by the Sprott Global Resources Group out of California. I think we have some new players back to the game, but we have a lot of shareholders that have been with us over the long haul.
These are people that have a good vision of the uranium sector. They know that the good times are around the corner. It’s a point that we believe really strongly, and we think that the sector is improving a great deal.
This is how our loyal shareholders are going to be rewarded, by being a much better market with an aggressive team like Fission 3.0, and the new shareholders will probably be long term loyal shareholders too if we’re successful and able to build value for them as well.
Maurice Jackson: What is the float?
Ross McElroy: Fully diluted, we have 227 million shares. We’ve got shares outstanding, we’ve got options and warrants that we’re a part of financing as well, so 227 million shares out in total. We trade around 240,000 shares a day, I think that’s our average volume.
Maurice Jackson: Multi-layered question. What is the next unanswered question for Fission 3.0? When can we expect a response? What determines success?
Ross McElroy: Well, we are going to be successful through work. We know that a better market should buoy the price up of everybody involved in the nuclear sector. They’re starting to get some life back in the exploration world.
Really, we’ve always built value by our success. We’ve been successful with making discoveries. We now have the money, we have the team, we’re putting them to work. I would look to us as being one of the most dynamic uranium explorers out there. That’s something that I think people can follow, they can see our news release cycle, they’ll see how we’re marketing our story, and just look at the results. I think they’ll speak for themselves.
We’re looking at our projects, we’ll be active throughout the calendar year. I think the news flow will be very strong and steady. People that are interested in following the company will always see that there’s a continuing narrative out there. We want to take advantage of this and improve the uranium market, the fact that we are well financed, and we have the properties that we want to explore. I think there’s a very good opportunity for readers to look at Fission 3.0 as a sector leader in the uranium exploration business.
Maurice Jackson: Mr. McElroy, last question. What did I forget to ask?
Ross McElroy: I think we’ve covered a lot of ground here, and a lot of important ground. One of the takeaways that I want readers to know is we really do believe in the nuclear sector. We think that we have turned the corner and that conditions are improving.
If people are looking to invest in the uranium sector, I think it’s important for them to look at a group that has done it before. Your track record is very indicative of what your future has the potential to look like. I always find myself, when I’m investing, I like to back teams with a proven track record.
We have that in our group. We’ve got an exceptional management team. We’ve done it before. We’ve been able to capitalize on our discoveries by selling assets. We have a unique technical team that has the ability to make discoveries.
So better sector, very good team. Strong management. Those are the ingredients we need to be successful.
Maurice Jackson: Ross, for someone listening that wants to get more information about Fission 3.0, please share the website address.
Ross McElroy: Our website address is www.fission3corp.com.
Maurice Jackson: For direct queries email ir@fission3corp.com, or you may call (778) 484-8030. Fission 3.0 trades on the TSX:V, symbol FUU, and on the OTC, symbol FISOF.
For audience, we’ve been proud shareholders of Fission 3.0 since 2014. Last but not least, please visit our website, provenandprobable.com, for mining insights and bullion sales. You may reach us at contact@provenandprobable.com.
Ross McElroy of Fission 3.0, thank you for joining us today on Proven and Probable.
Maurice Jackson is the founder of Proven and Probable, a site that aims to enrich its subscribers through education in precious metals and junior mining companies that will enrich the world.
Disclosure:
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In this action packed interview, Bob Moriarty the founder of 321gold and 321energy.com sits down with Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable to discuss current events, companies that have your attention, and to discuss Amazon’s best-selling book right now, under Commodities Trading, which happens to be your book aptly entitled: “Basic Investing In Resource Stocks, the Idiot’s Guide”.
VIDEO
AUDIO
https://soundcloud.com/proven-and-probable/bob-feb-2019
TRANSCRIPT
Original Source: https://www.streetwisereports.com/article/2019/03/03/bob-moriarty-on-geopolitics-resource-companies-and-his-new-book.html
Bob Moriarty on Geopolitics, Resource Companies and His New Book
Contributed Opinion
Source: Maurice Jackson for Streetwise Reports (3/3/19)
Bob Moriarty of 321 Gold sits down with Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable and sounds off about the state of the world, resource companies he is paying attention to, and what readers will find in his new book.
Maurice Jackson: Welcome to Proven and Probable, I’m your host Maurice Jackson. Joining us for a conversation is Bob Moriarty, the founder of 321gold and 321energy.com.
We brought you on today to discuss current events, companies that have your attention and to discuss Amazon’s best-selling book right now under commodities trading, which happens to be your book aptly entitled “Basic Investing in Resource Stocks: The Idiot’s Guide.” Bob, you shared with me on a number of occasions to be aware of political and geopolitical events as they have a direct influence on our lives and portfolio. Let’s begin with current events and there’s a number of them unfolding right before us. Beginning in the U.S., what has your attention and why?
Bob Moriarty: I don’t know a good term to use, but it’s almost a feeling of a sick desire to watch something obscene, the Cohen hearings are certainly interesting. It’s a measure of how far over the cliff the country has gone. It’s obscene. Why you would get a guy who is a felon and who’s lied to Congress, who has an agenda to testify in Congress is just amazing! We know the guy is a liar. It’s all political theater. Sadly, neither party, no one is trying to improve the country. They’re just trying to get even with the guys on the other side of the aisle. It’s sick okay, but it’s interesting to watch because it’s so sick.
Maurice Jackson: In previous interviews you referenced the Deep State/Shadow Government. For someone new to the conversation, who is the Deep State and what is their significance?
Bob Moriarty: I’m not sure that deep state is a good term. It’s really the Congressional Military Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower warned us about in 1961 in his farewell address. In his written copy, President Eisenhower called it the Congressional Military Industrial Complex. His political advisor said, “You can’t do that. You can’t criticize Congress, so remove that. Just call it the Military Industrial Complex.”
There exists within the United States a small subset whose economic welfare is based on constant war. We no longer fight wars to achieve peace. We fight wars to achieve war and it’s a transfer of wealth from the taxpayers, the United States to the Congressional Military Industrial Complex. Wars will destroy, actually it has destroyed the United States already.
The United States is bankrupt, it’s functionally bankrupt. There is nothing we can do about it. There is no savior that’s going to come along. There are no solutions, we’re bankrupt. The standard of living of most Americans is going to decline a lot more than it already has.
Maurice Jackson: Just for the record, is it the Military Industrial Complex or the Democratic Party, which one is it that really wants President Trump out and why?
Bob Moriarty: Both the Deep State and the Democrats, but only because they wanted Hillary Clinton in. She was supported by the Deep State. A couple of months ago I was writing and talking about there being a coup d’etat in the United States. Then Andrew McCabe came actually went on 60 Minutes and he admitted it. I mean this is bizarre. If you have a coup d’etat in any country in the world, the legal system should arrest these guys, give them fair trials and shoot them. We don’t do that. We admit, “Oh yeah, we attempted a coup d’etat, the Department of Justice and the NSA and the CIA and the FBI were all trying to overthrow the democratically elected president of the United States,” but who cares?
Maurice Jackson: Bob, I want to go back to my previous question, what will be the purpose or what is the ultimate intent? If they get President Trump out, then what?
Bob Moriarty: Well, see, that’s the problem. We talk about defeating the ISIS in Syria or we talk about regime change in Iran or regime change in Syria or regime change in Afghanistan or regime change in Iraq. We never have a plan B. We never have anything that we actually intend to do. The journey has become the destination and that is perpetual war.
Maurice Jackson: Let me ask you this here, what is Bob Moriarty’s assessment of President Trump?
Bob Moriarty: I think the man’s an idiot. You want to beat around the bush, he’s a blithering idiot. He’s a narcissist. He’s knowledge of things economic or historical are absolutely obscene. He’s most certainly a criminal, but when you say that you also have to say, well, his opponent was Hillary Clinton. If she had been elected president, there would have been four versions of air force one, three of them just to carry her baggage around.
Maurice Jackson: Therefore, in some regards the United States would have the same president in Trump or Clinton. Let’s expand the narrative to geopolitics here. Things are really heating up between India and Pakistan. What’s going on there?
Bob Moriarty: Let me back track a little bit. I think we’ve discussed the worldwide revolution before, but the population of every country on earth is upset because the power and the money is being transmitted from the 99% to the 1%. Everybody is upset, the Yellow Vest and Israel and Canada and Brussels and Spain and I’m certain that’s true in Pakistan as well. There is an area of disputed territory between Pakistan and India that’s been in dispute since 1948. There are people, there are terrorists, India calls them terrorists, but they’re supported by Pakistan who set off a bomb and killed 40 Indian policemen, military. India was naturally upset.
When you’re dealing with two parties who are equipped with nuclear weapons, you want to avoid that kind of stuff. Because one of the options is everybody keeps being stupid and you end up lobbying nuclear weapons at each other. I’m not going to say I’m predicting it, I don’t know what the possibility is. I know it’s a very dangerous time and I wish there was a way of sorting it out that made sense. Unfortunately, I mean the only sane political leader in the world today I think is Putin.
Maurice Jackson: Speaking of Putin, I want to address the situation with Russian, Ukraine as well. Before we do that, let’s move west and go and discuss the situation between the U.S. and Iran, what’s going on there?
Bob Moriarty: Well, here’s what’s funny. Israel has been advocating for a war against Iran since 1982. It’s in writing. They’ve said it many, many times. It has nothing to do with Iran and everything to do with Israel. Israel has convinced the United States to fight their wars for them. There is no Iranian nuclear weapons program period. It stopped years ago, all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies admitted and there is no nuclear weapons program period, end of story. Everything that has been said about Iran is something that has been made up by Benjamin Netanyahu and the Mossad. They’re trying to convince the Americans to go to war.
Now since Donald Trump was bought and paid for by Sheldon Adelson, he sold his soul for about $30 or $35 million in the presidential campaign. Benjamin Netanyahu through Sheldon Adelson literally tells the President of the United States what to do. I’m naturally against that, however, if Hillary Clinton had been elected she would have done the same thing. We need to stop fighting wars for Israel. I am not a pacifist. I am the opposite of a pacifist. I am a warrior and I fought in war and I know all about war because I’ve been there. I would defend my country and my family and my state in a minute against a true enemy.
We go out and create the straw enemies who are not the enemies of us on behalf of Israel. Then we attack them and we let a bunch of our kids get killed. We pay for the war and it’s bankrupted the United States. The United States can end up just like French empire, the Spanish empire, the Russian empire, the British empire, it’s going to bankrupt itself. The standard of living of Americans are going to go down substantially, fighting wars for a tiny meaningless country in the Middle East.
Maurice Jackson: You know what you say sometimes I know that others may disagree with you and say, “That’s a little extreme,” but the reality is, you’ve stated empirical evidence. Wars bankrupt nations and then they also devalue their currency and history does repeat itself. The United States currently is on that trajectory. Let’s move north here. You referenced Russia earlier, there isn’t that much news coming out from Russia and Ukraine. What’s the situation like there?
Bob Moriarty: Well, actually there is and again that’s a situation where the neocons who are under the control of Benjamin Netanyahu. I mean they’re traitors to the United States, but they would like to get into war with Russia and they’re using the Ukraine. It’s really funny because the Ukrainian government is supported by the United States, Poroshenko, they’re just as corrupted as they could be. It’s the worst possible thing in the world for the Ukrainian people, but we don’t give a shit, okay, as long as they do what the United States wants to do, which is to antagonize Russia.
Now everybody talks about Russia having invaded Crimea, but the Crimea was always part of Russian, been part of Russian since I think Catherine the Great. The Crimea only became part of Ukraine in 1954, because Khrushchev got drunk and he signed it over to the Ukrainians. Ukraine was part of the USSR back then, so it didn’t really change anything whatsoever. When the United States sponsored and paid for and admittedly paid $5 billion of American dollars to subvert the Ukrainian government and sponsored the coup d’etat in Ukraine against their democratically elected president. Then the thugs that are running Ukraine started stirring up trouble that was anti-Russian. The people in the eastern part of the country voted and said, “We don’t want to be part of Ukraine, we’re Russian. We’ve always been Russian and we want to be Russian.” Ukraine is kind of split in two.
Ukrainian Navy tried to force a ship through a very narrow straight and the Russians captured the ship and said, “No, you can’t do that. That’s illegal to do.” It’s a hot spot and it’s something that could go nuclear in very short order. We have a small group about 30 people who are at the heart of military industrial complex. They’re neocons, they’re dual nationals. They do not owe any loyalty whatsoever to the United States, but all of it to Israel who want to sponsor war between the United States and Russia. If we do, if we allow them to do that, it’s a war that’s going to last for about 30 minutes.
Maurice Jackson: Well, certainly it’s a war that we don’t want. I recall, Bob, you’ve referenced before in previous interviews it’s a fact that maybe most people aren’t aware of. You referenced that the United States does not engage in war with countries that have nuclear weapons. I’m I correct in my memory on that?
Bob Moriarty: Well, by and large we choose to attack countries that cannot defend themselves. Pakistan was good and Afghanistan was good and Iraq was good and Syria was good and Iran’s good. Why they’re antagonizing Russia, which most certainly is nuclear armed, I don’t know.
Maurice Jackson: Switching gears, let’s move onto companies that have your attention at the moment.
Bob Moriarty: Well, there’s my favorite trio and Quinton Hennigh is behind all three of them in Novo Resources Corp. (NVO:TSX.V; NSRPF:OTCQX), which we have talked about at some length. It’s very hot in Australia right now and summer starts cooling down in March and April and they’ll get busy. Novo is doing some stuff now, but nothing of significance that will move the market. They will be testing at Egina probably starting in April and I expect some very significant results there.
But of more interest is Miramont Resources Corp. (MONT:CSE) that I think they’ve completed six holes so far in southern Peru. They’ve got a very interesting deposit with three big targets that could be a world-class project. I’m not sure the first results they’re going to show out of the box, blow the lead off the stock kind of assays. It’s a drill program that I expect to be of major importance. I expect drill results coming out in two to four weeks, and they’re certainly going to be very interesting and it’s the stocks that I own a lot of and I’d like a lot. It’s got about $30 million market cap. Now Novo has about $400 million market cap, so Miramont’s can move a lot more than Novo in terms of percentage.
Second, you and I went to Irving Resources Inc. (IRV:CSE; IRVRF:OTCBB) a year and a half ago, almost two years ago now. They should and should be in great big quotation marks, should start drilling about mid-March and probably six weeks to two months after that start coming out with the results. They’re testing two things. They’re going to test the area that we saw that had very high grade gold right at the surface in a vein system. Just for your information Keith Barron went over there. The samples that we took tested about $25,000 a ton. Keith Barron took a sample that tested $35,000 a ton. That’s not going to be the first drill target. The first drill target’s going to be in the sinter. The sinter has shown some several grams to the ton assays from the coats of silica cap that makes it the sinter. That sinter is steep because that’s typically not where the gold is found. The gold is trapped underneath the sinter and they’re going to drill into that. I can’t tell you whether Irving will hit on the first hole or its 50th hole, but I expect some real barn burning results there.
Maurice Jackson: It’s truly interesting times for Dr Quinton Hennigh there. How about switching to the Metallic Group of Companies. What can you tell us about them?
Bob Moriarty: Well, the first company that I wrote up going back 18 years ago is NovaGold. The guy that I was working with was Greg Johnson, he was the Vice President of Exploration. Very intelligent guy, very good guy. I like him a lot. What he’s done he’s put together three companies in different commodities. He’s got a company that specializes in copper and it’s called Granite Creek Copper Ltd. (GCX.V:TSXV). He’s got a company called Group Ten Metals Inc. (PGE:TSX.V; PGEZF:OTC) that has a platinum, palladium deposit in Montana right next to the Stillwater mine. It appears from a technical point of view, it appears that they’ve got a carbon copy of the Stillwater Mine.
Greg has done a brilliant job of putting packages together that nobody else has ever put together before. Everybody knew there were some good projects at Stillwater that weren’t owned by Stillwater. One guy owned one and another guy owned another. Another company owned the other and what Greg’s managed to do is put that together. Then there’s Metallic Minerals Corp. (MMG:TSX.V) that specializes in silver up in the Yukon. The interesting thing is, it’s all under similar managements. I like him a lot. These are all very quiet companies. Nobody’s heard about them. Nobody pays any attention to them, but I think that all three of them will end up being home runs. I like Greg Johnson a lot, he’s a good guy.
Maurice Jackson: Full disclosure, all the companies that you’ve referenced so far are sponsors of Proven and Probable with the exception of Granite Creek Copper. There’s one more company that recently you’ve been discussing and that is Rover Metals. What can you share with us?
Bob Moriarty: Well, Rover Metals Corp. (ROVR:TSX.V; ROVMF:OTCQB) is interesting. Rover has got the market cap about $3 million and they’ve got just under a million dollars in the bank. They can get started. In a roaring ball market it is not the majors or the mid tiers that have the greatest percentage advance, it’s the little tiny companies that have the major upside. Rover is north of the Yellowknife okay up in the Northwest Territory. I think they’re 110 kilometers north of the Yellowknife.
Most people won’t even recognize this, but I think it’s the biggest gold mine in Canada was the giant mines in Yellowknife. It was a big deal 30 or 40 years ago, but you don’t hear much about that district now. He’s put together a good package. They’re getting a lot of interesting results. He’s got enough money to get started on the drill program and it’s the company that can go from the $3 million market cap to a $30 million market cap with one set of good drill holes.
Maurice Jackson: The CEO there is Judson Culter. Just for our audience, we will be interviewing Group Ten Metal’s tomorrow as well as Rover Metals. Then Metallic Minerals as well next week and we plan to have Granite Creek Copper as well. We just interviewed Novo Resources and we’re trying to get Miramont and Irving back on the program as well here in the future. Finally, Bob, you just released a new book entitled ‘Basic Investing in Resource Stocks: The Idiot’s Guide.’ Allow me to be the first to congratulate you in less than 10 days your book is the best-selling book on Commodities Trading on Amazon. That’s quite an accomplishment.
Bob Moriarty: Well, yeah, but you’re the guy who kept bugging me to write the damn thing. It’s all your fault, it’s not my fault.
Maurice Jackson: I’m delighted and honored that you wrote the book and I know everyone that will be wise enough to purchase a copy will feel the same. Bob, tell us about your book, and why should someone reading purchase a copy?
Bob Moriarty: Well, here’s what’s interesting, if you’ve never written a book or a long article, you don’t realize that once you start writing, it takes a life of its own. I fully intended to cover copper and uranium and zinc and silver and gold and platinum and palladium. What I intended to do turned out to be something totally different than what I actually ended up with. I started writing and whatever it is that controls my typing fingers said, “No, you don’t want to go in this direction. You want to go in this direction,” so I did that. What I did is I put in a lot of things that I’ve learned over the years that they’re very important.
I mean, let me give you a perfect example. There are so many people who are invested in gold and silver and resource stocks, who spend a lot of time worrying about manipulations. The funny thing is the whole manipulation thing is just as big as scam as “Bitcon” and Global Warming. We talked about Bitcon when it was $800 billion and it’s $150 billion now. That was a great financial fraud world test. Global warming and carbon credits is an absolute fraud. It’s a tax. There is no such thing as global warming. The real danger is global cooling and it has far more to do with the sun than it has to do with the actions of man.
To a much smaller degree, the idea of manipulation being significant, it’s similar. It’s fraud and the people who talk about it know that they’re using fraud. However, it’s very appealing. When you go out and buy a company or when you go out and buy a commodity and it goes down, you can always point at manipulation and say, “It’s manipulated. I didn’t lose money because I’m stupid and made bad decisions. I lost money because it’s manipulated.” The guys who talk about manipulation and use manipulation as an excuse don’t bother telling everybody every financial instrument is manipulated. It is manipulated by everybody all of the time. Now if you think that manipulation is significant, you should not invest. It’s that simple, but everything’s manipulated.
We know the government manipulates the interest rates. We know they manipulate currencies, good chance they manipulate stock market. Who gives a shit? It’s like the sun coming up, you can’t do anything about it. Why worry about it? I put in a bunch of tips that I’ve learned over the years from mistakes that I’ve made and I’m really quite proud of the book. I think it’s a good book and I think that people will save themselves a lot of money by buying and reading the book.
What I try to do is I try to make books very simple. I’m not interested in a 400 or 500 page turner or I’m trying to espouse some really unique theory of investing. I don’t give a shit. I want to help ordinary people make decisions that can make them money. Now, I think you and I have talked a couple of times about the Daily Sentiment Indicator. I have used that to predict turns in 24 commodities. I did it in January of 2018 and then I did it in the end of December 2018. Only 24 commodities that I predicted would turn direction, 24 of them did it. The funny thing is I’m not a guru. Anybody could do that, if they would read the book, if they would understand the basics. If they use the tools that are available to everybody. Anybody could do that. There’s no magic to it. Everybody wants to convince people there’s some kind of magic. You need to listen to the experts, you need to listen to the gurus. Well, the experts are all full of shit. Why would you want to listen to them?
Maurice Jackson: Your book resonates with so many people, hence the success it’s had already. When one reads this book, you have the ability to tap into one of the deepest reservoirs of intellectual capacity in this sector that has a proven pedigree of success. Bob is sharing with you the tools he uses, and they’re very practical. Anyone as you referenced could use the tools.
When I first read the book, it wasn’t what I expected. Not in a disappointing way, I thought you were going to go into a more technical side but instead it’s a very pragmatic book. It’s very easy to understand and apply. Bob, on behalf of Proven and Probable, we want to thank you for giving us the seal of approval as one of the trusted sources that you recommend for readers. That is by far the highest compliment to our work and I want to thank you for that sir.
Bob Moriarty: Well, I don’t know whether you should thank me. If people hate the book, I’m going to blame you.
Maurice Jackson: We’ll take the blame on that one. Let me ask you this as well, what type of feedback have you received from your peers in the industry?
Bob Moriarty: Very positive. When you’re a writer you never really know how people are going to react to it. I mean face it, there’s a lot of books that are worth reading. When you do something and you have invested a lot of time and energy and thought into something, you want people to react to it in a positive way. I’ve talked to a lot of people and I’ve had a lot of people do reviews so far and there will be a lot more reviews. Everybody is receiving it very well. I think these guys are not trying to suck up to me. If they saw a problem with it, they’d say something.
