Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Gold Bull Resources (TSX-V: GBRC) CEO Cherie Leeden on Flagship Sandman Gold Project and the Progress and Process for 5 Million Gold Ounces by Year-End

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Gold Bull Resources — Miss Cherie Leeden. Cherie, how are you this morning?

Cherie Leeden: I'm doing well… very excited about today's news!

Gerardo Del Real: It's a big announcement by my calculations. You've added over $360 million dollars to the company's bottom line! And I'm joking, of course, but jokes aside — you've added nearly 200,000 ounces to the existing resource without ever having to drill a single hole. 

There's a lot to talk about including the upcoming drill program. But first and foremost, congratulations! You've expanded the resource estimate at the Sandman project by 60% to nearly half a million ounces of gold. Congrats!

Cherie Leeden: Thank you very much!

Gerardo Del Real: Let's talk about grade. Let's talk about depth. And then, let's talk about the resource and how you plan on growing it.

Cherie Leeden: Okay, well, it's a wonderful increase. We acquired it from Newmont back in December so we've only had it in our possession a couple of months. And Newmont had done extensive additional drilling since the 2007 resource estimate so we incorporated all of those additional Newmont holes. Most of them are diamond core holes; a couple of hundred