Maurice Jackson: Bob, give us a title one more time and share with us where we can purchase a copy.
Bob Moriarty: Okay, you can go to Amazon.com and buy it there in any country they sell books. It’s “Basic Investing in Resource Stocks: The Idiot’s Guide.” I want everybody to understand it’s not the reader that’s the idiot, it’s me.
Maurice Jackson: Bob, before we close, last question. What did I forget to ask?
Bob Moriarty: Probably dozens and dozens of things. You just lack the ability to ask any interesting questions. Once you got past, “How are you doing on your book?” you just ran out of interesting things to say.
Barbara Moriarty: He forgot to ask about the new investment.
Bob Moriarty: Oh, which new investment?
Maurice Jackson: Well, please share with us.
Barbara Moriarty: Sheep. I bought two of the Swiss Valley black Nosed Sheep. They are a special breed. They are very rare and they are absolutely gorgeous. They are living in five star luxury in the new forest in England and they are two males, but they sort of didn’t go full, did they really?
Bob Moriarty: Yeah. Let me be nice about this. They used to be males.
Barbara Moriarty: They have them fixed, but they’re not like normal sheep. They are like lovely cuddly teddy bears.
Maurice Jackson: Pleasure speaking with you, ma’am.
Barbara Moriarty: I will send you a photo.
http://www.valaisblacknose.org/
Maurice Jackson: Bob, for someone that wants to get more information on your work, please share the websites.
Bob Moriarty: I’ve got two websites, 321energy and 321gold, and they’re free websites and we’ve got about 50,000 people a day coming to them. We think they’re valuable.
Maurice Jackson: Last but not least, please visit provenandprobable.com for Mining Insights and Bullion Sales. You may reach us at contact@provenandprobable.com.
Bob Moriarty of 321gold and 321energy.com, thank you for joining us today on Proven and Probable.
Bob and Barb Moriarty brought 321gold.com to the Internet almost 16 years ago. They later added 321energy.com to cover oil, natural gas, gasoline, coal, solar, wind and nuclear energy. Both sites feature articles, editorial opinions, pricing figures and updates on current events affecting both sectors. Previously, Moriarty was a Marine F-4B and O-1 pilot with more than 832 missions in Vietnam. He holds 14 international aviation records.
Maurice Jackson is the founder of Proven and Probable, a site that aims to enrich its subscribers through education in precious metals and junior mining companies that will enrich the world.
We brought you on today to discuss current events, companies that have your attention and to discuss Amazon’s best-selling book right now under commodities trading, which happens to be your book aptly entitled “Basic Investing in Resource Stocks: The Idiot’s Guide.” Bob, you shared with me on a number of occasions to be aware of political and geopolitical events as they have a direct influence on our lives and portfolio. Let’s begin with current events and there’s a number of them unfolding right before us. Beginning in the U.S., what has your attention and why?
Bob Moriarty: I don’t know a good term to use, but it’s almost a feeling of a sick desire to watch something obscene, the Cohen hearings are certainly interesting. It’s a measure of how far over the cliff the country has gone. It’s obscene. Why you would get a guy who is a felon and who’s lied to Congress, who has an agenda to testify in Congress is just amazing! We know the guy is a liar. It’s all political theater. Sadly, neither party, no one is trying to improve the country. They’re just trying to get even with the guys on the other side of the aisle. It’s sick okay, but it’s interesting to watch because it’s so sick.
Maurice Jackson: In previous interviews you referenced the Deep State/Shadow Government. For someone new to the conversation, who is the Deep State and what is their significance?
Bob Moriarty: I’m not sure that deep state is a good term. It’s really the Congressional Military Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower warned us about in 1961 in his farewell address. In his written copy, President Eisenhower called it the Congressional Military Industrial Complex. His political advisor said, “You can’t do that. You can’t criticize Congress, so remove that. Just call it the Military Industrial Complex.”
There exists within the United States a small subset whose economic welfare is based on constant war. We no longer fight wars to achieve peace. We fight wars to achieve war and it’s a transfer of wealth from the taxpayers, the United States to the Congressional Military Industrial Complex. Wars will destroy, actually it has destroyed the United States already.
The United States is bankrupt, it’s functionally bankrupt. There is nothing we can do about it. There is no savior that’s going to come along. There are no solutions, we’re bankrupt. The standard of living of most Americans is going to decline a lot more than it already has.
Maurice Jackson: Just for the record, is it the Military Industrial Complex or the Democratic Party, which one is it that really wants President Trump out and why?
Bob Moriarty: Both the Deep State and the Democrats, but only because they wanted Hillary Clinton in. She was supported by the Deep State. A couple of months ago I was writing and talking about there being a coup d’etat in the United States. Then Andrew McCabe came actually went on 60 Minutes and he admitted it. I mean this is bizarre. If you have a coup d’etat in any country in the world, the legal system should arrest these guys, give them fair trials and shoot them. We don’t do that. We admit, “Oh yeah, we attempted a coup d’etat, the Department of Justice and the NSA and the CIA and the FBI were all trying to overthrow the democratically elected president of the United States,” but who cares?
Maurice Jackson: Bob, I want to go back to my previous question, what will be the purpose or what is the ultimate intent? If they get President Trump out, then what?
Bob Moriarty: Well, see, that’s the problem. We talk about defeating the ISIS in Syria or we talk about regime change in Iran or regime change in Syria or regime change in Afghanistan or regime change in Iraq. We never have a plan B. We never have anything that we actually intend to do. The journey has become the destination and that is perpetual war.
Maurice Jackson: Let me ask you this here, what is Bob Moriarty’s assessment of President Trump?
Bob Moriarty: I think the man’s an idiot. You want to beat around the bush, he’s a blithering idiot. He’s a narcissist. He’s knowledge of things economic or historical are absolutely obscene. He’s most certainly a criminal, but when you say that you also have to say, well, his opponent was Hillary Clinton. If she had been elected president, there would have been four versions of air force one, three of them just to carry her baggage around.
Maurice Jackson: Therefore, in some regards the United States would have the same president in Trump or Clinton. Let’s expand the narrative to geopolitics here. Things are really heating up between India and Pakistan. What’s going on there?
Bob Moriarty: Let me back track a little bit. I think we’ve discussed the worldwide revolution before, but the population of every country on earth is upset because the power and the money is being transmitted from the 99% to the 1%. Everybody is upset, the Yellow Vest and Israel and Canada and Brussels and Spain and I’m certain that’s true in Pakistan as well. There is an area of disputed territory between Pakistan and India that’s been in dispute since 1948. There are people, there are terrorists, India calls them terrorists, but they’re supported by Pakistan who set off a bomb and killed 40 Indian policemen, military. India was naturally upset.
When you’re dealing with two parties who are equipped with nuclear weapons, you want to avoid that kind of stuff. Because one of the options is everybody keeps being stupid and you end up lobbying nuclear weapons at each other. I’m not going to say I’m predicting it, I don’t know what the possibility is. I know it’s a very dangerous time and I wish there was a way of sorting it out that made sense. Unfortunately, I mean the only sane political leader in the world today I think is Putin.
Maurice Jackson: Speaking of Putin, I want to address the situation with Russian, Ukraine as well. Before we do that, let’s move west and go and discuss the situation between the U.S. and Iran, what’s going on there?
Bob Moriarty: Well, here’s what’s funny. Israel has been advocating for a war against Iran since 1982. It’s in writing. They’ve said it many, many times. It has nothing to do with Iran and everything to do with Israel. Israel has convinced the United States to fight their wars for them. There is no Iranian nuclear weapons program period. It stopped years ago, all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies admitted and there is no nuclear weapons program period, end of story. Everything that has been said about Iran is something that has been made up by Benjamin Netanyahu and the Mossad. They’re trying to convince the Americans to go to war.
Now since Donald Trump was bought and paid for by Sheldon Adelson, he sold his soul for about $30 or $35 million in the presidential campaign. Benjamin Netanyahu through Sheldon Adelson literally tells the President of the United States what to do. I’m naturally against that, however, if Hillary Clinton had been elected she would have done the same thing. We need to stop fighting wars for Israel. I am not a pacifist. I am the opposite of a pacifist. I am a warrior and I fought in war and I know all about war because I’ve been there. I would defend my country and my family and my state in a minute against a true enemy.
We go out and create the straw enemies who are not the enemies of us on behalf of Israel. Then we attack them and we let a bunch of our kids get killed. We pay for the war and it’s bankrupted the United States. The United States can end up just like French empire, the Spanish empire, the Russian empire, the British empire, it’s going to bankrupt itself. The standard of living of Americans are going to go down substantially, fighting wars for a tiny meaningless country in the Middle East.
Maurice Jackson: You know what you say sometimes I know that others may disagree with you and say, “That’s a little extreme,” but the reality is, you’ve stated empirical evidence. Wars bankrupt nations and then they also devalue their currency and history does repeat itself. The United States currently is on that trajectory. Let’s move north here. You referenced Russia earlier, there isn’t that much news coming out from Russia and Ukraine. What’s the situation like there?
Bob Moriarty: Well, actually there is and again that’s a situation where the neocons who are under the control of Benjamin Netanyahu. I mean they’re traitors to the United States, but they would like to get into war with Russia and they’re using the Ukraine. It’s really funny because the Ukrainian government is supported by the United States, Poroshenko, they’re just as corrupted as they could be. It’s the worst possible thing in the world for the Ukrainian people, but we don’t give a shit, okay, as long as they do what the United States wants to do, which is to antagonize Russia.
Now everybody talks about Russia having invaded Crimea, but the Crimea was always part of Russian, been part of Russian since I think Catherine the Great. The Crimea only became part of Ukraine in 1954, because Khrushchev got drunk and he signed it over to the Ukrainians. Ukraine was part of the USSR back then, so it didn’t really change anything whatsoever. When the United States sponsored and paid for and admittedly paid $5 billion of American dollars to subvert the Ukrainian government and sponsored the coup d’etat in Ukraine against their democratically elected president. Then the thugs that are running Ukraine started stirring up trouble that was anti-Russian. The people in the eastern part of the country voted and said, “We don’t want to be part of Ukraine, we’re Russian. We’ve always been Russian and we want to be Russian.” Ukraine is kind of split in two.
Ukrainian Navy tried to force a ship through a very narrow straight and the Russians captured the ship and said, “No, you can’t do that. That’s illegal to do.” It’s a hot spot and it’s something that could go nuclear in very short order. We have a small group about 30 people who are at the heart of military industrial complex. They’re neocons, they’re dual nationals. They do not owe any loyalty whatsoever to the United States, but all of it to Israel who want to sponsor war between the United States and Russia. If we do, if we allow them to do that, it’s a war that’s going to last for about 30 minutes.
Maurice Jackson: Well, certainly it’s a war that we don’t want. I recall, Bob, you’ve referenced before in previous interviews it’s a fact that maybe most people aren’t aware of. You referenced that the United States does not engage in war with countries that have nuclear weapons. I’m I correct in my memory on that?
Bob Moriarty: Well, by and large we choose to attack countries that cannot defend themselves. Pakistan was good and Afghanistan was good and Iraq was good and Syria was good and Iran’s good. Why they’re antagonizing Russia, which most certainly is nuclear armed, I don’t know.
Maurice Jackson: Switching gears, let’s move onto companies that have your attention at the moment.
Bob Moriarty: Well, there’s my favorite trio and Quinton Hennigh is behind all three of them in Novo Resources Corp. (NVO:TSX.V; NSRPF:OTCQX), which we have talked about at some length. It’s very hot in Australia right now and summer starts cooling down in March and April and they’ll get busy. Novo is doing some stuff now, but nothing of significance that will move the market. They will be testing at Egina probably starting in April and I expect some very significant results there.
But of more interest is Miramont Resources Corp. (MONT:CSE) that I think they’ve completed six holes so far in southern Peru. They’ve got a very interesting deposit with three big targets that could be a world-class project. I’m not sure the first results they’re going to show out of the box, blow the lead off the stock kind of assays. It’s a drill program that I expect to be of major importance. I expect drill results coming out in two to four weeks, and they’re certainly going to be very interesting and it’s the stocks that I own a lot of and I’d like a lot. It’s got about $30 million market cap. Now Novo has about $400 million market cap, so Miramont’s can move a lot more than Novo in terms of percentage.
Second, you and I went to Irving Resources Inc. (IRV:CSE; IRVRF:OTCBB) a year and a half ago, almost two years ago now. They should and should be in great big quotation marks, should start drilling about mid-March and probably six weeks to two months after that start coming out with the results. They’re testing two things. They’re going to test the area that we saw that had very high grade gold right at the surface in a vein system. Just for your information Keith Barron went over there. The samples that we took tested about $25,000 a ton. Keith Barron took a sample that tested $35,000 a ton. That’s not going to be the first drill target. The first drill target’s going to be in the sinter. The sinter has shown some several grams to the ton assays from the coats of silica cap that makes it the sinter. That sinter is steep because that’s typically not where the gold is found. The gold is trapped underneath the sinter and they’re going to drill into that. I can’t tell you whether Irving will hit on the first hole or its 50th hole, but I expect some real barn burning results there.
Maurice Jackson: It’s truly interesting times for Dr Quinton Hennigh there. How about switching to the Metallic Group of Companies. What can you tell us about them?
Bob Moriarty: Well, the first company that I wrote up going back 18 years ago is NovaGold. The guy that I was working with was Greg Johnson, he was the Vice President of Exploration. Very intelligent guy, very good guy. I like him a lot. What he’s done he’s put together three companies in different commodities. He’s got a company that specializes in copper and it’s called Granite Creek Copper Ltd. (GCX.V:TSXV). He’s got a company called Group Ten Metals Inc. (PGE:TSX.V; PGEZF:OTC) that has a platinum, palladium deposit in Montana right next to the Stillwater mine. It appears from a technical point of view, it appears that they’ve got a carbon copy of the Stillwater Mine.
Greg has done a brilliant job of putting packages together that nobody else has ever put together before. Everybody knew there were some good projects at Stillwater that weren’t owned by Stillwater. One guy owned one and another guy owned another. Another company owned the other and what Greg’s managed to do is put that together. Then there’s Metallic Minerals Corp. (MMG:TSX.V) that specializes in silver up in the Yukon. The interesting thing is, it’s all under similar managements. I like him a lot. These are all very quiet companies. Nobody’s heard about them. Nobody pays any attention to them, but I think that all three of them will end up being home runs. I like Greg Johnson a lot, he’s a good guy.
Maurice Jackson: Full disclosure, all the companies that you’ve referenced so far are sponsors of Proven and Probable with the exception of Granite Creek Copper. There’s one more company that recently you’ve been discussing and that is Rover Metals. What can you share with us?
Bob Moriarty: Well, Rover Metals Corp. (ROVR:TSX.V; ROVMF:OTCQB) is interesting. Rover has got the market cap about $3 million and they’ve got just under a million dollars in the bank. They can get started. In a roaring ball market it is not the majors or the mid tiers that have the greatest percentage advance, it’s the little tiny companies that have the major upside. Rover is north of the Yellowknife okay up in the Northwest Territory. I think they’re 110 kilometers north of the Yellowknife.
Most people won’t even recognize this, but I think it’s the biggest gold mine in Canada was the giant mines in Yellowknife. It was a big deal 30 or 40 years ago, but you don’t hear much about that district now. He’s put together a good package. They’re getting a lot of interesting results. He’s got enough money to get started on the drill program and it’s the company that can go from the $3 million market cap to a $30 million market cap with one set of good drill holes.
Maurice Jackson: The CEO there is Judson Culter. Just for our audience, we will be interviewing Group Ten Metal’s tomorrow as well as Rover Metals. Then Metallic Minerals as well next week and we plan to have Granite Creek Copper as well. We just interviewed Novo Resources and we’re trying to get Miramont and Irving back on the program as well here in the future. Finally, Bob, you just released a new book entitled ‘Basic Investing in Resource Stocks: The Idiot’s Guide.’ Allow me to be the first to congratulate you in less than 10 days your book is the best-selling book on Commodities Trading on Amazon. That’s quite an accomplishment.
Bob Moriarty: Well, yeah, but you’re the guy who kept bugging me to write the damn thing. It’s all your fault, it’s not my fault.
Maurice Jackson: I’m delighted and honored that you wrote the book and I know everyone that will be wise enough to purchase a copy will feel the same. Bob, tell us about your book, and why should someone reading purchase a copy?
Bob Moriarty: Well, here’s what’s interesting, if you’ve never written a book or a long article, you don’t realize that once you start writing, it takes a life of its own. I fully intended to cover copper and uranium and zinc and silver and gold and platinum and palladium. What I intended to do turned out to be something totally different than what I actually ended up with. I started writing and whatever it is that controls my typing fingers said, “No, you don’t want to go in this direction. You want to go in this direction,” so I did that. What I did is I put in a lot of things that I’ve learned over the years that they’re very important.
I mean, let me give you a perfect example. There are so many people who are invested in gold and silver and resource stocks, who spend a lot of time worrying about manipulations. The funny thing is the whole manipulation thing is just as big as scam as “Bitcon” and Global Warming. We talked about Bitcon when it was $800 billion and it’s $150 billion now. That was a great financial fraud world test. Global warming and carbon credits is an absolute fraud. It’s a tax. There is no such thing as global warming. The real danger is global cooling and it has far more to do with the sun than it has to do with the actions of man.
To a much smaller degree, the idea of manipulation being significant, it’s similar. It’s fraud and the people who talk about it know that they’re using fraud. However, it’s very appealing. When you go out and buy a company or when you go out and buy a commodity and it goes down, you can always point at manipulation and say, “It’s manipulated. I didn’t lose money because I’m stupid and made bad decisions. I lost money because it’s manipulated.” The guys who talk about manipulation and use manipulation as an excuse don’t bother telling everybody every financial instrument is manipulated. It is manipulated by everybody all of the time. Now if you think that manipulation is significant, you should not invest. It’s that simple, but everything’s manipulated.
We know the government manipulates the interest rates. We know they manipulate currencies, good chance they manipulate stock market. Who gives a shit? It’s like the sun coming up, you can’t do anything about it. Why worry about it? I put in a bunch of tips that I’ve learned over the years from mistakes that I’ve made and I’m really quite proud of the book. I think it’s a good book and I think that people will save themselves a lot of money by buying and reading the book.
What I try to do is I try to make books very simple. I’m not interested in a 400 or 500 page turner or I’m trying to espouse some really unique theory of investing. I don’t give a shit. I want to help ordinary people make decisions that can make them money. Now, I think you and I have talked a couple of times about the Daily Sentiment Indicator. I have used that to predict turns in 24 commodities. I did it in January of 2018 and then I did it in the end of December 2018. Only 24 commodities that I predicted would turn direction, 24 of them did it. The funny thing is I’m not a guru. Anybody could do that, if they would read the book, if they would understand the basics. If they use the tools that are available to everybody. Anybody could do that. There’s no magic to it. Everybody wants to convince people there’s some kind of magic. You need to listen to the experts, you need to listen to the gurus. Well, the experts are all full of shit. Why would you want to listen to them?
Maurice Jackson: Your book resonates with so many people, hence the success it’s had already. When one reads this book, you have the ability to tap into one of the deepest reservoirs of intellectual capacity in this sector that has a proven pedigree of success. Bob is sharing with you the tools he uses, and they’re very practical. Anyone as you referenced could use the tools.
When I first read the book, it wasn’t what I expected. Not in a disappointing way, I thought you were going to go into a more technical side but instead it’s a very pragmatic book. It’s very easy to understand and apply. Bob, on behalf of Proven and Probable, we want to thank you for giving us the seal of approval as one of the trusted sources that you recommend for readers. That is by far the highest compliment to our work and I want to thank you for that sir.
Bob Moriarty: Well, I don’t know whether you should thank me. If people hate the book, I’m going to blame you.
Maurice Jackson: We’ll take the blame on that one. Let me ask you this as well, what type of feedback have you received from your peers in the industry?
Bob Moriarty: Very positive. When you’re a writer you never really know how people are going to react to it. I mean face it, there’s a lot of books that are worth reading. When you do something and you have invested a lot of time and energy and thought into something, you want people to react to it in a positive way. I’ve talked to a lot of people and I’ve had a lot of people do reviews so far and there will be a lot more reviews. Everybody is receiving it very well. I think these guys are not trying to suck up to me. If they saw a problem with it, they’d say something.
Maurice Jackson: Bob, give us a title one more time and share with us where we can purchase a copy.
Bob Moriarty: Okay, you can go to Amazon.com and buy it there in any country they sell books. It’s “Basic Investing in Resource Stocks: The Idiot’s Guide.” I want everybody to understand it’s not the reader that’s the idiot, it’s me.
Maurice Jackson: Bob, before we close, last question. What did I forget to ask?
Bob Moriarty: Probably dozens and dozens of things. You just lack the ability to ask any interesting questions. Once you got past, “How are you doing on your book?” you just ran out of interesting things to say.
Barbara Moriarty: He forgot to ask about the new investment.
Bob Moriarty: Oh, which new investment?
Maurice Jackson: Well, please share with us.
Barbara Moriarty: Sheep. I bought two of the Swiss Valley black Nosed Sheep. They are a special breed. They are very rare and they are absolutely gorgeous. They are living in five star luxury in the new forest in England and they are two males, but they sort of didn’t go full, did they really?
Bob Moriarty: Yeah. Let me be nice about this. They used to be males.
Barbara Moriarty: They have them fixed, but they’re not like normal sheep. They are like lovely cuddly teddy bears.
Maurice Jackson: Pleasure speaking with you, ma’am.
Barbara Moriarty: I will send you a photo.
http://www.valaisblacknose.org/
Maurice Jackson: Bob, for someone that wants to get more information on your work, please share the websites.
Bob Moriarty: I’ve got two websites, 321energy and 321gold, and they’re free websites and we’ve got about 50,000 people a day coming to them. We think they’re valuable.
Maurice Jackson: Last but not least, please visit provenandprobable.com for Mining Insights and Bullion Sales. You may reach us at contact@provenandprobable.com.
Bob Moriarty of 321gold and 321energy.com, thank you for joining us today on Proven and Probable.
Bob and Barb Moriarty brought 321gold.com to the Internet almost 16 years ago. They later added 321energy.com to cover oil, natural gas, gasoline, coal, solar, wind and nuclear energy. Both sites feature articles, editorial opinions, pricing figures and updates on current events affecting both sectors. Previously, Moriarty was a Marine F-4B and O-1 pilot with more than 832 missions in Vietnam. He holds 14 international aviation records.
Maurice Jackson is the founder of Proven and Probable, a site that aims to enrich its subscribers through education in precious metals and junior mining companies that will enrich the world.
1) Bob Moriarty: I, or members of my immediate household or family, own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: Miramont Resources, Irving Resources, Novo Resources, Granite Creek Copper, Group Ten Metals and Metallic Minerals. I personally am, or members of my immediate household or family are, paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None. My company has a financial relationship with the following companies mentioned in this article: Miramont Resources, Irving Resources, Novo Resources, Granite Creek Copper, Group Ten Metals and Metallic Minerals are sponsors of 321 Gold and/or 321 Energy.
2) Maurice Jackson: I, or members of my immediate household or family, own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: Miramont Resources, Irving Resources, Novo Resources, Granite Creek Copper, Group Ten Metals and Metallic Minerals. I personally am, or members of my immediate household or family are, paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None. My company has a financial relationship with the following companies mentioned in this article: Miramont Resources, Irving Resources, Novo Resources, Granite Creek Copper, Group Ten Metals and Metallic Minerals are sponsors of Proven and Probable. Proven and Probable disclosures are listed below.
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Dr. Quinton Hennigh the President and Director of Novo Resources (TSX: NVO | OTCQX: NSRPF) sits down with Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable to discuss the companies road to production. Current and prospective shareholders will be introduced to the thesis and unique value proposition that Novo Resources provides to the market. We shall address a number of fronts from expanding the project portfolio from 7,000 sq km to 12,000 sq km, bulk sample results, mechanical rock sorting with TOMRA, and DTC Eligibility for U.S. investors just to name a few. Dr. Hennigh shall provide a thorough comprehensive update on each project in the Novo portfolio.
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AUDIO
TRANSCRIPT
Company’s Quest to Become an Established Gold Producer in Australia
Contributed Opinion
Source: Maurice Jackson for Streetwise Reports (2/23/19): https://www.streetwisereports.com/article/2019/02/23/companys-quest-to-become-an-established-gold-producer-in-australia.html
Dr. Quinton Hennigh, chairman and president of Novo Resources, sits down with Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable to discuss how the road to production looks.
Maurice Jackson: Joining us for a conversation today is Dr. Quinton Hennigh, the president and chairman of Novo Resources Corp. (NVO:TSX.V; NSRPF:OTCQX), which is focused on “A New Paradigm in Gold Exploration and Investing.” Dr. Hennigh, welcome to the show.
Quinton Hennigh: Thank you, Maurice.
Maurice Jackson: Last time we spoke, Novo Resources accomplished a major milestone and that was the inclusion into the GDXJ. Since then Novo Resources has been extremely busy on a number of fronts from expanding the project portfolio, providing bulk sample results, mechanical rock sorting and DTC Eligibility, just to name a few. But before we go into greater detail, Dr. Hennigh, for someone new to the story, who is Novo Resources?
Quinton Hennigh: Novo Resources is Canada listed company that is focused on exploring in Australia. I founded the company roughly nine years ago, and it was explicitly to explore for a certain type of gold deposit in northwest Australia in a region called the Pilbara, which is just in from the Indian Ocean along the northern coast. Our projects are close to two cities, Port Hedland and Karratha.
They’re major cities that give access to the interior where there’s a lot of active iron ore mining in the region. The Pilbara has had a long-standing reputation, over 50 years, for their iron mines around Newman and Tom Price. Coincidently, within this same region Novo recognized the potential for gold early on in actually in the same strata, believe it or not, as the iron ore sequence.
Novo had a hypothesis that the Pilbara was once connected with the Kaapvaal Craton in South Africa. Both of those cratons are very old rocks, they’re over three billion years old, they share a lot of geologic similarities, including the strata that’s been deposited on each block. In addition, we identified the stratigraphy can be correlated from one side of the ocean to the other.
In South Africa, as many people know, there are vast deposits of gold in conglomerates in a basin called the Witwatersrand Basin. These gold deposits have been mined since around 1886 when they were first discovered; they produced something like 35% of all the gold produced on earth, around 1.7 billion ounces. The Witwatersrand Basin is a remarkable deposit; it’s basically the Saudi Arabia of gold.
The logical conclusion for us was, if deposits like that are present in South Africa, maybe over here in the Pilbara Craton there are similar deposits in conglomerates and of similar age, that have yet been discovered. Therefore, we came to Australia on that premise. We first structured deals with a gentleman named Mark Creasy, a well-known prospector in Australia, and those deals were largely centered over in the eastern part of the Pilbara region.
The Pilbara region is quite vast from one side to the other, covering over six hundred kilometers, and from the coast up here down to Paraburdoo is something like 250 or 300 kilometers. This is an enormous target area. Our first exploration ever was at Beatons Creek.
In 2011, drilled up a small resource at Beatons Creek, but what we learned is that the conglomerate units were quite continuous, and the gold is indeed there. The gold is a coarser grain than the Witwatersrand, but it is indeed present and appears to be economic. During our time at Beatons Creek we also conducted a bit of exploration at Marble Bar.
Since that time, we have focused efforts more to the northwest and acquired this vast land package by Karratha. This was based on a discovery roughly two-and-a-half years ago of gold being found by prospectors in areas like Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward, as well as others around the marsh and the basin, including Egina and some other select locals.
The gold occurrences had been known by the locals for many years. When the news got out in late 2016, we strategically assembled a land package, including Comet Well and Egina. Novo staked a tremendous amount of ground, which is 100% owned by us. In addition, we also conducted a joint-venture agreement with Artemis Resource.
Maurice Jackson: Dr. Hennigh, you’ve already introduced us to the project portfolio, but introduce us in particular to the value proposition we have before us.
Quinton Hennigh: The conglomerate gold systems in our project portfolio are different gold deposits than most people are used to seeing. Our conglomerates are flat-sheet-like, and continuous over large areas. We’ve latched onto three systems in particular that we’re focused on right now, which are Beatons Creek, Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward, where we are actively exploring now.
In 2018, we assembled the land package at Egina, and we’re conducting advanced exploration there now including bulk sampling.
For current and prospective shareholders I believe it best to become familiar with our trajectory for each project, as they are separate and unique. At Beatons Creek we’ve now undertaken a couple rounds of drilling over the past few years and also large-scale sampling, so this would be trench sampling as well as bulk sampling, and our current resource stands at somewhere around 670,000 ounces Measured, Indicated and Inferred. We are looking to grow that and are working to get a resource put together at Beatons Creek north of 1 million ounces in the near future.
Not only that, we’ve done a lot of work like test mining and other things to demonstrate the economics and continuity of this system. We are looking to advance our Beatons Creek project towards monetization over the coming year. Beatons Creek is our most advanced, it’s certainly a robust project. What you see there at Beatons Creek, you see conglomerate horizons, in some places it’s stacked six high, so we have a conglomerate bed with a bit of intervening material, another conglomerate bed, and so forth.
At Beatons Creek we have a robust deposit, easily accessible form surface. Those familiar with coal mines in West Virginia would identify these as tabletop mines. That’s the kind of setting we have at Beatons Creek, so it’s a really interesting deposit from that aspect, and the most exiting aspect is that Beatons Creek may be very inexpensive from a production standpoint. The gold is coarse and is easily recoverable; gravity recovery captures a lot but you know cyanide captures the rest so we expect very, very good recoveries out of that deposit in particular.
At Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward, we first evaluated the system, because it is a very coarse gold system, this is not your average gold deposit.
The gold particles are often tenths of a gram up to multi-gram even tens of grams, and they’re distributed through the conglomerate somewhat randomly. Therefore, one can’t just walk up, grab a rock chip sample and expect to know through fire assay what’s in this rock. We’ve had to do some very hard yards in terms of bulk sampling and other means to begin to evaluate the grain here.
What we’ve shown at Comet Well and the Purdy’s Reward joint venture with Artemis is that the continuity appears to be good over several kilometers. We’ve done a lot of core drilling for geology and stepped out into the basin. Presently, we have enough data between the core drilling, three-dimensional modeling, as well as the grade data that we have from the bulk samples, to put together a mineralization report.
This is a big step for Novo. All of our tenements are currently exploration licenses. In order to advance a project towards a mining stage, we have to convert exploration licenses to mining licenses in Australia, and to do that we need a couple of things. One, we need a mineralization report, in this case we’re not necessarily going to produce a resource per se, we’ll demonstrate that we have a potentially economic body of rock here, through the data that we’ve collected that I just mentioned.
Novo Resources will submit a mineralization report within the next few weeks. The other aspect that’s needed is an agreement with the Aboriginal community, this would be the Ngarluma Community. The Ngarluma Community basically covers most of this project area here. We’ve been in negotiations with them, and developed a good relationship with the Ngarlumas, over the past year and a half.
We need to strike what’s called a “Native Title Agreement” that allows us rights to go mining, as well the Ngarlumas have commercial rights, such as royalty, as part of this project. But these are things that also have to be worked out for granting a mining lease.
We anticipate taking Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward through a development trajectory, probably first through trial mining. In fact, we might do a certain amount of trial mining this year. That will provide us more supporting data for developing a larger scale mine. But we are definitely moving Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward forward in a trajectory towards making a producing asset.
Revisiting the map, one can see that Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward are really just a small component of a much larger land package. As I alluded to earlier, within the conglomerate horizons, people have found nuggets weathering out of these conglomerates over many kilometers through this region. We have a lot of greenfields work to do along strike (gold line).
We also have some very interesting new ground at Egina that we’ve recently assembled. At Egina the conglomerates have weathered away over time. They used to cover a significant portion in the Pilbara. But as they have weathered away and receded back, they’ve left the gold that was in them behind across a terrace, or flat country through here in the Pilbara. If one drives across this country, it is absolutely flat as a pancake, very similar to West Texas.
If one were to look in either direction, it’s like a pool table. But the flat surface throughout this region has what is called a lag gravel horizon on it. The lag gravel horizon is about one to two meters thick. Novo was able to demonstrate last year through our trial bulk sampling at Egina that it contains gold and it’s fairly coarse-grain gold; we recovered something like 108 grams of gold out of a hundred cubic meters of bulk sample that we collected.
That’s pretty remarkable! A lot of alluvial deposits are less than 0.3 grams, and the grades we’re seeing at Egina are very enticing. Our hypothesis is that this terrace, of which we own about 400 sq km, could be a sizeable gold project in its own right.
Egina is basically another very large target we have. It is earlier stage, but the nice thing about Egina is that it’s soft rock, gravels at surface. Novo can advance this in a fairly orderly fashion.
We control 100% (of the blue on the map) at Egina. Thus, we are able to get out there and do a lot of test mining and stuff like that that we can’t quite undertake presently at Comet Well at the moment. So Egina is definitely going to be a focus for us this year. We’re going to tackle that terrace gravel, see what kind of economics that might have, including the size and potential that we might have.
Therefore, we are going to do sampling not only in the mining lease but hopefully in some more extensive areas to demonstrate the hypothesis that this region could hold a vast gold deposit could be true.
Maurice Jackson: Dr. Hennigh, allow be to interject here. This land package you have here, it looks quite massive, how many square kilometers are we looking at here?
Quinton Hennigh: Our land package is around 12,000 square kilometers at present.
Maurice Jackson: Let me ask you this, sir. I know Novo Resources has undergone a tedious and methodical process in attempting to figure out grade and tonnage. In the spring of 2018 the company released the first bulk-sample results from Comet Well, how have those been coming along?
Quinton Hennigh: The bulk samples from Comet Well that we released in May were the first two that we completed. To get these samples through the lab was a big exercise. It required several renditions of crushing and experimenting and assaying different streams. We also were battling a bit of wet weather down in Perth last year; it took a long time but we did get a pretty comprehensive set of assays out in late October that demonstrated the grade of these conglomerate horizons.
What we’ve identified are two conglomerate horizons at Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward. The lower one of which is say 2or 3 meters thick, the grades range from about a 1 to 6 grams, and it sits right on the basement, so it’s basically the lowermost bed of rock in this bigger sequence.
Twelve to fifteen meters above first horizon is a second horizon. We call it the Upper Cannonball conglomerate, the Upper Cannonball conglomerate is about 1 to 2 meters thick, and again the grades in that bed are in a range of 1 to 3, 4 grams, somewhere in that range. And it’s very continuous along strike; we can see good continuity from one trench to the other over three-and-a-half, four kilometers right now. We feel very compelled that it’s demonstrating similar continuity to the beds we see at Beatons Creek.
For those who have followed Novo Resources for the year are familiar with the challenges we had at Beatons Creek. Specifically, we had to develop sampling protocols to deal with the coarse grade, assay protocols that were unusual; it took some time to develop. But now, Beatons Creek is basically getting close to mine.
Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward area are going along the same trajectory as Beatons Creek. We’ve had to cut our teeth with different styles of bulk sampling and assaying but we’ve now got things under control. We are also experimenting with somewhat unconventional techniques of recovering the gold.
Novo has done test work with TOMRA, for example; this was starting in late last year in November. The results that came out are fantastic! We think there is potential to crush up the conglomerate, screen it, of course, but put it through an ore sorting machine, and actually let the ore sorter pick rock with the gold particles.
You know the downside of coarse gold is assaying. It’s a real challenge, but the upside is that the metallurgy might be very favorable for us. Novo is very excited about that ore sorter possibility.
Maurice Jackson: Dr. Hennigh, the following may be a bit premature to address at the moment but the two most frequent questions I receive from prospective shareholders are, “Is this a place for deposit?” and, “How do you intend to extract the gold?” What do you have to say to those two questions?
Quinton Hennigh: Sure, the first question is a very good one. I came to this region on the basis that there might be deposits like those in South Africa. Now let me give a little background there, in South Africa there are really two types of ore, there’s the conglomeratic ore and in that the gold occurs as particles distributed in the matrix of the conglomerate.
In effect those are alluvial deposits in the Witwatersrand Basin. There is also what they call “carbon leader ore.” Carbon leader ore is a very, very thin seam of carbon, almost like coal, and I’ve written several papers (click here to view paper) on this with other authors. We believe that that seam of carbon is basically the fossil remains of early cyanobacterial mats that formed or evolved in a time when Earth’s atmosphere was largely reduced. The idea is the sea water back at that time, under reduced conditions, would have been able to dissolve a fair bit of gold. Gold dissolves in reduced atmospheric conditions.
The cyanobacteria was the first photosynthetic life. During this time period the cyanobacteria starting to kick off oxygen. What we believe is that that oxygen, which causes gold to precipitate, actually pulled, or started pulling the gold out of sea water and created that little carbon seam type ore, that is very, very rich in gold. This is a very, very unusual style of gold mineralization. It’s a thin and very continuous and covers many square kilometers. A seam of carbonaceous gold ore.
I came here looking for similar carbonaceous ores. What have we found? Well, at Beatons Creek, in fact we’ve talked about this in the past, we’ve actually found particles, pieces of carbonaceous material in the conglomerates here. So to answer your question, at Beatons Creek, we see two types of gold, we see bonafide alluvial gold. These would be loose, somewhat rounded particles in the matrix of the conglomerate, but we also see a component of carbonaceous material at Beatons Creek that tells us that that same process that you see in the Witwatersrand was active over in this area.
At Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward, what we see in the conglomerates here are large, rounded; they appear to be water-worn nuggets of gold. The origin of that gold we still haven’t put our finger on, but it’s possible that that gold has been recycled from weathering of previously existing conglomerates or carbonaceous beds that no longer exist.
In their present form it’s alluvial gold, but it’s ultimate origin is still in question. In addition, we have gold that appears to have grown in the matrix around the nuggets. This is what we call “halo gold,” it’s a thin halo about two or three millimeters wide around the gold nuggets, the coarse nuggets, and we believe that gold is actually a precipitated type gold, probably in response to biogenic activity.
So once again I would say it’s a mixture of two types of gold that have brought the system together. We have alluvial particles for sure, we have secondary gold that appears to be perhaps biogenic in nature.
Maurice Jackson: Alright and the second question: “How do you intend to extract the gold?”
Quinton Hennigh: Like the coarse gold is a problem from the sense of assaying but in terms of recovery, it is quite favorable. Gold is dense. One of the easiest ways to treat coarse gold is, of course, gravity recovery, and that’s certainly a possibility, but one of the things we wanted to look at was a call it a somewhat portable style of processing, by using ore sorting machines.
These ore sorting devices are skid mounted or they’re mounted on a transportable platform. They can be moved from one location to the other. Now why is that important? Well, this is a flat deposit, so if you have something that’s long, you know rather than trucking ore from one place to another over kilometers, why not mine process, right on the spot, and then move as you mine the material.
We looked at TOMRA ore sorters starting late last year (click here). We tried ore sorting early in 2017, had mixed results with the Steinert, first looked like it worked great, second rendition didn’t work so well. When we went to TOMRA they showed us some reasons why they thought they could improve things dramatically and just recently we published the final data from that.
In fact, the two samples that were good coherent conglomerate material that we put through saw recoveries over 80% just by sorting. This is using a scanner device, X-ray transmission that literally picks out particles of rock off a conveyor belt that have gold embedded in them. It’s just remarkable! We essentially took gravel, put it on a conveyor belt, sent it across this machine, and it picks out the little particles of rock with gold. What you end up with is a concentrate that’s a very, very small fraction of the overall mass you put in that machine, and it has most of the gold in it.
There are a few additional steps we have got to take to test this further. One question is “What do we do with the fines?” At the present, we are considering to conglomerate them, and then put them through the ore sorter as they are. In other words, turn them back into little pellets or something, let the ore sorter pick them out. Or another option we could do is just put the fines through a gravity circuit on their own. These are options we are considering, which are essentially unconventional means of processing for this very unconventional deposit.
Maurice Jackson: Looking forward, what are the company’s goals and objectives for 2019?
Quinton Hennigh: First, at Beatons Creek, which I talked about as being the most advanced project. We have a resource remodel underway right now, this is work that’s ongoing and we are expecting some bulk samples back from the project. These are ones we collected late last year. Once we have all that data, which should be available by the end of the first quarter, we anticipate publishing a new, updated resource for Beatons Creek. We are targeting over a million ounces, we’ll see if we can get there, I feel pretty confident. Beatons Creek should be a robust deposit. This puts the project in a good path for monetization. Then we will take the next steps of looking at how we potentially develop that project.
Second, at Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward, we anticipate doing a level of trial mining this year. We are continuing to evaluate some of the test work around the TOMRA, for example, as a means of processing at Comet Well. I think once we get a full evaluation, and we do have a bit more data we got to get back on that, but once we have a full evaluation of that processing, we’ll look at that trajectory. Bear in mind, we also are shooting for that mineralization report and working on a Native Title agreement so that we can convert a lot of that country into mining leases. That’s the trajectory for Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward.
Third, at Egina, once the rainy season’s over in a few weeks, we anticipate getting out there and hitting the mining lease very hard. This is the mining lease where we took our bulk sample last year. We anticipate putting together on a test basis, a grid of samples across a target area, where we can see if we can put together a resource on the terrace gravels.
We also anticipate, because it’s a mining lease and we have permit to go up to 50,000 tons extractable, doing some small-scale test mining. We are seeking to help build our confidence around that project. The other aspect to Egina, very important, we anticipate taking some samples further afield in some more distant areas, and trying to get an idea how extensive that deposit may be. If Novo proves that that deposit covers a vast area, encompassing many tens of square kilometers, in that country, I think people will sit up and take note. I think that’s really a big add to the story we have in the Pilbara right now.
Maurice Jackson: Near term, what is the next unanswered question, when should we expect results, and what determines success?
Quinton Hennigh: Per each project, the factors that determine success are a bit different. We have data coming back from bulk samples from Beatons Creek that will help support a new resource model, again that’s going to be over the next few weeks. We anticipate getting that resource put together by the end of this quarter.
If we see a resource above a million ounces I think we now have critical mass that allows us to look at that project a bit differently and more aggressively in terms of advancing it.
As far as Comet Well goes, I think right now we feel comfortable with the grades and the continuities we’re seeing. I think we have a fairly decent understanding of what this deposit is. What we really need to do there is to go test mine it on a scale, maybe a few tens of thousands of tonnes, and from multiple locations alone the strike of the conglomerate.
We also have to do some ore sorting tests to see if we can use that as a means of processing. Those are the two factors if we can successfully process this material using ore sorter, and that includes capturing the gold that’s in the finer material, I think we have an exceptional means of treating this unusual mineralization.
Ore sorting and test mining at Comet Well are absolutely critical paths for us. At Egina, because it’s free-dig gravel at surface, we have the luxury, and because we have a mining lease, too, of going out there and being pretty aggressive. Right so we can go out and start digging some hundred cubic meter samples like we did late in 2018, and we can advance that project quickly.
Basically, it’s almost like doing an exploration program in parallel with test mining and test processing. So I really think even though the metrics are not fully defined yet, I think Egina is one where it’s an easier project that can be advanced much more quickly. Therefore, we believe going forward Egina is going to become more and more important to the company.
Maurice Jackson: Sir, what do you see as the biggest challenge for Novo Resources, and how would you mitigate that situation?
Quinton Hennigh: This is a good question. Australia’s a very good place to work and in particular in Western Australia. Every single project that’s been put up for permitting and advancement has become a mine. There are virtually no examples where a deposit wasn’t mined, but it takes time. That’s our determining factor.
We have to do things like permit, we have to get mining leases from exploration licenses. We have to do the proper steps. We have to work with social license, we can’t just go in and start mining. I think a lot of people, they look at our projects and they’re very exciting, it’s easy to see that these things could be developed, we literally go out and start mining some tomorrow if you had that luxury, but we have to do things right here.
We have to do things right, both in terms of permitting, social license and all of those aspects, but we also have to do the right technical work to make sure that we take the right steps. We don’t want to go and fall on our sword. I guess my comment to that question would be, time and patience is what we need.
Maurice Jackson: Switching gears, sir can you please share with us the current capital structure for Novo Resources?
Quinton Hennigh: We have a little over 163 million shares out. We have a few options in warrants out there bringing us to 204 million shares. Right now we have a little less cash than shown above, we’re around CA$45 million at the end of the year. We have a good treasury, which is great! Because these projects, as I just said, need time and patience to advance.
What we really are appreciative of is the shareholder base. We’ve got good shareholders, we have Kirkland Lake, we have Newmont Mining, Mark Creasy who I mentioned earlier, we have a lot of long-term shareholders who really understand the geology, and they understand the steps that we need to take to get these projects through to fruition.
Maurice Jackson: And at the recording of today’s interview, right now the share price is at CA$2.32. Sir, for our U.S. investors, what can you share with us regarding DTC Eligibility?
Quinton Hennigh: Novo Resources filed DTC Eligibility in October 2018. This will enable U.S. citizens’ shares to be traded electronically in much more user-friendly way to facilitate electronic trading. It allows U.S. shareholders to put those share certificates into a U.S. brokerage accounts and trade them. So we did that for the benefit of our shareholders and I haven’t heard any complaints since.
Maurice Jackson: Last question. What did I forget to ask?
Quinton Hennigh: What does Novo Resources want to become? People who really know us know the story. They know we want to become a gold producer. Novo has tackled a very unusual style of mineralization but we want to prove that these deposits are going to make good economic mines, and we have three very promising projects, each of which has huge potential! Beatons Creek, Karratha, as well as Egina, all have extremely good potential to be very large, and hopefully very high margin, deposits.
I think if I had one comment to say, that’s the path we’re going to take: “Novo would like to become an established Western Australian gold producer.”
Maurice Jackson: Dr. Hennigh, for someone who wants to get more information on Novo Resources, please share the contact details.
Quinton Hennigh: Please contact our Head of Investor Relations Leo Karabelas in Toronto. His telephone number 416.543.3120 or email leo@novoresources.com.
Maurice Jackson: And as a reminder, Novo Resources trades on the TSX.V symbol NVO and on the OTCQX symbol NSRPF. Novo Resources is a sponsor of Proven and Probable and we are proud shareholders of Novo Resources for the virtues conveyed in today’s message. And last but not least, please visit our website, provenandprobable.com, where we deliver mining insights and bullion sales. You may reach us at contact@provenandprobable.com.
Dr. Quentin Hennigh of Novo Resources, thank you for joining us today, on Proven and Probable.
Maurice Jackson is the founder of Proven and Probable, a site that aims to enrich its subscribers through education in precious metals and junior mining companies that will enrich the world.
Quinton Hennigh: Thank you, Maurice.
Maurice Jackson: Last time we spoke, Novo Resources accomplished a major milestone and that was the inclusion into the GDXJ. Since then Novo Resources has been extremely busy on a number of fronts from expanding the project portfolio, providing bulk sample results, mechanical rock sorting and DTC Eligibility, just to name a few. But before we go into greater detail, Dr. Hennigh, for someone new to the story, who is Novo Resources?
Quinton Hennigh: Novo Resources is Canada listed company that is focused on exploring in Australia. I founded the company roughly nine years ago, and it was explicitly to explore for a certain type of gold deposit in northwest Australia in a region called the Pilbara, which is just in from the Indian Ocean along the northern coast. Our projects are close to two cities, Port Hedland and Karratha.
They’re major cities that give access to the interior where there’s a lot of active iron ore mining in the region. The Pilbara has had a long-standing reputation, over 50 years, for their iron mines around Newman and Tom Price. Coincidently, within this same region Novo recognized the potential for gold early on in actually in the same strata, believe it or not, as the iron ore sequence.
Novo had a hypothesis that the Pilbara was once connected with the Kaapvaal Craton in South Africa. Both of those cratons are very old rocks, they’re over three billion years old, they share a lot of geologic similarities, including the strata that’s been deposited on each block. In addition, we identified the stratigraphy can be correlated from one side of the ocean to the other.
In South Africa, as many people know, there are vast deposits of gold in conglomerates in a basin called the Witwatersrand Basin. These gold deposits have been mined since around 1886 when they were first discovered; they produced something like 35% of all the gold produced on earth, around 1.7 billion ounces. The Witwatersrand Basin is a remarkable deposit; it’s basically the Saudi Arabia of gold.
The logical conclusion for us was, if deposits like that are present in South Africa, maybe over here in the Pilbara Craton there are similar deposits in conglomerates and of similar age, that have yet been discovered. Therefore, we came to Australia on that premise. We first structured deals with a gentleman named Mark Creasy, a well-known prospector in Australia, and those deals were largely centered over in the eastern part of the Pilbara region.
The Pilbara region is quite vast from one side to the other, covering over six hundred kilometers, and from the coast up here down to Paraburdoo is something like 250 or 300 kilometers. This is an enormous target area. Our first exploration ever was at Beatons Creek.
In 2011, drilled up a small resource at Beatons Creek, but what we learned is that the conglomerate units were quite continuous, and the gold is indeed there. The gold is a coarser grain than the Witwatersrand, but it is indeed present and appears to be economic. During our time at Beatons Creek we also conducted a bit of exploration at Marble Bar.
Since that time, we have focused efforts more to the northwest and acquired this vast land package by Karratha. This was based on a discovery roughly two-and-a-half years ago of gold being found by prospectors in areas like Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward, as well as others around the marsh and the basin, including Egina and some other select locals.The gold occurrences had been known by the locals for many years. When the news got out in late 2016, we strategically assembled a land package, including Comet Well and Egina. Novo staked a tremendous amount of ground, which is 100% owned by us. In addition, we also conducted a joint-venture agreement with Artemis Resource.
Maurice Jackson: Dr. Hennigh, you’ve already introduced us to the project portfolio, but introduce us in particular to the value proposition we have before us.
Quinton Hennigh: The conglomerate gold systems in our project portfolio are different gold deposits than most people are used to seeing. Our conglomerates are flat-sheet-like, and continuous over large areas. We’ve latched onto three systems in particular that we’re focused on right now, which are Beatons Creek, Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward, where we are actively exploring now.
In 2018, we assembled the land package at Egina, and we’re conducting advanced exploration there now including bulk sampling.
For current and prospective shareholders I believe it best to become familiar with our trajectory for each project, as they are separate and unique. At Beatons Creek we’ve now undertaken a couple rounds of drilling over the past few years and also large-scale sampling, so this would be trench sampling as well as bulk sampling, and our current resource stands at somewhere around 670,000 ounces Measured, Indicated and Inferred. We are looking to grow that and are working to get a resource put together at Beatons Creek north of 1 million ounces in the near future.
Not only that, we’ve done a lot of work like test mining and other things to demonstrate the economics and continuity of this system. We are looking to advance our Beatons Creek project towards monetization over the coming year. Beatons Creek is our most advanced, it’s certainly a robust project. What you see there at Beatons Creek, you see conglomerate horizons, in some places it’s stacked six high, so we have a conglomerate bed with a bit of intervening material, another conglomerate bed, and so forth.
At Beatons Creek we have a robust deposit, easily accessible form surface. Those familiar with coal mines in West Virginia would identify these as tabletop mines. That’s the kind of setting we have at Beatons Creek, so it’s a really interesting deposit from that aspect, and the most exiting aspect is that Beatons Creek may be very inexpensive from a production standpoint. The gold is coarse and is easily recoverable; gravity recovery captures a lot but you know cyanide captures the rest so we expect very, very good recoveries out of that deposit in particular.
At Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward, we first evaluated the system, because it is a very coarse gold system, this is not your average gold deposit.
The gold particles are often tenths of a gram up to multi-gram even tens of grams, and they’re distributed through the conglomerate somewhat randomly. Therefore, one can’t just walk up, grab a rock chip sample and expect to know through fire assay what’s in this rock. We’ve had to do some very hard yards in terms of bulk sampling and other means to begin to evaluate the grain here.
What we’ve shown at Comet Well and the Purdy’s Reward joint venture with Artemis is that the continuity appears to be good over several kilometers. We’ve done a lot of core drilling for geology and stepped out into the basin. Presently, we have enough data between the core drilling, three-dimensional modeling, as well as the grade data that we have from the bulk samples, to put together a mineralization report.
This is a big step for Novo. All of our tenements are currently exploration licenses. In order to advance a project towards a mining stage, we have to convert exploration licenses to mining licenses in Australia, and to do that we need a couple of things. One, we need a mineralization report, in this case we’re not necessarily going to produce a resource per se, we’ll demonstrate that we have a potentially economic body of rock here, through the data that we’ve collected that I just mentioned.
Novo Resources will submit a mineralization report within the next few weeks. The other aspect that’s needed is an agreement with the Aboriginal community, this would be the Ngarluma Community. The Ngarluma Community basically covers most of this project area here. We’ve been in negotiations with them, and developed a good relationship with the Ngarlumas, over the past year and a half.
We need to strike what’s called a “Native Title Agreement” that allows us rights to go mining, as well the Ngarlumas have commercial rights, such as royalty, as part of this project. But these are things that also have to be worked out for granting a mining lease.
We anticipate taking Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward through a development trajectory, probably first through trial mining. In fact, we might do a certain amount of trial mining this year. That will provide us more supporting data for developing a larger scale mine. But we are definitely moving Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward forward in a trajectory towards making a producing asset.
Revisiting the map, one can see that Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward are really just a small component of a much larger land package. As I alluded to earlier, within the conglomerate horizons, people have found nuggets weathering out of these conglomerates over many kilometers through this region. We have a lot of greenfields work to do along strike (gold line).
We also have some very interesting new ground at Egina that we’ve recently assembled. At Egina the conglomerates have weathered away over time. They used to cover a significant portion in the Pilbara. But as they have weathered away and receded back, they’ve left the gold that was in them behind across a terrace, or flat country through here in the Pilbara. If one drives across this country, it is absolutely flat as a pancake, very similar to West Texas.
If one were to look in either direction, it’s like a pool table. But the flat surface throughout this region has what is called a lag gravel horizon on it. The lag gravel horizon is about one to two meters thick. Novo was able to demonstrate last year through our trial bulk sampling at Egina that it contains gold and it’s fairly coarse-grain gold; we recovered something like 108 grams of gold out of a hundred cubic meters of bulk sample that we collected.
That’s pretty remarkable! A lot of alluvial deposits are less than 0.3 grams, and the grades we’re seeing at Egina are very enticing. Our hypothesis is that this terrace, of which we own about 400 sq km, could be a sizeable gold project in its own right.
Egina is basically another very large target we have. It is earlier stage, but the nice thing about Egina is that it’s soft rock, gravels at surface. Novo can advance this in a fairly orderly fashion.
We control 100% (of the blue on the map) at Egina. Thus, we are able to get out there and do a lot of test mining and stuff like that that we can’t quite undertake presently at Comet Well at the moment. So Egina is definitely going to be a focus for us this year. We’re going to tackle that terrace gravel, see what kind of economics that might have, including the size and potential that we might have.
Therefore, we are going to do sampling not only in the mining lease but hopefully in some more extensive areas to demonstrate the hypothesis that this region could hold a vast gold deposit could be true.
Maurice Jackson: Dr. Hennigh, allow be to interject here. This land package you have here, it looks quite massive, how many square kilometers are we looking at here?
Quinton Hennigh: Our land package is around 12,000 square kilometers at present.
Maurice Jackson: Let me ask you this, sir. I know Novo Resources has undergone a tedious and methodical process in attempting to figure out grade and tonnage. In the spring of 2018 the company released the first bulk-sample results from Comet Well, how have those been coming along?
Quinton Hennigh: The bulk samples from Comet Well that we released in May were the first two that we completed. To get these samples through the lab was a big exercise. It required several renditions of crushing and experimenting and assaying different streams. We also were battling a bit of wet weather down in Perth last year; it took a long time but we did get a pretty comprehensive set of assays out in late October that demonstrated the grade of these conglomerate horizons.
What we’ve identified are two conglomerate horizons at Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward. The lower one of which is say 2or 3 meters thick, the grades range from about a 1 to 6 grams, and it sits right on the basement, so it’s basically the lowermost bed of rock in this bigger sequence.
Twelve to fifteen meters above first horizon is a second horizon. We call it the Upper Cannonball conglomerate, the Upper Cannonball conglomerate is about 1 to 2 meters thick, and again the grades in that bed are in a range of 1 to 3, 4 grams, somewhere in that range. And it’s very continuous along strike; we can see good continuity from one trench to the other over three-and-a-half, four kilometers right now. We feel very compelled that it’s demonstrating similar continuity to the beds we see at Beatons Creek.
For those who have followed Novo Resources for the year are familiar with the challenges we had at Beatons Creek. Specifically, we had to develop sampling protocols to deal with the coarse grade, assay protocols that were unusual; it took some time to develop. But now, Beatons Creek is basically getting close to mine.
Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward area are going along the same trajectory as Beatons Creek. We’ve had to cut our teeth with different styles of bulk sampling and assaying but we’ve now got things under control. We are also experimenting with somewhat unconventional techniques of recovering the gold.
Novo has done test work with TOMRA, for example; this was starting in late last year in November. The results that came out are fantastic! We think there is potential to crush up the conglomerate, screen it, of course, but put it through an ore sorting machine, and actually let the ore sorter pick rock with the gold particles.
You know the downside of coarse gold is assaying. It’s a real challenge, but the upside is that the metallurgy might be very favorable for us. Novo is very excited about that ore sorter possibility.
Maurice Jackson: Dr. Hennigh, the following may be a bit premature to address at the moment but the two most frequent questions I receive from prospective shareholders are, “Is this a place for deposit?” and, “How do you intend to extract the gold?” What do you have to say to those two questions?
Quinton Hennigh: Sure, the first question is a very good one. I came to this region on the basis that there might be deposits like those in South Africa. Now let me give a little background there, in South Africa there are really two types of ore, there’s the conglomeratic ore and in that the gold occurs as particles distributed in the matrix of the conglomerate.
In effect those are alluvial deposits in the Witwatersrand Basin. There is also what they call “carbon leader ore.” Carbon leader ore is a very, very thin seam of carbon, almost like coal, and I’ve written several papers (click here to view paper) on this with other authors. We believe that that seam of carbon is basically the fossil remains of early cyanobacterial mats that formed or evolved in a time when Earth’s atmosphere was largely reduced. The idea is the sea water back at that time, under reduced conditions, would have been able to dissolve a fair bit of gold. Gold dissolves in reduced atmospheric conditions.
The cyanobacteria was the first photosynthetic life. During this time period the cyanobacteria starting to kick off oxygen. What we believe is that that oxygen, which causes gold to precipitate, actually pulled, or started pulling the gold out of sea water and created that little carbon seam type ore, that is very, very rich in gold. This is a very, very unusual style of gold mineralization. It’s a thin and very continuous and covers many square kilometers. A seam of carbonaceous gold ore.
I came here looking for similar carbonaceous ores. What have we found? Well, at Beatons Creek, in fact we’ve talked about this in the past, we’ve actually found particles, pieces of carbonaceous material in the conglomerates here. So to answer your question, at Beatons Creek, we see two types of gold, we see bonafide alluvial gold. These would be loose, somewhat rounded particles in the matrix of the conglomerate, but we also see a component of carbonaceous material at Beatons Creek that tells us that that same process that you see in the Witwatersrand was active over in this area.
At Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward, what we see in the conglomerates here are large, rounded; they appear to be water-worn nuggets of gold. The origin of that gold we still haven’t put our finger on, but it’s possible that that gold has been recycled from weathering of previously existing conglomerates or carbonaceous beds that no longer exist.
In their present form it’s alluvial gold, but it’s ultimate origin is still in question. In addition, we have gold that appears to have grown in the matrix around the nuggets. This is what we call “halo gold,” it’s a thin halo about two or three millimeters wide around the gold nuggets, the coarse nuggets, and we believe that gold is actually a precipitated type gold, probably in response to biogenic activity.
So once again I would say it’s a mixture of two types of gold that have brought the system together. We have alluvial particles for sure, we have secondary gold that appears to be perhaps biogenic in nature.
Maurice Jackson: Alright and the second question: “How do you intend to extract the gold?”
Quinton Hennigh: Like the coarse gold is a problem from the sense of assaying but in terms of recovery, it is quite favorable. Gold is dense. One of the easiest ways to treat coarse gold is, of course, gravity recovery, and that’s certainly a possibility, but one of the things we wanted to look at was a call it a somewhat portable style of processing, by using ore sorting machines.
These ore sorting devices are skid mounted or they’re mounted on a transportable platform. They can be moved from one location to the other. Now why is that important? Well, this is a flat deposit, so if you have something that’s long, you know rather than trucking ore from one place to another over kilometers, why not mine process, right on the spot, and then move as you mine the material.
We looked at TOMRA ore sorters starting late last year (click here). We tried ore sorting early in 2017, had mixed results with the Steinert, first looked like it worked great, second rendition didn’t work so well. When we went to TOMRA they showed us some reasons why they thought they could improve things dramatically and just recently we published the final data from that.
In fact, the two samples that were good coherent conglomerate material that we put through saw recoveries over 80% just by sorting. This is using a scanner device, X-ray transmission that literally picks out particles of rock off a conveyor belt that have gold embedded in them. It’s just remarkable! We essentially took gravel, put it on a conveyor belt, sent it across this machine, and it picks out the little particles of rock with gold. What you end up with is a concentrate that’s a very, very small fraction of the overall mass you put in that machine, and it has most of the gold in it.
There are a few additional steps we have got to take to test this further. One question is “What do we do with the fines?” At the present, we are considering to conglomerate them, and then put them through the ore sorter as they are. In other words, turn them back into little pellets or something, let the ore sorter pick them out. Or another option we could do is just put the fines through a gravity circuit on their own. These are options we are considering, which are essentially unconventional means of processing for this very unconventional deposit.
Maurice Jackson: Looking forward, what are the company’s goals and objectives for 2019?
Quinton Hennigh: First, at Beatons Creek, which I talked about as being the most advanced project. We have a resource remodel underway right now, this is work that’s ongoing and we are expecting some bulk samples back from the project. These are ones we collected late last year. Once we have all that data, which should be available by the end of the first quarter, we anticipate publishing a new, updated resource for Beatons Creek. We are targeting over a million ounces, we’ll see if we can get there, I feel pretty confident. Beatons Creek should be a robust deposit. This puts the project in a good path for monetization. Then we will take the next steps of looking at how we potentially develop that project.
Second, at Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward, we anticipate doing a level of trial mining this year. We are continuing to evaluate some of the test work around the TOMRA, for example, as a means of processing at Comet Well. I think once we get a full evaluation, and we do have a bit more data we got to get back on that, but once we have a full evaluation of that processing, we’ll look at that trajectory. Bear in mind, we also are shooting for that mineralization report and working on a Native Title agreement so that we can convert a lot of that country into mining leases. That’s the trajectory for Comet Well and Purdy’s Reward.
Third, at Egina, once the rainy season’s over in a few weeks, we anticipate getting out there and hitting the mining lease very hard. This is the mining lease where we took our bulk sample last year. We anticipate putting together on a test basis, a grid of samples across a target area, where we can see if we can put together a resource on the terrace gravels.
We also anticipate, because it’s a mining lease and we have permit to go up to 50,000 tons extractable, doing some small-scale test mining. We are seeking to help build our confidence around that project. The other aspect to Egina, very important, we anticipate taking some samples further afield in some more distant areas, and trying to get an idea how extensive that deposit may be. If Novo proves that that deposit covers a vast area, encompassing many tens of square kilometers, in that country, I think people will sit up and take note. I think that’s really a big add to the story we have in the Pilbara right now.
Maurice Jackson: Near term, what is the next unanswered question, when should we expect results, and what determines success?
Quinton Hennigh: Per each project, the factors that determine success are a bit different. We have data coming back from bulk samples from Beatons Creek that will help support a new resource model, again that’s going to be over the next few weeks. We anticipate getting that resource put together by the end of this quarter.
If we see a resource above a million ounces I think we now have critical mass that allows us to look at that project a bit differently and more aggressively in terms of advancing it.
As far as Comet Well goes, I think right now we feel comfortable with the grades and the continuities we’re seeing. I think we have a fairly decent understanding of what this deposit is. What we really need to do there is to go test mine it on a scale, maybe a few tens of thousands of tonnes, and from multiple locations alone the strike of the conglomerate.
We also have to do some ore sorting tests to see if we can use that as a means of processing. Those are the two factors if we can successfully process this material using ore sorter, and that includes capturing the gold that’s in the finer material, I think we have an exceptional means of treating this unusual mineralization.
Ore sorting and test mining at Comet Well are absolutely critical paths for us. At Egina, because it’s free-dig gravel at surface, we have the luxury, and because we have a mining lease, too, of going out there and being pretty aggressive. Right so we can go out and start digging some hundred cubic meter samples like we did late in 2018, and we can advance that project quickly.
Basically, it’s almost like doing an exploration program in parallel with test mining and test processing. So I really think even though the metrics are not fully defined yet, I think Egina is one where it’s an easier project that can be advanced much more quickly. Therefore, we believe going forward Egina is going to become more and more important to the company.
Maurice Jackson: Sir, what do you see as the biggest challenge for Novo Resources, and how would you mitigate that situation?
Quinton Hennigh: This is a good question. Australia’s a very good place to work and in particular in Western Australia. Every single project that’s been put up for permitting and advancement has become a mine. There are virtually no examples where a deposit wasn’t mined, but it takes time. That’s our determining factor.
We have to do things like permit, we have to get mining leases from exploration licenses. We have to do the proper steps. We have to work with social license, we can’t just go in and start mining. I think a lot of people, they look at our projects and they’re very exciting, it’s easy to see that these things could be developed, we literally go out and start mining some tomorrow if you had that luxury, but we have to do things right here.
We have to do things right, both in terms of permitting, social license and all of those aspects, but we also have to do the right technical work to make sure that we take the right steps. We don’t want to go and fall on our sword. I guess my comment to that question would be, time and patience is what we need.
Maurice Jackson: Switching gears, sir can you please share with us the current capital structure for Novo Resources?
Quinton Hennigh: We have a little over 163 million shares out. We have a few options in warrants out there bringing us to 204 million shares. Right now we have a little less cash than shown above, we’re around CA$45 million at the end of the year. We have a good treasury, which is great! Because these projects, as I just said, need time and patience to advance.
What we really are appreciative of is the shareholder base. We’ve got good shareholders, we have Kirkland Lake, we have Newmont Mining, Mark Creasy who I mentioned earlier, we have a lot of long-term shareholders who really understand the geology, and they understand the steps that we need to take to get these projects through to fruition.
Maurice Jackson: And at the recording of today’s interview, right now the share price is at CA$2.32. Sir, for our U.S. investors, what can you share with us regarding DTC Eligibility?
Quinton Hennigh: Novo Resources filed DTC Eligibility in October 2018. This will enable U.S. citizens’ shares to be traded electronically in much more user-friendly way to facilitate electronic trading. It allows U.S. shareholders to put those share certificates into a U.S. brokerage accounts and trade them. So we did that for the benefit of our shareholders and I haven’t heard any complaints since.
Maurice Jackson: Last question. What did I forget to ask?
Quinton Hennigh: What does Novo Resources want to become? People who really know us know the story. They know we want to become a gold producer. Novo has tackled a very unusual style of mineralization but we want to prove that these deposits are going to make good economic mines, and we have three very promising projects, each of which has huge potential! Beatons Creek, Karratha, as well as Egina, all have extremely good potential to be very large, and hopefully very high margin, deposits.
I think if I had one comment to say, that’s the path we’re going to take: “Novo would like to become an established Western Australian gold producer.”
Maurice Jackson: Dr. Hennigh, for someone who wants to get more information on Novo Resources, please share the contact details.
Quinton Hennigh: Please contact our Head of Investor Relations Leo Karabelas in Toronto. His telephone number 416.543.3120 or email leo@novoresources.com.
Maurice Jackson: And as a reminder, Novo Resources trades on the TSX.V symbol NVO and on the OTCQX symbol NSRPF. Novo Resources is a sponsor of Proven and Probable and we are proud shareholders of Novo Resources for the virtues conveyed in today’s message. And last but not least, please visit our website, provenandprobable.com, where we deliver mining insights and bullion sales. You may reach us at contact@provenandprobable.com.
Dr. Quentin Hennigh of Novo Resources, thank you for joining us today, on Proven and Probable.
Maurice Jackson is the founder of Proven and Probable, a site that aims to enrich its subscribers through education in precious metals and junior mining companies that will enrich the world.
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Gregory Beischer the President, Director, and CEO of Millrock Resources (TSX: MRO | OTC: MLRKF) along with Chris Van Treeck Senior Project Geologist sits down with Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable to discuss a unique value proposition for current and prospective shareholders on the latest developments on MRO’s West Pogo – Goodpaster Project. Today’s interview will be very comprehensive, as Senior Project Geologist Chris Van Treeck provides a thorough analysis of Nothern Star Resources Pogo Mine in relation to Millrock Resources adjacent 100% owned (7) claim blocks in the West Pogo – Goodpaster, in what may very likely be a watershed moment for Millrock Resources.
VIDEO
AUDIO
TRANSCRIPT
Original Source: http://www.streetwisereports.com/article/2019/02/20/millrock-resources-watching-neighbors-drilling-closely.html
Source: Maurice Jackson for Streetwise Reports (2/20/19)
Gregory Beischer, the president, director and CEO of Millrock Resources, and Chris Van Treeck, the company’s senior geologist, speak to Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable about their varied projects, and discuss what their next-door neighbor’s drilling in Alaska is finding.
Maurice Jackson: Joining us for a conversation today is Gregory Beischer, the president, director and CEO of Millrock Resources Inc. (MRO:TSX.V; MLRKF:OTCQX), along with Chris Van Treeck, senior project geologist.
Glad to have you both on the program to discuss an important announcement that may be quite significance for Millrock Resources. But before we begin, Mr. Beischer, for first time listeners, who is Millrock Resources?
Gregory B: Millrock is a project generator company. Alaska is home base for a lot of us and so we explore there and we also explore in Sonora state in northwestern Mexico, as well as the state of New Mexico and the southwest U.S. At Millrock we come up with early-stage exploration projects and then we make agreements with other exploration and mining companies to share the risk that’s involved in early-stage drilling. And the whole objective is to keep a systematically exploring continuous early exploring company that over time will make big discoveries that drives up Millrock’s share price without continuously diluting shareholders as with most exploration companies.
Maurice Jackson: Mr. Beischer, beginning in Mexico, please introduce us to the Millrock project portfolio.
Gregory B: In Sonora state, which is the northwestern part of Mexico (click here to view), Millrock holds advanced exploration projects, primarily focusing on Orogenic gold deposits, of which Sonora hosts some great examples, such as the Herradura multimillion ounce, probably around 9 million ounces, one of which is Newmont’s leading mine. We are in the right part of the world to be looking for these large gold deposits. Additionally, we target copper there, in particular porphyry coppers like the world-class Cananea-La Caridad belt, just south of the Arizona porphyry belt, probably a southern extension of the same cluster of the porphyry deposit. So, we like these types of deposits that can be exceptionally large and great metal producers.
We also explore in the state of New Mexico (click here to view), which is opened up as a much more open jurisdiction to mining. We acquired several years ago a uranium deposit in that state; we’ve sat on it to for these years without doing much work, biding our time until the uranium price improved. It turns out this year the uranium deposit also has a lot of vanadium in it, and potentially both metals could be mined together. We’re starting to get calls as people learned that we own this project. So, I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to make an agreement on it sometime soon. We also have a gold project in New Mexico and are lining up partners as we speak. But home base is Alaska, where we’ve got quite a number of gold and copper projects that have active exploration ongoing right now.
Maurice Jackson: And, gentlemen, let’s stay in Alaska, shall we? And, in particular, I want to focus on seven claim blocks owned by Millrock Resources, which may be direct beneficiaries regarding the press release issued on Feb. 12 by neighboring Northern Star Resources where it just released some exceptional exploration results on its Pogo gold mine. Chris, you are the senior project geologists on the Pogo West. Please take us to the Pogo gold mine and show us where it is in relation to Millrock resources, Pogo West.
Chris Van T: We are going to be in interior Alaska right next to the Pogo mine. Literally right next to the Pogo mine as photos from our property, you can see the mill, right here and this is for the last drilling campaign by the junior company that had it prior to Millrock. So we are right across the river from Pogo proper. Current exploration on the mine property is getting closer and closer to the Pogo mine, which was very recently purchased from Northern Star at a fair price, but it ended up equaling about $69 an ounce that they had to find already.
But it’s been a great asset for Sumitomo and now Northern Star, 12 years of production, nearly 4 million ounces produced and easily another 4 million ounces that they have in their reserve and resource prior to the update that they said they’d be releasing later this year based on their new drilling and the latest press release. So things are really ramping up there. And it’s been a great asset for those two companies. And Northern Star felt very highly of it and some of their promotional material they placed it as the third highest grade mines in North America. And they felt it was the eighth largest gold mine in the United States, based on its production and contained ounces.
Millrock’s Pogo West is located in Tintina Gold Belt in Alaska, which has some of the more prolific deposits in Alaska right now. The Pogo mine has about 8 million ounces contained gold. The Mother’s Fort Knox is up at 13 million ounces and, of course, the gargantuan Donlin Creek at 45 million ounces, as well as some smaller deposits that are still being explored heavily in the Yukon that I’m sure you’re aware of there, Coffee and White Gold and Brewery Creek.
Maurice Jackson: Chris, can you provide us with some additional context on the geology at the West Pogo Goodpaster region?
Chris Van T: Geologically, the Goodpaster district, which contains Pogo, is a nice chunk of the crust that’s broken up by a number of very large faults that are all related to the Tintina gold belt faults. And so, the Denali fault would be down here, that’s the southern boundary of the Tintina gold belt and the Tintina fault is up here. And so, it’s in an area of metamorphic rocks that has some very nice granitic intrusions in them, which would be the source of the fluids for the Pogo mine, as well as the other deposits in the district there.
Maurice Jackson: Chris, what can you share with us about the existing infrastructure?
Chris Van T: It’s fantastic access and infrastructure with the Pogo mine road running through the claim block. We have the permit to travel on that road. The nice claim block, which size is 7,500 hectors and, as I mentioned, it’s adjacent to the Pogo mine. Taking a look at what the Pogo mine looks like in a geologic model, specifically in a schematic cross section. The Pogo mine itself is exploiting and beneficiating low angle quartz veins, as well as high angle veins. So, the theory is that the fluids from the plutons travel up those steep faults and enter into the shallow dipping faults. And that’s where they have the gold veins in both the steep faults in the shallow faults.
And there are quartz veins with a small amount of sulfide minerals, arsenopyrite and as well as some bismuth minerals. And so, arsenic and bismuth along with gold are the fantastic pathfinder elements that we have at the surface. Those allow us to look at the soil samples and the rock samples at the surface and try to zone in on where the mineralization would be at depth. The surface features would be these high angle steep faults intercepting the soil profile.
These are the projections of the Pogo veins from the subsurface brought up and displayed on the surface. Northern Star Resources are mining these areas: South Pogo, Liese, North Zone and East Theits. There are large faults that break up the rocks and move them around.
Looking at this cross section towards the northeast are some high angle steep veins and they’re interpreted mineralized halo. Both these and the shallow dipping faults contain veins that are being mined right now at the Pogo mine. And an important thing to point out on are the steep faults tend to move the northwest side of the fault up relative to the southeast side, which would then bring this mineralization in the low angle faults closer to the surface, and that’s been repeated throughout the district and has a real boon to the Millrock properties.
Here’s a picture from the mine and we’re looking down the trace of the mine. The latest exploration on Pogo is across the river and right adjacent to our claim block.
In 2017, they made a fantastic discovery of another vein of minable width. And on the other side of the river. The Goodpaster vein had very nice thicknesses and it dips in the same direction of previous veins. Northern Star Resources made this discovery based on reinterpretation of its subsurface imaging that uses a resistivity method called CSAMT, (Controlled Source Audio Magnetotellurics), the image conductive properties of the rocks. The company decided that the break rate here and the conductive properties of the rocks represented the base of a vein and the drilling in 2017 revealed this low angle vein that the 2007 drilling didn’t reach because they didn’t have this reinterpreted imaging.
The vein that they intercepted, a low angle vein Quartz gold Arsenopyrite, and it had a very nice minable width of 5.3 meters at 60 grams. So, this is very similar, nearly identical to what was being mined already in the Liese veins South Pogo, east steeps north zone on the eastern side of the river. Now on the western side of the river, they have nearly identical mineralization with the exact same orientation. So they’re very excited that the vein system that they’ve been mining for 12 years exists on the west side of the river.
The Fun Zone is this area in here on their plan map, so this would be looking down over the mine. The river is a visible in the satellite imagery from a northeast view, as we look this cross section. Once again, these high angel steep faults bring the northwest western side up.
Maurice Jackson: Chris, if I may interrupt you with the shift in the fault zones, how does it benefit Millrock?
Chris Van T: It brings the mineralization closer to surface. This area here is a big part of their latest press release; Northern Star Resources is calling it the Central Lode System and it feels that it’s a significant extension of both the Liese zone and Fun zone vein sets within the same overall large, mildly dipping faults that contain these veins. And so, this same process that’s bringing things up all throughout the district is that work on the western side of the river adjacent to the Millrock claims.
These red lines represent those steep folks that make and bring the northwestern side up relative to the southeastern side. And this red line represents that Goodpaster Structural Zone. The Goodpaster Prospect that has been explored aggressively by Pogo in the last two years is in between two other of these large steeply dipping faults. And so, it’s a fairly contiguous block and it’s about the same distance between the Goodpaster Structural Zone and the South Pogo Zone. And so, this matches very well geologically with what we would expect to see on these high angle faults. Northern Star Resources claim boundary and the latest exploration road is very close to our claim boundaries within 420 meters of our claim boundary now. Not only at an exploration road but also some of its large drill pads and it is drilling in the area.
Maurice Jackson: Does Northern Star Resources have any drilling planned this year near Millrock’s claim blocks?
Chris Van T: Northern Star Resources are exploring very close. It has got some drill holes planned for this year in the summertime within 90 meters of the claims boundary right here in the north. And so, Pogo is knocking at the door of the Millrock claims of their exploration. Their Central Lode and that’s what was in the press release (click here) that came out Feb. 12. And so, this area right in here is where they have released their new spectacular results and subsequent definition of resource coming this August from the press release. From a real estate standpoint, Millrock is very well placed within what’s going on with the Pogo mine exploration. And we feel that the rest of our geologic knowledge in the area as well as the information purchase from other parties leads me to believe that those veins extend onto the middle rock properties.
Maurice Jackson: Northern Star Resources had an active drill program near the Millrock claim blocks last year. Do we know any of the results? And also, do we know what their aspirations are in the area for 2019?
Chris Van T: Here are some photos in September of their exploration in that area. Very large drill pads, large rigs drilling, multiple drill holes. Northern Star Resources 2019 planned holes which are to start in February so they could well be underway as we speak. They are drilling off what appears to be a substantial resource of those low angle veins. Once again, just to remind you of 5.3 meters at 60 grams per tonne drilled and released in this area here. No other drill results or any of this drilling has been made public as of yet, but they are getting closer and closer to our claim boundary in this trajectory right here.
This is a photo from our claims looking back to the mine and here is that Goodpaster Structural Zone that they’ve named it. And so right now they’ve defined their new Central Lodes would be filling this area basically from their road here to this structural zone where they’ve defined basically a new extension of the mine right up to this fault and they’re getting ready to go and move some headings into there and continue to explore that from underground. So they’re moving mine infrastructure from the Liese zone, right up to this Structural zone. And as I mentioned, the Goodpaster Prospect is just the other side of that and is actually had the veins that are being explored for in the area brought closer to the surface because of the faults and how they always bring the northwestern side up, very close to our claim boundary.
Let’s take a look at a magnetic survey image that the state survey ran in 2000. Here are the Pogo veins brought to surface. Note these veins occur outside of this purple magnetic high, within a magnetic low relative to the rest of the area. There are more of these on the other side of this large high angle fault throughout the Millrock claim boundary as well as here in the Goodpaster Prospect.
This is the area they’re drilling and right now, predominantly in this magnetic low that’s very similar to what they have on the north side of their mine. They’ve got a diorite within the mine that’s magnetic and there’s one on the Millrock claims that’s magnetic as well with the same magnetic lows surrounding it. So, from a geologic standpoint, these are nearly identical features. The fact that they’re drilling and this one here as well as this mag lode to the north, lead me to believe that the geologic model at the mine is readily applicable on the other side of that high angle, steep fault called the Goodpaster Structural Zone. So I feel that the Millrock claims are very highly prospective for the extension of the vein. Placing our soil and rock samples on top of the magnetics, they illustrate how in those areas of magnetics, we have great gold samples and they are oriented more or less in a northeast, southwest fashion, which is the same as what’s going on over here on the mine property.
They have a northeast southwest orientation to their gold and soil sample. We have the same orientation on our property. These are most likely caused by unmapped equally dipping fault such as this one here, which helps those fluids from the magmatic intrusion at depth, get them to the surface into the soil profile. Arsenic has a coincident anomaly and so does bismuth. And so our pathfinder elements that match the Pogo mineralization of gold in our arsenopyrite with bismuth minerals are all present on the Millrock properties.
Maurice Jackson: Let’s add some geometry to the discussion.
Chris Van T: This here is the location of that Goodpaster vein, the 5.3 meters at 60 grams. Northern Star Resources has stated the vein was oriented with a strike of 240 degrees and the dip of 35 to the northwest. Plotting that strike line is would be where the vein would be the same elevation all the way across. It brings us very close to past drilling in our area. Past drilling was situated in that area of fantastic gold, soil, and rock anomalies that are all showing the interaction of those steep faults that carried the fluids with the soil. The vein intercepted within these drill holes have been narrow quartz arsenopyrite veins. And the assays returned good arsenic bismuth silver. They have the same style of alteration of Pogo there. And the angles intercept in there would indicate that these veins are steeply dipping.
So, exactly along the model lines of the steeply dipping faults springing the fluids up towards the surface. All of those faults have been intercepted in these drill holes. The difference between here and what’s going on at Pogo is that these drill holes did not get deep enough to intersect those shallowly dipping veins such as the hole reflecting 5.3 meters at 60 grams. That’s due to the higher elevation where are these drill holes where collared as well as the dip along the vein. The deepest hole over here at the very end of the hole, only got down to 350 meters above sea level. The vein was intercepted at 230 meters above sea level. So when all things being consistent, this hole ended 120 meters vertically above where we would expect to see the flat and veins.
To bring this back into the Pogo model, the exact same thing happened on the Pogo property in 2007. Norther Star Resources drilled and intercepted steeply dipping veins that contain gold, arsenopyrite and bismuth; they did not reach the flat line veins. The hole did not go deep enough. The same thing went on the west Pogo claims.
The drilling so far at West Pogo has just gotten into the top of these steeply dipping veins. I believe that the shallow dipping veins are there at depth, that the soil and rock anomalies at the surface coupled with the drilling show that we haven’t reached the depth of those flat veins to date and that a few holes of deeper drilling could readily intersect these veins at the depth and an extension of the mine mineralization on the Millrock Claims.
Maurice Jackson: What initiatives will Millrock take to de-risk the West Pogo property?
Chris Van T: That would be to do that imaging along these black lines here in order to do the same style imaging, the CSAMT or Resistivity imaging over this mag low that also has the good gold and rock samples on top of it. That would be one way to de-risk it. In order to know the depth you need to drill to in order to find the extension of this mineralization that’s on the Pogo claims.
Millrock believes that the West Pogo property has not been explored properly to depth. It’s got the exact same magnetic signature as the mine proper. The surface geochemistry and the drill hole geochemistry have all the attributes to indicate that mine style mineralization is located on the property. Northern Star Resources is currently exploring, right against our claim boundary and we’ve got established access with the mine road running right through the property. And so very positive factors for the West Pogo property.
Maurice Jackson: Gregory, this may be premature, but should we continue to have favorable outcomes such as this press release? How does this impact Millrock’s strategy?
Gregory B: Well, I think one of the more remarkable things about the statements from Northern Star is the exceptional grade of the drilling intersections that they’ve discovered at this Central Lode’s area. And we’re pretty sure they’re finding similar things at their new Goodpaster discovery, which is very close to Millrock’s West Pogo project. If an ore body of that grade does trend right onto Millrock’s claims, I think it’s going to make a tremendous difference in the price of Millrock stock. We’re trading today around 10 cents Canadian. And I think, just fortuitously, if that deposit comes onto our claims, it’s going to make a big difference for our company and for our shareholders.
We have stuck rigorously to our business model over the 12 years we’ve be in the operation. We’ve always got a partner on a project before it got to the drilling stage. Right now, we’re faced with the possibility that our neighbor, Northern Star at Pogo, has discovered an ore body that comes right on to our claims. And so, we might take a different view at this point since we presently have not made an agreement on the claims and we own it 100%. So, it’s possible that we would actually pursue this claim ourselves, but it’s not determined yet. And in fact, right now our best strategy is to wait and see what Northern Star has discovered. Eventually they’ll tell us more about their Goodpaster discovery.
What they announced on Feb. 12 was really interesting. I think they’re going to make a fortune from their purchase of the Pogo mine. They’re great miners and great explorers clearly. And they’ve had some great success of finding the new Central Lode’s area, but we know there’s more, further to the northwest and there’s likely to be gold on our claims too. So our strategy for now is to stand pat and a wait for more information, which is not our usual way of doing things. Usually we’re charging ahead full steam, but we’re at now we’re going to bide our time and watch, wait and see what happens.
Maurice Jackson: Germane to this discussion, how do the prices of gold, silver, copper and uranium fit into this narrative?
Gregory B: Well, certainly Millrock has exposure to all of these metals. I know that the price of gold seems to have a large effect on availability of capital for junior explorers. When the price of gold is strong, there’s lots of capital available. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for copper, it often seems to have a lot to do with the price of gold. Millrock has seen good increase in the gold price lately. Everything I’m reading says that gold’s going to march up even higher and silver we’ll go with it. I hope they’re all right about that. And that will soon have a really favorable market in the coming years for those metals. Longer term, I’m a huge believer in copper. I just know it’s going to be a metal in huge demand and we’re happy to be looking for copper now too, for the future. And a uranium, well, it’s a beaten a down cycle a long time, but I’ve sure seen some active of bull markets in that metal over the years. And if there’s another one coming, Millrock and its shareholders are really going to benefit by virtue of the uranium deposit we own in New Mexico.
Maurice Jackson: Switching gears, Gregory, what do you see as the biggest challenge for Millrock resources and how do you mitigate that situation?
Gregory B: Our biggest challenge is a financing. We’re in a short cash position. How do we mitigate that? Well, the best way we can do it is to get more funding partners on our projects. And so we’re on a real push to get that done right now. We’ve got deals that look like they’re imminent in Sonora and Alaska. So that’s the best way. Ultimately we may have to raise funds through an equity financing again soon. So those are Millrock’s challenges right now, but I think there’s good solutions for them. Millrock presently has a pretty low share account all of which was in quite solid hands. There’s 67 million shares outstanding at present.
Maurice Jackson: Finally, what did I forget to ask?
Gregory B: Well, I don’t know if it’s something you forgot to ask, Maurice, but maybe something I forgot to mention. Millrock had acquired several great properties in British Columbia some years ago, and last year we rolled them all into a new company called Sojourn Exploration and found a great management team for that company. It has its own projects and so Millrock’s is a big shareholder of Sojourn Exploration. Those shares are worth the money right now, which helps Millrock shareholders, and we own royalties on three of those projects. So, we’ve reviewed internally what’s Sojourn all those projects recently and that it’s just a great portfolio and I know that team is going to have great success attracting other companies to fund drilling on them and make discoveries. So, this could be a real winner for Millrock and its shareholders.
Maurice Jackson: Mr. Beischer, for someone listening that wants to get more information on Millrock Resources, please share the contact details.
Gregory B: millrockresources.com and Melanee Henderson at 604-638-3164, in charge of investor relations, will be glad to talk to you or put the shareholders in direct touch with me.
Maurice Jackson: And as a reminder, Millrock Resources trades on the TSX.V, symbol MRO. Now, in the OTCQX, symbol, MLRKF. Millrock Resources is a sponsor of Proven and Probable and we are proud shareholders of Millrock Resources for the virtues conveyed in today’s message. And last but not least, please visit our website, provenandprobable.com, where we deliver mining insights and bullion sales. You may reach us at contact@provenandprobable.com.
Gregory Beischer and Chris Van Treeck of Millrock Resources, thank you for joining us today on Proven and Probable.
Maurice Jackson is the founder of Proven and Probable, a site that aims to enrich its subscribers through education in precious metals and junior mining companies that will enrich the world.
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Glad to have you both on the program to discuss an important announcement that may be quite significance for Millrock Resources. But before we begin, Mr. Beischer, for first time listeners, who is Millrock Resources?
Gregory B: Millrock is a project generator company. Alaska is home base for a lot of us and so we explore there and we also explore in Sonora state in northwestern Mexico, as well as the state of New Mexico and the southwest U.S. At Millrock we come up with early-stage exploration projects and then we make agreements with other exploration and mining companies to share the risk that’s involved in early-stage drilling. And the whole objective is to keep a systematically exploring continuous early exploring company that over time will make big discoveries that drives up Millrock’s share price without continuously diluting shareholders as with most exploration companies.
Maurice Jackson: Mr. Beischer, beginning in Mexico, please introduce us to the Millrock project portfolio.
Gregory B: In Sonora state, which is the northwestern part of Mexico (click here to view), Millrock holds advanced exploration projects, primarily focusing on Orogenic gold deposits, of which Sonora hosts some great examples, such as the Herradura multimillion ounce, probably around 9 million ounces, one of which is Newmont’s leading mine. We are in the right part of the world to be looking for these large gold deposits. Additionally, we target copper there, in particular porphyry coppers like the world-class Cananea-La Caridad belt, just south of the Arizona porphyry belt, probably a southern extension of the same cluster of the porphyry deposit. So, we like these types of deposits that can be exceptionally large and great metal producers.
We also explore in the state of New Mexico (click here to view), which is opened up as a much more open jurisdiction to mining. We acquired several years ago a uranium deposit in that state; we’ve sat on it to for these years without doing much work, biding our time until the uranium price improved. It turns out this year the uranium deposit also has a lot of vanadium in it, and potentially both metals could be mined together. We’re starting to get calls as people learned that we own this project. So, I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to make an agreement on it sometime soon. We also have a gold project in New Mexico and are lining up partners as we speak. But home base is Alaska, where we’ve got quite a number of gold and copper projects that have active exploration ongoing right now.
Maurice Jackson: And, gentlemen, let’s stay in Alaska, shall we? And, in particular, I want to focus on seven claim blocks owned by Millrock Resources, which may be direct beneficiaries regarding the press release issued on Feb. 12 by neighboring Northern Star Resources where it just released some exceptional exploration results on its Pogo gold mine. Chris, you are the senior project geologists on the Pogo West. Please take us to the Pogo gold mine and show us where it is in relation to Millrock resources, Pogo West.
Chris Van T: We are going to be in interior Alaska right next to the Pogo mine. Literally right next to the Pogo mine as photos from our property, you can see the mill, right here and this is for the last drilling campaign by the junior company that had it prior to Millrock. So we are right across the river from Pogo proper. Current exploration on the mine property is getting closer and closer to the Pogo mine, which was very recently purchased from Northern Star at a fair price, but it ended up equaling about $69 an ounce that they had to find already.
But it’s been a great asset for Sumitomo and now Northern Star, 12 years of production, nearly 4 million ounces produced and easily another 4 million ounces that they have in their reserve and resource prior to the update that they said they’d be releasing later this year based on their new drilling and the latest press release. So things are really ramping up there. And it’s been a great asset for those two companies. And Northern Star felt very highly of it and some of their promotional material they placed it as the third highest grade mines in North America. And they felt it was the eighth largest gold mine in the United States, based on its production and contained ounces.
Millrock’s Pogo West is located in Tintina Gold Belt in Alaska, which has some of the more prolific deposits in Alaska right now. The Pogo mine has about 8 million ounces contained gold. The Mother’s Fort Knox is up at 13 million ounces and, of course, the gargantuan Donlin Creek at 45 million ounces, as well as some smaller deposits that are still being explored heavily in the Yukon that I’m sure you’re aware of there, Coffee and White Gold and Brewery Creek.
Maurice Jackson: Chris, can you provide us with some additional context on the geology at the West Pogo Goodpaster region?
Chris Van T: Geologically, the Goodpaster district, which contains Pogo, is a nice chunk of the crust that’s broken up by a number of very large faults that are all related to the Tintina gold belt faults. And so, the Denali fault would be down here, that’s the southern boundary of the Tintina gold belt and the Tintina fault is up here. And so, it’s in an area of metamorphic rocks that has some very nice granitic intrusions in them, which would be the source of the fluids for the Pogo mine, as well as the other deposits in the district there.
Maurice Jackson: Chris, what can you share with us about the existing infrastructure?
Chris Van T: It’s fantastic access and infrastructure with the Pogo mine road running through the claim block. We have the permit to travel on that road. The nice claim block, which size is 7,500 hectors and, as I mentioned, it’s adjacent to the Pogo mine. Taking a look at what the Pogo mine looks like in a geologic model, specifically in a schematic cross section. The Pogo mine itself is exploiting and beneficiating low angle quartz veins, as well as high angle veins. So, the theory is that the fluids from the plutons travel up those steep faults and enter into the shallow dipping faults. And that’s where they have the gold veins in both the steep faults in the shallow faults.
And there are quartz veins with a small amount of sulfide minerals, arsenopyrite and as well as some bismuth minerals. And so, arsenic and bismuth along with gold are the fantastic pathfinder elements that we have at the surface. Those allow us to look at the soil samples and the rock samples at the surface and try to zone in on where the mineralization would be at depth. The surface features would be these high angle steep faults intercepting the soil profile.
These are the projections of the Pogo veins from the subsurface brought up and displayed on the surface. Northern Star Resources are mining these areas: South Pogo, Liese, North Zone and East Theits. There are large faults that break up the rocks and move them around.
Looking at this cross section towards the northeast are some high angle steep veins and they’re interpreted mineralized halo. Both these and the shallow dipping faults contain veins that are being mined right now at the Pogo mine. And an important thing to point out on are the steep faults tend to move the northwest side of the fault up relative to the southeast side, which would then bring this mineralization in the low angle faults closer to the surface, and that’s been repeated throughout the district and has a real boon to the Millrock properties.
Here’s a picture from the mine and we’re looking down the trace of the mine. The latest exploration on Pogo is across the river and right adjacent to our claim block.
In 2017, they made a fantastic discovery of another vein of minable width. And on the other side of the river. The Goodpaster vein had very nice thicknesses and it dips in the same direction of previous veins. Northern Star Resources made this discovery based on reinterpretation of its subsurface imaging that uses a resistivity method called CSAMT, (Controlled Source Audio Magnetotellurics), the image conductive properties of the rocks. The company decided that the break rate here and the conductive properties of the rocks represented the base of a vein and the drilling in 2017 revealed this low angle vein that the 2007 drilling didn’t reach because they didn’t have this reinterpreted imaging.
The vein that they intercepted, a low angle vein Quartz gold Arsenopyrite, and it had a very nice minable width of 5.3 meters at 60 grams. So, this is very similar, nearly identical to what was being mined already in the Liese veins South Pogo, east steeps north zone on the eastern side of the river. Now on the western side of the river, they have nearly identical mineralization with the exact same orientation. So they’re very excited that the vein system that they’ve been mining for 12 years exists on the west side of the river.
The Fun Zone is this area in here on their plan map, so this would be looking down over the mine. The river is a visible in the satellite imagery from a northeast view, as we look this cross section. Once again, these high angel steep faults bring the northwest western side up.
Maurice Jackson: Chris, if I may interrupt you with the shift in the fault zones, how does it benefit Millrock?
Chris Van T: It brings the mineralization closer to surface. This area here is a big part of their latest press release; Northern Star Resources is calling it the Central Lode System and it feels that it’s a significant extension of both the Liese zone and Fun zone vein sets within the same overall large, mildly dipping faults that contain these veins. And so, this same process that’s bringing things up all throughout the district is that work on the western side of the river adjacent to the Millrock claims.
These red lines represent those steep folks that make and bring the northwestern side up relative to the southeastern side. And this red line represents that Goodpaster Structural Zone. The Goodpaster Prospect that has been explored aggressively by Pogo in the last two years is in between two other of these large steeply dipping faults. And so, it’s a fairly contiguous block and it’s about the same distance between the Goodpaster Structural Zone and the South Pogo Zone. And so, this matches very well geologically with what we would expect to see on these high angle faults. Northern Star Resources claim boundary and the latest exploration road is very close to our claim boundaries within 420 meters of our claim boundary now. Not only at an exploration road but also some of its large drill pads and it is drilling in the area.
Maurice Jackson: Does Northern Star Resources have any drilling planned this year near Millrock’s claim blocks?
Chris Van T: Northern Star Resources are exploring very close. It has got some drill holes planned for this year in the summertime within 90 meters of the claims boundary right here in the north. And so, Pogo is knocking at the door of the Millrock claims of their exploration. Their Central Lode and that’s what was in the press release (click here) that came out Feb. 12. And so, this area right in here is where they have released their new spectacular results and subsequent definition of resource coming this August from the press release. From a real estate standpoint, Millrock is very well placed within what’s going on with the Pogo mine exploration. And we feel that the rest of our geologic knowledge in the area as well as the information purchase from other parties leads me to believe that those veins extend onto the middle rock properties.
Maurice Jackson: Northern Star Resources had an active drill program near the Millrock claim blocks last year. Do we know any of the results? And also, do we know what their aspirations are in the area for 2019?
Chris Van T: Here are some photos in September of their exploration in that area. Very large drill pads, large rigs drilling, multiple drill holes. Northern Star Resources 2019 planned holes which are to start in February so they could well be underway as we speak. They are drilling off what appears to be a substantial resource of those low angle veins. Once again, just to remind you of 5.3 meters at 60 grams per tonne drilled and released in this area here. No other drill results or any of this drilling has been made public as of yet, but they are getting closer and closer to our claim boundary in this trajectory right here.
This is a photo from our claims looking back to the mine and here is that Goodpaster Structural Zone that they’ve named it. And so right now they’ve defined their new Central Lodes would be filling this area basically from their road here to this structural zone where they’ve defined basically a new extension of the mine right up to this fault and they’re getting ready to go and move some headings into there and continue to explore that from underground. So they’re moving mine infrastructure from the Liese zone, right up to this Structural zone. And as I mentioned, the Goodpaster Prospect is just the other side of that and is actually had the veins that are being explored for in the area brought closer to the surface because of the faults and how they always bring the northwestern side up, very close to our claim boundary.
Let’s take a look at a magnetic survey image that the state survey ran in 2000. Here are the Pogo veins brought to surface. Note these veins occur outside of this purple magnetic high, within a magnetic low relative to the rest of the area. There are more of these on the other side of this large high angle fault throughout the Millrock claim boundary as well as here in the Goodpaster Prospect.
This is the area they’re drilling and right now, predominantly in this magnetic low that’s very similar to what they have on the north side of their mine. They’ve got a diorite within the mine that’s magnetic and there’s one on the Millrock claims that’s magnetic as well with the same magnetic lows surrounding it. So, from a geologic standpoint, these are nearly identical features. The fact that they’re drilling and this one here as well as this mag lode to the north, lead me to believe that the geologic model at the mine is readily applicable on the other side of that high angle, steep fault called the Goodpaster Structural Zone. So I feel that the Millrock claims are very highly prospective for the extension of the vein. Placing our soil and rock samples on top of the magnetics, they illustrate how in those areas of magnetics, we have great gold samples and they are oriented more or less in a northeast, southwest fashion, which is the same as what’s going on over here on the mine property.
They have a northeast southwest orientation to their gold and soil sample. We have the same orientation on our property. These are most likely caused by unmapped equally dipping fault such as this one here, which helps those fluids from the magmatic intrusion at depth, get them to the surface into the soil profile. Arsenic has a coincident anomaly and so does bismuth. And so our pathfinder elements that match the Pogo mineralization of gold in our arsenopyrite with bismuth minerals are all present on the Millrock properties.
Maurice Jackson: Let’s add some geometry to the discussion.
Chris Van T: This here is the location of that Goodpaster vein, the 5.3 meters at 60 grams. Northern Star Resources has stated the vein was oriented with a strike of 240 degrees and the dip of 35 to the northwest. Plotting that strike line is would be where the vein would be the same elevation all the way across. It brings us very close to past drilling in our area. Past drilling was situated in that area of fantastic gold, soil, and rock anomalies that are all showing the interaction of those steep faults that carried the fluids with the soil. The vein intercepted within these drill holes have been narrow quartz arsenopyrite veins. And the assays returned good arsenic bismuth silver. They have the same style of alteration of Pogo there. And the angles intercept in there would indicate that these veins are steeply dipping.
So, exactly along the model lines of the steeply dipping faults springing the fluids up towards the surface. All of those faults have been intercepted in these drill holes. The difference between here and what’s going on at Pogo is that these drill holes did not get deep enough to intersect those shallowly dipping veins such as the hole reflecting 5.3 meters at 60 grams. That’s due to the higher elevation where are these drill holes where collared as well as the dip along the vein. The deepest hole over here at the very end of the hole, only got down to 350 meters above sea level. The vein was intercepted at 230 meters above sea level. So when all things being consistent, this hole ended 120 meters vertically above where we would expect to see the flat and veins.
To bring this back into the Pogo model, the exact same thing happened on the Pogo property in 2007. Norther Star Resources drilled and intercepted steeply dipping veins that contain gold, arsenopyrite and bismuth; they did not reach the flat line veins. The hole did not go deep enough. The same thing went on the west Pogo claims.
The drilling so far at West Pogo has just gotten into the top of these steeply dipping veins. I believe that the shallow dipping veins are there at depth, that the soil and rock anomalies at the surface coupled with the drilling show that we haven’t reached the depth of those flat veins to date and that a few holes of deeper drilling could readily intersect these veins at the depth and an extension of the mine mineralization on the Millrock Claims.
Maurice Jackson: What initiatives will Millrock take to de-risk the West Pogo property?
Chris Van T: That would be to do that imaging along these black lines here in order to do the same style imaging, the CSAMT or Resistivity imaging over this mag low that also has the good gold and rock samples on top of it. That would be one way to de-risk it. In order to know the depth you need to drill to in order to find the extension of this mineralization that’s on the Pogo claims.
Millrock believes that the West Pogo property has not been explored properly to depth. It’s got the exact same magnetic signature as the mine proper. The surface geochemistry and the drill hole geochemistry have all the attributes to indicate that mine style mineralization is located on the property. Northern Star Resources is currently exploring, right against our claim boundary and we’ve got established access with the mine road running right through the property. And so very positive factors for the West Pogo property.
Maurice Jackson: Gregory, this may be premature, but should we continue to have favorable outcomes such as this press release? How does this impact Millrock’s strategy?
Gregory B: Well, I think one of the more remarkable things about the statements from Northern Star is the exceptional grade of the drilling intersections that they’ve discovered at this Central Lode’s area. And we’re pretty sure they’re finding similar things at their new Goodpaster discovery, which is very close to Millrock’s West Pogo project. If an ore body of that grade does trend right onto Millrock’s claims, I think it’s going to make a tremendous difference in the price of Millrock stock. We’re trading today around 10 cents Canadian. And I think, just fortuitously, if that deposit comes onto our claims, it’s going to make a big difference for our company and for our shareholders.
We have stuck rigorously to our business model over the 12 years we’ve be in the operation. We’ve always got a partner on a project before it got to the drilling stage. Right now, we’re faced with the possibility that our neighbor, Northern Star at Pogo, has discovered an ore body that comes right on to our claims. And so, we might take a different view at this point since we presently have not made an agreement on the claims and we own it 100%. So, it’s possible that we would actually pursue this claim ourselves, but it’s not determined yet. And in fact, right now our best strategy is to wait and see what Northern Star has discovered. Eventually they’ll tell us more about their Goodpaster discovery.
What they announced on Feb. 12 was really interesting. I think they’re going to make a fortune from their purchase of the Pogo mine. They’re great miners and great explorers clearly. And they’ve had some great success of finding the new Central Lode’s area, but we know there’s more, further to the northwest and there’s likely to be gold on our claims too. So our strategy for now is to stand pat and a wait for more information, which is not our usual way of doing things. Usually we’re charging ahead full steam, but we’re at now we’re going to bide our time and watch, wait and see what happens.
Maurice Jackson: Germane to this discussion, how do the prices of gold, silver, copper and uranium fit into this narrative?
Gregory B: Well, certainly Millrock has exposure to all of these metals. I know that the price of gold seems to have a large effect on availability of capital for junior explorers. When the price of gold is strong, there’s lots of capital available. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for copper, it often seems to have a lot to do with the price of gold. Millrock has seen good increase in the gold price lately. Everything I’m reading says that gold’s going to march up even higher and silver we’ll go with it. I hope they’re all right about that. And that will soon have a really favorable market in the coming years for those metals. Longer term, I’m a huge believer in copper. I just know it’s going to be a metal in huge demand and we’re happy to be looking for copper now too, for the future. And a uranium, well, it’s a beaten a down cycle a long time, but I’ve sure seen some active of bull markets in that metal over the years. And if there’s another one coming, Millrock and its shareholders are really going to benefit by virtue of the uranium deposit we own in New Mexico.
Maurice Jackson: Switching gears, Gregory, what do you see as the biggest challenge for Millrock resources and how do you mitigate that situation?
Gregory B: Our biggest challenge is a financing. We’re in a short cash position. How do we mitigate that? Well, the best way we can do it is to get more funding partners on our projects. And so we’re on a real push to get that done right now. We’ve got deals that look like they’re imminent in Sonora and Alaska. So that’s the best way. Ultimately we may have to raise funds through an equity financing again soon. So those are Millrock’s challenges right now, but I think there’s good solutions for them. Millrock presently has a pretty low share account all of which was in quite solid hands. There’s 67 million shares outstanding at present.
Maurice Jackson: Finally, what did I forget to ask?
Gregory B: Well, I don’t know if it’s something you forgot to ask, Maurice, but maybe something I forgot to mention. Millrock had acquired several great properties in British Columbia some years ago, and last year we rolled them all into a new company called Sojourn Exploration and found a great management team for that company. It has its own projects and so Millrock’s is a big shareholder of Sojourn Exploration. Those shares are worth the money right now, which helps Millrock shareholders, and we own royalties on three of those projects. So, we’ve reviewed internally what’s Sojourn all those projects recently and that it’s just a great portfolio and I know that team is going to have great success attracting other companies to fund drilling on them and make discoveries. So, this could be a real winner for Millrock and its shareholders.
Maurice Jackson: Mr. Beischer, for someone listening that wants to get more information on Millrock Resources, please share the contact details.
Gregory B: millrockresources.com and Melanee Henderson at 604-638-3164, in charge of investor relations, will be glad to talk to you or put the shareholders in direct touch with me.
Maurice Jackson: And as a reminder, Millrock Resources trades on the TSX.V, symbol MRO. Now, in the OTCQX, symbol, MLRKF. Millrock Resources is a sponsor of Proven and Probable and we are proud shareholders of Millrock Resources for the virtues conveyed in today’s message. And last but not least, please visit our website, provenandprobable.com, where we deliver mining insights and bullion sales. You may reach us at contact@provenandprobable.com.
Gregory Beischer and Chris Van Treeck of Millrock Resources, thank you for joining us today on Proven and Probable.
Maurice Jackson is the founder of Proven and Probable, a site that aims to enrich its subscribers through education in precious metals and junior mining companies that will enrich the world.
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1) Gregory Beischer: I, or members of my immediate household or family, own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: Millrock Resources. I personally am, or members of my immediate household or family are, paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: Millrock Resources.
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Dr. John-Mark Staude of President and CEO of Riverside Resources (TSX: RRI | OTC: RVSDF) sits down with Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable to discuss the company’s successes in 2018 and the projected catalyst’s for 2019. Dr. Staude will provide updates on a number of fronts, new exiting opportunities that look into significantly increase shareholder value.
VIDEO
AUDIO
TRANSCRIPT
Original Source: https://www.streetwisereports.com/article/2019/02/19/prospect-generator-plans-to-expand-jurisdictions.html
Source: Maurice Jackson for Streetwise Reports (2/19/19)
John-Mark Staude, president and CEO of Riverside Resources, talks with Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable about successes in 2018 and the outlook for 2019.
Maurice Jackson: Joining us for a conversation is Dr. John-Mark Staude, the president and CEO of Riverside Resources Inc. (RRI:TSX.V; RVSDF:OTCQB), where knowledge is golden. Dr. Staude, welcome to the show, sir.
John-Mark Staude: Thank you, Maurice.
Maurice Jackson: We brought you on today to highlight some of Riverside Resources successes of last year and the company’s outlook for 2019. But before we begin, for first time listeners who is Riverside Resources?
John-Mark Staude: Riverside is a prospect generator. We’ve been working for 12 years, finding projects and finding partners through the prospect generator business. We’ve been able to expose ourselves to great upside while limiting the downside risk.
Maurice Jackson: You referenced that you are a prospect generator. There’s a lot of ambiguity regarding prospect/project generators, therefore speculators often overlook them in their portfolio. What type of competitive advantages does a shareholder have with a project generator over traditional exploration companies?
John-Mark Staude: I think the first thing is you’ve got a tight share structure, key that other people are spending the money. The second is you get a lot of shots, multiple different projects going simultaneously. Third is you don’t have the management teams that have to continually go back and refinance, so they can be focused on discovery for the shareholders. Those three things make prospect generators one of the better ways to invest in mineral exploration.
Maurice Jackson: Let’s revisit 2018 and share some of the successes of Riverside Resources that will serve as catalysts for 2019.
John-Mark Staude: I think the first thing was that we were able to leverage off of our previous work on copper, so that in 2019 we’ll be able to generate new big strategic alliances. I think the second thing was we signed a letter of intent with Sinaloa Resources, and now in 2019 we’ll have the definitive agreement and the go forward drill program. I think a third thing was the work that we did on Cecilia. High-grade gold mineralization, very good geology. Now in 2019 we can see drilling. So we have lots of catalysts in 2019. We’re really excited about this coming year.
Maurice Jackson: Speaking of 2019, let’s discuss the outlook for this year. What is new and what does Riverside Resources have planned this year?
John-Mark Staude: I believe one of the key things is a new strategic alliance. Getting a strategic partner will be awesome, and I think we have that in our sights. I think the second thing will be drilling. We have now got a definitive agreement progressing with Sinaloa Resources, and we’ll have additional new assets added into the portfolio. We’ll also diversify beyond Mexico. We’ve done well in Mexico, but we’ve also been successful previously in porphyry coppers in Canada and large gold systems in Arizona, and I think in 2019 we’ll again see us diversify beyond Mexico to capture great new opportunities.
Maurice Jackson: I want to expand further on the value preposition of Riverside Resources here. Germane to this discussion are the prices of gold, silver and copper. Twofold question. What are some of the catalysts you see that will change these prices, and what type of impact can we expect that this will have on Riverside Resources?
John-Mark Staude: One of the catalysts we see now is some of the uncertainty around trade and some of the uncertainty particularly in the gold price and with this gold price we actually see that has been rising up; that for us is excellent. We have gold assets in the ground, and gold potential to grow. So I think the gold will be a really key way to do this.
Maurice Jackson: Let’s be a little bit more specific for current and prospective shareholders. What type of competitive advantages does Riverside Resources have in the natural resource space included in this discussion with the prices moving?
John-Mark Staude: One of the competitive advantages we have is knowledge. We have knowledge, we have been able to find gold. We’ve been able to find copper. We’ve been successful. We’ve worked in this region and made discoveries that have then been built into mines. That’s a competitive advantage. The second is we’re all running. We’re in the position, we didn’t have to stop during the downturn times. We’ve been able to continually keep the same strong technical people. I know, Maurice, you’ve actually been out to site, other people come out to site. We can really demonstrate out on site the great development and ease to do the work. I think our turnkey ability has been shown by strategic alliances we’ve done in the past, and many projects we’ve been able to turn over. So in 2019, that creates great chance for catalyst rising gold prices, with potentially rising copper prices, with copper demand from electric cars, other copper usage. Riverside’s in an awesomely great position.
Maurice Jackson: Speaking of site visits, yes, I was there in April 2018 at the Cecilia, and I noticed there a lot of the intangibles that don’t show up on the balance sheet. Could you share some of those with us?
John-Mark Staude: I think one of the ones is relationships. When you come out to the site you can see how well we get along with the local people. I think the second is ease of access, you can see that we have the gate keys, we have the ease to get to the projects, paved roads into the area’s infrastructure. It’s so easy to look at a map, but in reality when you go out and see that you can drive on paved roads, when you have power lines, when you have water, when you have all of that stuff. I think the other intangible is our team. When you can see that we have the people in the back of our company that do the work for many other supporting groups, can really do a good work. Riverside has a sought-after team. I think those are in some of the intangibles that really make Riverside unique.
Maurice Jackson: Speaking of your team, a lot of them are seasoned in their tenure. Talk to us about how many years they’ve been with Riverside.
John-Mark Staude: Riverside’s been going 12 years and some of them been going with us ever since the beginning. Many of them have worked with me before Riverside. I used to work at Teck Resources, prior to that at BHP, and even prior to that back in the 1990s at Magma Copper, and some of these individuals that work with me today worked with me back then. We’ve been friends up to 30 years, and we’ve been able to be involved and we therefore we know we have trust, we know what we can count on, and we know we have the skills that deliver excellent projects, and the excellence to trust in what we’re doing.
Maurice Jackson: Speaking of Mexico, there’s a new president. What type of impact do you foresee the new administration having on Riverside Resources?
John-Mark Staude: It’s interesting, we were a bit concerned initially, back when the elections happened, hearing about socialist different movements and things, but really interesting, since December 1st when he’s been elected, it’s actually been pro capitalism, pro-development. There continue to be noises going back and forth about different issues, and they’ll have to get settled out. But we’re actually quite positive about the new president AMLO, and we’re also quite president about his words and efforts that he says towards helping develop favorability towards investments. So, we actually see that this new administration will be able to be a good push for the mining industry. We’re pretty pleased with what’s happening now.
Maurice Jackson: Switching gears slightly, to make the Riverside Resources project portfolio come to fruition, joint venture partners have to be willing to commit to projects. What is their current level of commitment that Riverside Resources is seeing right now?
John-Mark Staude: Right now, the first thing is the really big strategic alliance we have coming. Second is a drill program and funding with Sinaloa Resources. We’ll come up with the news release coming out quickly here as we finalize the definitive agreement, which we’ve not yet finalized, but we’ll get that done, and that’ll actually be a major program. We’ll also find that we have work on the copper, gold and silver assets, and we’re working on spinning out our transaction for one of our other properties. So, we actually see quite a few number of flows of capital coming in, and quite a few catalysts in 2019 due to the partner spending.
Maurice Jackson: You touched on it briefly, how does amalgamation fit into this narrative, and how realistic is the proposition of amalgamation?
John-Mark Staude: So at this point what we’re talking about is actually taking one of our assets into another company. We’ve been working on it now. Two aspects, one is the capital and the other is the other party, the ability and interest to be able to carry it forward. We’re working on that now, and I think it’s fairly realistic to do. It’s not something that we’ve put all of our eggs into, but it would be a great step for Riverside to give our shareholders another set of shares, another strategic way of increasing shareholder value. I think we have the right team on the other side. This will be a really exciting transaction going forward.
Maurice Jackson: John-Mark, what do you see as the biggest challenge for Riverside Resources, and how would you mitigate that situation?
John-Mark Staude: One of the big challenges is getting more partners in Mexico, and the way we’re mitigating it is by doing work again outside of Mexico, and by doing that we have our skills and we have Freeman Smith, our Vice President, Exploration, lives in Vancouver, knows the Canadian portfolios and Canadian assets, and we live in Vancouver, Canada, so it really fits for us to be able to diversify. That diversification really helps our shareholders as well. It helps us being in Mexico, and leveraging off of our knowledge in other places as well, using our skills. We’re in a great position for 2019.
Maurice Jackson: Let’s touch on the capital structure here briefly. John-Mark, Riverside has a proven record of being a good steward of capital. Remind us how many shares outstanding there are, enterprise value, and where does the company stand financially?
John-Mark Staude: Riverside has almost 45 million shares out, after going for 12 years. That’s remarkable. Financially, we have $1.5 million cash, and the market is actually very low right now. So myself, I’m buying more shares. We’re at a low in the market conditions right now, and I think there’s great upside right now. Our enterprise value is only $5 million. Our market cap is $7 million. We’re in a good situation to have a good leverage to the upside now.
Maurice Jackson: Last question. What did I forget to ask?
John-Mark Staude: Well, you always ask great questions. I think one of the other things is what do we actually see in the next news release? I think the next news release for us will be the signing of a deal. Signing of deals is great. Those are the momentum steps that we like. Also, the addition of a new asset. We’re excited by that. So I think we have two new things coming on, short term, that will really make a difference for Riverside.
Maurice Jackson: Dr. Staude, for someone listening that wants to get more information on Riverside Resources, please share the contact details.
John-Mark Staude: We’re at www.rivres.com, or give us a call at (778) 327-6671.
Maurice Jackson: As a reminder, Riverside Resources trades on the TSX, symbol RRI, and on the OTCQB, symbol RVSDF. As reminder, Riverside Resources is a sponsor of Proven and Probable, and we are proud shareholders of Riverside Resources for the virtues conveyed in today’s message. And last but not least, please visit our website, provenandprobable.com, where we deliver mining insights and bullion sales. You may reach us at contact@provenandprobable.com.
Dr. John-Mark Staude of Riverside Resources, thank you for joining us today on Proven and Probable.
Maurice Jackson is the founder of Proven and Probable, a site that aims to enrich its subscribers through education in precious metals and junior mining companies that will enrich the world.
John-Mark Staude: Thank you, Maurice.
Maurice Jackson: We brought you on today to highlight some of Riverside Resources successes of last year and the company’s outlook for 2019. But before we begin, for first time listeners who is Riverside Resources?
John-Mark Staude: Riverside is a prospect generator. We’ve been working for 12 years, finding projects and finding partners through the prospect generator business. We’ve been able to expose ourselves to great upside while limiting the downside risk.
Maurice Jackson: You referenced that you are a prospect generator. There’s a lot of ambiguity regarding prospect/project generators, therefore speculators often overlook them in their portfolio. What type of competitive advantages does a shareholder have with a project generator over traditional exploration companies?
John-Mark Staude: I think the first thing is you’ve got a tight share structure, key that other people are spending the money. The second is you get a lot of shots, multiple different projects going simultaneously. Third is you don’t have the management teams that have to continually go back and refinance, so they can be focused on discovery for the shareholders. Those three things make prospect generators one of the better ways to invest in mineral exploration.
Maurice Jackson: Let’s revisit 2018 and share some of the successes of Riverside Resources that will serve as catalysts for 2019.
John-Mark Staude: I think the first thing was that we were able to leverage off of our previous work on copper, so that in 2019 we’ll be able to generate new big strategic alliances. I think the second thing was we signed a letter of intent with Sinaloa Resources, and now in 2019 we’ll have the definitive agreement and the go forward drill program. I think a third thing was the work that we did on Cecilia. High-grade gold mineralization, very good geology. Now in 2019 we can see drilling. So we have lots of catalysts in 2019. We’re really excited about this coming year.
Maurice Jackson: Speaking of 2019, let’s discuss the outlook for this year. What is new and what does Riverside Resources have planned this year?
John-Mark Staude: I believe one of the key things is a new strategic alliance. Getting a strategic partner will be awesome, and I think we have that in our sights. I think the second thing will be drilling. We have now got a definitive agreement progressing with Sinaloa Resources, and we’ll have additional new assets added into the portfolio. We’ll also diversify beyond Mexico. We’ve done well in Mexico, but we’ve also been successful previously in porphyry coppers in Canada and large gold systems in Arizona, and I think in 2019 we’ll again see us diversify beyond Mexico to capture great new opportunities.
Maurice Jackson: I want to expand further on the value preposition of Riverside Resources here. Germane to this discussion are the prices of gold, silver and copper. Twofold question. What are some of the catalysts you see that will change these prices, and what type of impact can we expect that this will have on Riverside Resources?
John-Mark Staude: One of the catalysts we see now is some of the uncertainty around trade and some of the uncertainty particularly in the gold price and with this gold price we actually see that has been rising up; that for us is excellent. We have gold assets in the ground, and gold potential to grow. So I think the gold will be a really key way to do this.
Maurice Jackson: Let’s be a little bit more specific for current and prospective shareholders. What type of competitive advantages does Riverside Resources have in the natural resource space included in this discussion with the prices moving?
John-Mark Staude: One of the competitive advantages we have is knowledge. We have knowledge, we have been able to find gold. We’ve been able to find copper. We’ve been successful. We’ve worked in this region and made discoveries that have then been built into mines. That’s a competitive advantage. The second is we’re all running. We’re in the position, we didn’t have to stop during the downturn times. We’ve been able to continually keep the same strong technical people. I know, Maurice, you’ve actually been out to site, other people come out to site. We can really demonstrate out on site the great development and ease to do the work. I think our turnkey ability has been shown by strategic alliances we’ve done in the past, and many projects we’ve been able to turn over. So in 2019, that creates great chance for catalyst rising gold prices, with potentially rising copper prices, with copper demand from electric cars, other copper usage. Riverside’s in an awesomely great position.
Maurice Jackson: Speaking of site visits, yes, I was there in April 2018 at the Cecilia, and I noticed there a lot of the intangibles that don’t show up on the balance sheet. Could you share some of those with us?
John-Mark Staude: I think one of the ones is relationships. When you come out to the site you can see how well we get along with the local people. I think the second is ease of access, you can see that we have the gate keys, we have the ease to get to the projects, paved roads into the area’s infrastructure. It’s so easy to look at a map, but in reality when you go out and see that you can drive on paved roads, when you have power lines, when you have water, when you have all of that stuff. I think the other intangible is our team. When you can see that we have the people in the back of our company that do the work for many other supporting groups, can really do a good work. Riverside has a sought-after team. I think those are in some of the intangibles that really make Riverside unique.
Maurice Jackson: Speaking of your team, a lot of them are seasoned in their tenure. Talk to us about how many years they’ve been with Riverside.
John-Mark Staude: Riverside’s been going 12 years and some of them been going with us ever since the beginning. Many of them have worked with me before Riverside. I used to work at Teck Resources, prior to that at BHP, and even prior to that back in the 1990s at Magma Copper, and some of these individuals that work with me today worked with me back then. We’ve been friends up to 30 years, and we’ve been able to be involved and we therefore we know we have trust, we know what we can count on, and we know we have the skills that deliver excellent projects, and the excellence to trust in what we’re doing.
Maurice Jackson: Speaking of Mexico, there’s a new president. What type of impact do you foresee the new administration having on Riverside Resources?
John-Mark Staude: It’s interesting, we were a bit concerned initially, back when the elections happened, hearing about socialist different movements and things, but really interesting, since December 1st when he’s been elected, it’s actually been pro capitalism, pro-development. There continue to be noises going back and forth about different issues, and they’ll have to get settled out. But we’re actually quite positive about the new president AMLO, and we’re also quite president about his words and efforts that he says towards helping develop favorability towards investments. So, we actually see that this new administration will be able to be a good push for the mining industry. We’re pretty pleased with what’s happening now.
Maurice Jackson: Switching gears slightly, to make the Riverside Resources project portfolio come to fruition, joint venture partners have to be willing to commit to projects. What is their current level of commitment that Riverside Resources is seeing right now?
John-Mark Staude: Right now, the first thing is the really big strategic alliance we have coming. Second is a drill program and funding with Sinaloa Resources. We’ll come up with the news release coming out quickly here as we finalize the definitive agreement, which we’ve not yet finalized, but we’ll get that done, and that’ll actually be a major program. We’ll also find that we have work on the copper, gold and silver assets, and we’re working on spinning out our transaction for one of our other properties. So, we actually see quite a few number of flows of capital coming in, and quite a few catalysts in 2019 due to the partner spending.
Maurice Jackson: You touched on it briefly, how does amalgamation fit into this narrative, and how realistic is the proposition of amalgamation?
John-Mark Staude: So at this point what we’re talking about is actually taking one of our assets into another company. We’ve been working on it now. Two aspects, one is the capital and the other is the other party, the ability and interest to be able to carry it forward. We’re working on that now, and I think it’s fairly realistic to do. It’s not something that we’ve put all of our eggs into, but it would be a great step for Riverside to give our shareholders another set of shares, another strategic way of increasing shareholder value. I think we have the right team on the other side. This will be a really exciting transaction going forward.
Maurice Jackson: John-Mark, what do you see as the biggest challenge for Riverside Resources, and how would you mitigate that situation?
John-Mark Staude: One of the big challenges is getting more partners in Mexico, and the way we’re mitigating it is by doing work again outside of Mexico, and by doing that we have our skills and we have Freeman Smith, our Vice President, Exploration, lives in Vancouver, knows the Canadian portfolios and Canadian assets, and we live in Vancouver, Canada, so it really fits for us to be able to diversify. That diversification really helps our shareholders as well. It helps us being in Mexico, and leveraging off of our knowledge in other places as well, using our skills. We’re in a great position for 2019.
Maurice Jackson: Let’s touch on the capital structure here briefly. John-Mark, Riverside has a proven record of being a good steward of capital. Remind us how many shares outstanding there are, enterprise value, and where does the company stand financially?
John-Mark Staude: Riverside has almost 45 million shares out, after going for 12 years. That’s remarkable. Financially, we have $1.5 million cash, and the market is actually very low right now. So myself, I’m buying more shares. We’re at a low in the market conditions right now, and I think there’s great upside right now. Our enterprise value is only $5 million. Our market cap is $7 million. We’re in a good situation to have a good leverage to the upside now.
Maurice Jackson: Last question. What did I forget to ask?
John-Mark Staude: Well, you always ask great questions. I think one of the other things is what do we actually see in the next news release? I think the next news release for us will be the signing of a deal. Signing of deals is great. Those are the momentum steps that we like. Also, the addition of a new asset. We’re excited by that. So I think we have two new things coming on, short term, that will really make a difference for Riverside.
Maurice Jackson: Dr. Staude, for someone listening that wants to get more information on Riverside Resources, please share the contact details.
John-Mark Staude: We’re at www.rivres.com, or give us a call at (778) 327-6671.
Maurice Jackson: As a reminder, Riverside Resources trades on the TSX, symbol RRI, and on the OTCQB, symbol RVSDF. As reminder, Riverside Resources is a sponsor of Proven and Probable, and we are proud shareholders of Riverside Resources for the virtues conveyed in today’s message. And last but not least, please visit our website, provenandprobable.com, where we deliver mining insights and bullion sales. You may reach us at contact@provenandprobable.com.
Dr. John-Mark Staude of Riverside Resources, thank you for joining us today on Proven and Probable.
Maurice Jackson is the founder of Proven and Probable, a site that aims to enrich its subscribers through education in precious metals and junior mining companies that will enrich the world.
Disclosure:
1) Maurice Jackson: I, or members of my immediate household or family, own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: Riverside Resources. I personally am, or members of my immediate household or family are, paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None. My company has a financial relationship with the following companies mentioned in this article: Riverside Resources is a sponsor of Proven and Probable. Proven and Probable disclosures are listed below.
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Renaissance Gold (REN)
Last month I gave a speech at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference, in which I talked about why most of the questions asked and discussed at mining conferences are erroneous and have nothing to do with making money from investing in mining.
My interest is not in speculating in commodities or to look for leverage, both of which are utterly disastrous to my capital, but to invest in mining for the upside that I see in terms of the value in the ground that has escaped the attention of the market. Also, I want to ensure that I provide downside support to my portfolio. When one focuses on protecting one’s capital, the upside takes care of itself:
The companies I mentioned in the speech are also linked here.
On investments…
Renaissance Gold (REN; C$0.175) is a company I have written about in the past. Last month, REN entered into an agreement with OceanaGold, and another with Hochschild. In my view, just these two agreements more than justify the enterprise value of REN. REN has option agreements on ten other projects with companies like Kinross, Anglo Gold, Ramelius, Coeur, etc. Moreover, REN is well cashed up.
Finally, if you have not already registered, tickets for the next Capitalism & Morality are going away fast. Of course, this is a philosophy seminar, but in my view, philosophy underpins everything in life.
Warm regards,
Jayant Bhandari
Associate: Rajni Bala
Disclaimer: All information found here, including any ideas, opinions, views, predictions, forecasts, commentaries, suggestions, or stock picks, expressed or implied herein, are for informational, entertainment or educational purposes only and should not be construed as personal investment advice. While the information provided is believed to be accurate, it may include errors or inaccuracies. The sole purpose of these musings is to show my thinking process when analyzing a stock, not to provide any recommendation. I will not and cannot be held liable for any actions you take as a result of anything you read here. Conduct your own due diligence, or consult a licensed financial advisor or broker before making any and all investment decisions. Any investments, trades, speculations, or decisions made on the basis of any information found on this site, expressed or implied herein, are committed at your own risk, financial or otherwise.
Michael Rowley of President and CEO of Group Ten Metals (TSX: PGE) sits down with Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable to discuss the company’s latest press release regarding the High-Grade Palladium, Platinum, and Gold results from the Wild West and Boulder Target Areas, which are the beginning 2 out of 14 Target Area results. Shareholders will be extremely impressed with the company’s findings.
VIDEO
AUDIO
https://soundcloud.com/proven-and-probable/is-montana-home-to-a-platreef-style-deposit
TRANSCRIPT
Source: Maurice Jackson for Streetwise Reports (2/7/19)
Michael Rowley, president and CEO of Group Ten Metals, sits down with Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable to discuss his company’s recent drill results at its Montana PGE project that is also showing significant gold mineralization.
Maurice Jackson: Joining Proven and Probable today is Michael Rowley, president and CEO of Group Ten Metals Inc. (PGE:TSX.V; PGEZF:OTC), which is known for platinum, palladium, nickel, copper and cobalt in the prolific Stillwater district of Montana. Mr. Rowley, welcome to the show.
Michael Rowley: Thank you, Maurice, glad to be back.
Maurice Jackson: Glad to have you back, sir. In 2018, Group Ten Metals began its first season on the ground and identified 14 target areas on its flagship project, Stillwater West. Today, we have the results from 2 of the 14 target areas, which are quite impressive. But before we begin, for someone new to the story, who is Group Ten Metals and what is the thesis you are attempting to prove?
Michael Rowley: At the very highest level, we are applying geologic models that were developed at the world’s biggest and most economic platinum, nickel and copper mines. These are the mines of the Northern Bushveld or Platreef District in South Africa. We’re applying those models to the Stillwater Complex in Montana, and this has not been done systematically before. The Bushveld and Stillwater Complexes are both large Igneous Complexes, they’re both magmatic systems, and there are many known parallels between the two. Despite those parallels, we are the first to bring together a large land position with a truly fantastic database and then bring in this Platreef expertise to enable a systematic exploration for these massive deposit types at Stillwater. In discussing that expertise, it’s worth noting that Ivanhoe’s Dr. David Broughton, who is one of the co-discoverers of its Platreef mine, which is now in development, joined our team late last year, which is a pretty good validation that we’re on the right track here in Stillwater.
Maurice Jackson: In our last interview, you shared the next unanswered question for Group Ten Metals would be assay results. On the 25th of January, Group Ten Metals issued a press release entitled “Group Ten reports high-grade palladium, platinum, and gold from the Wild West in Boulder target areas at the Stillwater West project, Montana.” Take us to the Wild West target area and provide us with some in-depth analysis on Group Ten Metals’ results there.
Michael Rowley: To begin, the press release issued on January 25, 2019, will be the first in a planned series and shareholders will see that the road map in the upper left corner of the image above. We’ve divided this 25-km-wide property into a series of target areas, and we’ll basically be releasing results west to east in the areas that you see. It’s the Chrome Mountain and Iron Mountain area that have the most drill results historically, that will be the subject of subsequent news releases here. In terms of the current news, it focused on the Boulder and Wild West, which are highlighted above, and the Wild West target area has the Platreef potential that we see property-wide is well-documented there historically. It also has the reef type, high-grade targets as shown in the red ellipses at the top of the claim block, and then it also has this high-grade gold occurrence, which is the Pine Shear zone, and that may be unexpected for some people, given that Stillwater camp is more generally known for palladium and platinum and nickel and copper, chrome. This is actually a significant area of gold mineralization and it’s got some spectacular hits.
In terms of the Platreef target, this conductive high that’s shown contains some very high level conductance in the rocks as evidenced by the purples and pinks. Historical drilling has shown that it does indeed contain copper and nickel, and that’s an excellent indication of a potential for this Platreef style mineralization. We also have some spectacular palladium hits, such as 10 gram per tonne palladium, very high grade, also with significant platinum that shows not only the level of mineralization in the system but also the potential for these high-grade reef-type deposits that, of course, the area is more known for. It’s worth noting that sitting just above the claim there is the 80 million ounce JM-Reef deposit, which averages a staggering 16 grams per tonne of palladium and platinum, so you know there’s a lot of metal in the system and this lower zone that we’re in continues that trend.
In addition to the high-grade samples summarized in this table, bottom left, we see some very good hits of palladium, platinum, and also some good indications of base metal mineralization, which again ties into that Platreef bulk mineable scenario. These are priorities for follow up in 2019 and we look forward to discussing that in further news releases.
The Pine Shear, which is noted above, has shown to contain gold. These 2004 hits were actually drilled by our current qualified person; they’re not considered historical, and confirm the presence of significant copper and nickel in that system although the conductive highs have not been tested and that’s one of our key items for follow up. These PC series of holes from 1983 show the potential of this Pine Shear zone, which is a later geologic event within the Stillwater layered system. Something has introduced a lot of gold to the system as shown by these fantastic lengths and mineralization, gold mineralization. We see, for example, 11 meters at 12 grams per tonne gold, which is a very high-grade hit and good length within that 8 meters at 16 grams per tonne, and then the hole PC5, 3 meters at a staggering 23 grams per tonne, that’s 2/3 of an ounce, so it’s very high-grade and nice lengths of it. That’s definitely something for follow up in 2019.
In addition, we’ve got grab samples in that area, rock chip samples, and we see not only high-grade gold mineralization as shown in this first sample here, 22 grams per tonne gold, but in addition, we see some high-grade palladium, 10 grams per tonne gold and almost 4 platinum as well. So you’re seeing mineralization throughout this area. Not only the PGE-nickel-copper that you might expect from the district, but also high-grade gold, and that’s very compelling for follow-up in 2019.
Maurice Jackson: Michael, these numbers are quite impressive. But let me ask you this, you’re in the most prolific area with the highest grades, concentration grades of platinum and palladium. You strategically have your assets positioned there, so were you really surprised?
Michael Rowley: No, and we, of course, had seen this data as we got into the project in the early days, it’s nice to prove it up in the compellation effort and make it more formal and we can then discuss it publicly, but the Stillwater district is very well mineralized and you’re right, that is very well known. What’s pleasing now is to be able to reveal the results of the compellation effort and plan our programs for 2019 so we begin to reveal what we think we’ve got.
Maurice Jackson: Well, the results are remarkable. We discussed the Wild West. Let’s move to the Boulder target area. What has Group Ten Metals excited here?
Michael Rowley: The Boulder area has less data than Wild West and then less data still than the Chrome Mountain and Iron Mountain target areas, however, it does have that lovely conductive high as shown in Figure 1. And, once again, the conductive highs have not been systematically tested. We do have the data from a historical drill hole, that’s BR2, shown more or less the middle of the Boulder target area. And that shows nice intercepts of copper-nickel mineralization. We have no PGE data on that, and that’s something that we’d like to remedy. In addition, we’ve got a very nice base metal hit up here including a very nice cobalt of 0.117, which speaks to the technology and battery metal potential of the system. The Bushveld is less known for cobalt, but we’re seeing very nice levels of cobalt here in the Stillwater Complex, which adds a nice co-product to a new potential operation here.
So in terms of 2019, Boulder won’t be a focus as we’ll discuss later, we’re going to have to focus on the more advanced target areas, however, we definitely will go back there and we’ll continue to move it along in our 2019 Program.
Maurice Jackson: Switching gears, we introduced the value proposition of Group Ten Metals on the 2nd of November. Since then, the company has successfully conducted a financing and the share price is up 29%. Please provide us with the company’s current capital structure.
Michael Rowley: We have 59 million shares outstanding at present and a market cap of about $12 million and that follows a raise of $1.2 million back in November, which we did at 15 cents in rather challenging market conditions, which speaks to the strength of this project in particular to attract investments, even in a rather challenging market.
Maurice Jackson: Sir, what is the next unanswered question for Group Ten Metals, when should we expect results and what determines success?
Michael Rowley: Well, I guess the unanswered question is, how is this possible, is there actually Stillwater in Montana? These districts have a lot of parallels and Stillwater is well known for these three very high-grade palladium-platinum mines. We’re looking forward to revealing why we think it’s there and how it’s been overlooked historically. This district has not been systematically explored for these target types and we’re the first to bring together the land position with the data with a team to do just that, and we’ll be launching a series of news releases to reveal what the past year of compellation work has shown us and what we, including David Boughton, see in the project and the potential.
Again, we’ll move from west to east across the project and the next news releases will detail the Chrome Mountain and Iron Mountain target areas, which include the most of the historical data including the 200 drill holes, and, of course, we have almost 12,000 meters of that core in our possession and have re-logged it now, so there’s some very exciting revelations to be revealed in the coming news releases.
Maurice Jackson: Mr. Rowley, what do you see as the biggest challenge for Group Ten Metals and how do you plan to mitigate that situation?
Michael Rowley: The biggest challenge facing us may just be the size of the project. It’s fantastic in the scale as you’ve seen from our figures, we may have as many as eight Platreef deposits across that, based on the coincidence geophysical anomalies, soil anomalies, and then just the geology and historical drill results. Thankfully, and the way to address that, is the quantity of data, the compilation effort that we’ve done, helps us focus our exploration efforts so prioritizing targets is very much the plan, we’ve done that and we look forward to revealing our 2019 plans. We’re going to focus basically on the Chrome Mountain and Iron Mountain areas where we have the greatest density of historical drilling and go out from there. And I think it will be a very exciting year for us as we reveal what we have and build it out with a 2019 exploration program. We had a terrific reception at the Core Shack at Roundup, we definitely attracted the attention of majors, and that’s the way forward that we see, if we do a couple of rounds here ourselves, and prove up what we think we have, and then look to engage bigger partners down the road as that becomes appropriate.
Maurice Jackson: Sir, we’ve covered the good. What keeps you up at night that we don’t know about?
Michael Rowley: The last time we talked, it was the share price and that has gotten a lot better as you mentioned, thanks to our campaign of news releases and I think also the Core Shack at Roundup did a lot for us. The good news in terms of share prices that we’ve only just begun to reveal what we have on the project, and we have a series of planned news releases and a major promotional push beginning here which will carry us right up through PDAC in March. We’ve had a number of very excellent meetings as well recently, and we’re excited to begin to reveal what we think we’re onto and what 2019 will hold for the company. I think it’ll be a pivotal year.
Maurice Jackson: Michael, today we’ve covered the value proposition of Group Ten Metals but Group Ten Metals is actually one of three companies comprising the Metallic Group of Companies. Please introduce them to us and share their value propositions with us.
Michael Rowley: The Metallic Group is a collaboration of three independent public exploration companies, growth-stage companies. We’ve essentially launched one company each year, Metallic Minerals in 2016, Group Ten in 2017, and then most recently Granite Creek Copper just a few weeks ago. Each one has been put together with the same method that you see at Group Ten, which is to acquire high-quality brownfields assets in a known mining district beside an existing mine, and then make that acquisition strategically in a depressed market at a price that would not otherwise be possible in a more normal market. And then add a substantial database to that and a world-class technical team, a world-class corporate team as well, and bring in geologic models from outside that district. Shareholders have seen us do that at Group Ten, we’re applying this Platreef thinking for the Bushveld, South Africa, to the Stillwater District.
Metallic Minerals, ticker is MMG, is applying geologic models from the multi-billion ounce Coeur d’Alene silver district in Idaho to the Yukon’s Keno High-Grade Silver district. And the parallels are there, there are very good indications of success in that one.
And then similarly at Granite Creek Copper, GCX is the ticker. We’re applying geologic models that are new in the district, this is a billion pound copper district in the Yukon. Models that were developed in the neighboring Minto mine, we’re applying to the Stu high-grade copper project, and that one is shaping up very nicely as well. It’s only been trading for about 10 days at this point and there’s a lot to be released on that one in the coming months.
In all three cases, we expect to add value by de-risking the projects and fast-tracking them to resource to delineation stage.
Maurice Jackson: Michael, for someone listening that wants to get more information on Group Ten Metals, please share the website address with us.
Michael Rowley: The website is http://www.grouptenmetals.com.
Maurice Jackson: And as a reminder, Group Ten Metals trades on the TXS.V:PGE, and on the OTCQB:PGEZF; for direct inquiries please contact Chris Ackerman at 604-357-4790 extension 1, or email info@grouptenmetals.com, as reminder Group Ten Metals is a sponsor of Proven and Probable, and we are proud shareholders for the virtues conveyed into today’s interview.
Last but not least, please visit our website www.provenandprobable.com where we interview the most respected names in the natural resource space. You may reach us at contact@provenandprobable.com.
Michael Rowley of Group Ten Metals, thank you for joining us today on Proven and Probable.
Maurice Jackson is the founder of Proven and Probable, a site that aims to enrich its subscribers through education in precious metals and junior mining companies that will enrich the world.
Michael Rowley: Thank you, Maurice, glad to be back.
Maurice Jackson: Glad to have you back, sir. In 2018, Group Ten Metals began its first season on the ground and identified 14 target areas on its flagship project, Stillwater West. Today, we have the results from 2 of the 14 target areas, which are quite impressive. But before we begin, for someone new to the story, who is Group Ten Metals and what is the thesis you are attempting to prove?
Michael Rowley: At the very highest level, we are applying geologic models that were developed at the world’s biggest and most economic platinum, nickel and copper mines. These are the mines of the Northern Bushveld or Platreef District in South Africa. We’re applying those models to the Stillwater Complex in Montana, and this has not been done systematically before. The Bushveld and Stillwater Complexes are both large Igneous Complexes, they’re both magmatic systems, and there are many known parallels between the two. Despite those parallels, we are the first to bring together a large land position with a truly fantastic database and then bring in this Platreef expertise to enable a systematic exploration for these massive deposit types at Stillwater. In discussing that expertise, it’s worth noting that Ivanhoe’s Dr. David Broughton, who is one of the co-discoverers of its Platreef mine, which is now in development, joined our team late last year, which is a pretty good validation that we’re on the right track here in Stillwater.
Maurice Jackson: In our last interview, you shared the next unanswered question for Group Ten Metals would be assay results. On the 25th of January, Group Ten Metals issued a press release entitled “Group Ten reports high-grade palladium, platinum, and gold from the Wild West in Boulder target areas at the Stillwater West project, Montana.” Take us to the Wild West target area and provide us with some in-depth analysis on Group Ten Metals’ results there.
Michael Rowley: To begin, the press release issued on January 25, 2019, will be the first in a planned series and shareholders will see that the road map in the upper left corner of the image above. We’ve divided this 25-km-wide property into a series of target areas, and we’ll basically be releasing results west to east in the areas that you see. It’s the Chrome Mountain and Iron Mountain area that have the most drill results historically, that will be the subject of subsequent news releases here. In terms of the current news, it focused on the Boulder and Wild West, which are highlighted above, and the Wild West target area has the Platreef potential that we see property-wide is well-documented there historically. It also has the reef type, high-grade targets as shown in the red ellipses at the top of the claim block, and then it also has this high-grade gold occurrence, which is the Pine Shear zone, and that may be unexpected for some people, given that Stillwater camp is more generally known for palladium and platinum and nickel and copper, chrome. This is actually a significant area of gold mineralization and it’s got some spectacular hits.
In terms of the Platreef target, this conductive high that’s shown contains some very high level conductance in the rocks as evidenced by the purples and pinks. Historical drilling has shown that it does indeed contain copper and nickel, and that’s an excellent indication of a potential for this Platreef style mineralization. We also have some spectacular palladium hits, such as 10 gram per tonne palladium, very high grade, also with significant platinum that shows not only the level of mineralization in the system but also the potential for these high-grade reef-type deposits that, of course, the area is more known for. It’s worth noting that sitting just above the claim there is the 80 million ounce JM-Reef deposit, which averages a staggering 16 grams per tonne of palladium and platinum, so you know there’s a lot of metal in the system and this lower zone that we’re in continues that trend.
In addition to the high-grade samples summarized in this table, bottom left, we see some very good hits of palladium, platinum, and also some good indications of base metal mineralization, which again ties into that Platreef bulk mineable scenario. These are priorities for follow up in 2019 and we look forward to discussing that in further news releases.
The Pine Shear, which is noted above, has shown to contain gold. These 2004 hits were actually drilled by our current qualified person; they’re not considered historical, and confirm the presence of significant copper and nickel in that system although the conductive highs have not been tested and that’s one of our key items for follow up. These PC series of holes from 1983 show the potential of this Pine Shear zone, which is a later geologic event within the Stillwater layered system. Something has introduced a lot of gold to the system as shown by these fantastic lengths and mineralization, gold mineralization. We see, for example, 11 meters at 12 grams per tonne gold, which is a very high-grade hit and good length within that 8 meters at 16 grams per tonne, and then the hole PC5, 3 meters at a staggering 23 grams per tonne, that’s 2/3 of an ounce, so it’s very high-grade and nice lengths of it. That’s definitely something for follow up in 2019.
In addition, we’ve got grab samples in that area, rock chip samples, and we see not only high-grade gold mineralization as shown in this first sample here, 22 grams per tonne gold, but in addition, we see some high-grade palladium, 10 grams per tonne gold and almost 4 platinum as well. So you’re seeing mineralization throughout this area. Not only the PGE-nickel-copper that you might expect from the district, but also high-grade gold, and that’s very compelling for follow-up in 2019.
Maurice Jackson: Michael, these numbers are quite impressive. But let me ask you this, you’re in the most prolific area with the highest grades, concentration grades of platinum and palladium. You strategically have your assets positioned there, so were you really surprised?
Michael Rowley: No, and we, of course, had seen this data as we got into the project in the early days, it’s nice to prove it up in the compellation effort and make it more formal and we can then discuss it publicly, but the Stillwater district is very well mineralized and you’re right, that is very well known. What’s pleasing now is to be able to reveal the results of the compellation effort and plan our programs for 2019 so we begin to reveal what we think we’ve got.
Maurice Jackson: Well, the results are remarkable. We discussed the Wild West. Let’s move to the Boulder target area. What has Group Ten Metals excited here?
Michael Rowley: The Boulder area has less data than Wild West and then less data still than the Chrome Mountain and Iron Mountain target areas, however, it does have that lovely conductive high as shown in Figure 1. And, once again, the conductive highs have not been systematically tested. We do have the data from a historical drill hole, that’s BR2, shown more or less the middle of the Boulder target area. And that shows nice intercepts of copper-nickel mineralization. We have no PGE data on that, and that’s something that we’d like to remedy. In addition, we’ve got a very nice base metal hit up here including a very nice cobalt of 0.117, which speaks to the technology and battery metal potential of the system. The Bushveld is less known for cobalt, but we’re seeing very nice levels of cobalt here in the Stillwater Complex, which adds a nice co-product to a new potential operation here.
So in terms of 2019, Boulder won’t be a focus as we’ll discuss later, we’re going to have to focus on the more advanced target areas, however, we definitely will go back there and we’ll continue to move it along in our 2019 Program.
Maurice Jackson: Switching gears, we introduced the value proposition of Group Ten Metals on the 2nd of November. Since then, the company has successfully conducted a financing and the share price is up 29%. Please provide us with the company’s current capital structure.
Michael Rowley: We have 59 million shares outstanding at present and a market cap of about $12 million and that follows a raise of $1.2 million back in November, which we did at 15 cents in rather challenging market conditions, which speaks to the strength of this project in particular to attract investments, even in a rather challenging market.
Maurice Jackson: Sir, what is the next unanswered question for Group Ten Metals, when should we expect results and what determines success?
Michael Rowley: Well, I guess the unanswered question is, how is this possible, is there actually Stillwater in Montana? These districts have a lot of parallels and Stillwater is well known for these three very high-grade palladium-platinum mines. We’re looking forward to revealing why we think it’s there and how it’s been overlooked historically. This district has not been systematically explored for these target types and we’re the first to bring together the land position with the data with a team to do just that, and we’ll be launching a series of news releases to reveal what the past year of compellation work has shown us and what we, including David Boughton, see in the project and the potential.
Again, we’ll move from west to east across the project and the next news releases will detail the Chrome Mountain and Iron Mountain target areas, which include the most of the historical data including the 200 drill holes, and, of course, we have almost 12,000 meters of that core in our possession and have re-logged it now, so there’s some very exciting revelations to be revealed in the coming news releases.
Maurice Jackson: Mr. Rowley, what do you see as the biggest challenge for Group Ten Metals and how do you plan to mitigate that situation?
Michael Rowley: The biggest challenge facing us may just be the size of the project. It’s fantastic in the scale as you’ve seen from our figures, we may have as many as eight Platreef deposits across that, based on the coincidence geophysical anomalies, soil anomalies, and then just the geology and historical drill results. Thankfully, and the way to address that, is the quantity of data, the compilation effort that we’ve done, helps us focus our exploration efforts so prioritizing targets is very much the plan, we’ve done that and we look forward to revealing our 2019 plans. We’re going to focus basically on the Chrome Mountain and Iron Mountain areas where we have the greatest density of historical drilling and go out from there. And I think it will be a very exciting year for us as we reveal what we have and build it out with a 2019 exploration program. We had a terrific reception at the Core Shack at Roundup, we definitely attracted the attention of majors, and that’s the way forward that we see, if we do a couple of rounds here ourselves, and prove up what we think we have, and then look to engage bigger partners down the road as that becomes appropriate.
Maurice Jackson: Sir, we’ve covered the good. What keeps you up at night that we don’t know about?
Michael Rowley: The last time we talked, it was the share price and that has gotten a lot better as you mentioned, thanks to our campaign of news releases and I think also the Core Shack at Roundup did a lot for us. The good news in terms of share prices that we’ve only just begun to reveal what we have on the project, and we have a series of planned news releases and a major promotional push beginning here which will carry us right up through PDAC in March. We’ve had a number of very excellent meetings as well recently, and we’re excited to begin to reveal what we think we’re onto and what 2019 will hold for the company. I think it’ll be a pivotal year.
Maurice Jackson: Michael, today we’ve covered the value proposition of Group Ten Metals but Group Ten Metals is actually one of three companies comprising the Metallic Group of Companies. Please introduce them to us and share their value propositions with us.
Michael Rowley: The Metallic Group is a collaboration of three independent public exploration companies, growth-stage companies. We’ve essentially launched one company each year, Metallic Minerals in 2016, Group Ten in 2017, and then most recently Granite Creek Copper just a few weeks ago. Each one has been put together with the same method that you see at Group Ten, which is to acquire high-quality brownfields assets in a known mining district beside an existing mine, and then make that acquisition strategically in a depressed market at a price that would not otherwise be possible in a more normal market. And then add a substantial database to that and a world-class technical team, a world-class corporate team as well, and bring in geologic models from outside that district. Shareholders have seen us do that at Group Ten, we’re applying this Platreef thinking for the Bushveld, South Africa, to the Stillwater District.
Metallic Minerals, ticker is MMG, is applying geologic models from the multi-billion ounce Coeur d’Alene silver district in Idaho to the Yukon’s Keno High-Grade Silver district. And the parallels are there, there are very good indications of success in that one.
And then similarly at Granite Creek Copper, GCX is the ticker. We’re applying geologic models that are new in the district, this is a billion pound copper district in the Yukon. Models that were developed in the neighboring Minto mine, we’re applying to the Stu high-grade copper project, and that one is shaping up very nicely as well. It’s only been trading for about 10 days at this point and there’s a lot to be released on that one in the coming months.
In all three cases, we expect to add value by de-risking the projects and fast-tracking them to resource to delineation stage.
Maurice Jackson: Michael, for someone listening that wants to get more information on Group Ten Metals, please share the website address with us.
Michael Rowley: The website is http://www.grouptenmetals.com.
Maurice Jackson: And as a reminder, Group Ten Metals trades on the TXS.V:PGE, and on the OTCQB:PGEZF; for direct inquiries please contact Chris Ackerman at 604-357-4790 extension 1, or email info@grouptenmetals.com, as reminder Group Ten Metals is a sponsor of Proven and Probable, and we are proud shareholders for the virtues conveyed into today’s interview.
Last but not least, please visit our website www.provenandprobable.com where we interview the most respected names in the natural resource space. You may reach us at contact@provenandprobable.com.
Michael Rowley of Group Ten Metals, thank you for joining us today on Proven and Probable.
Maurice Jackson is the founder of Proven and Probable, a site that aims to enrich its subscribers through education in precious metals and junior mining companies that will enrich the world.
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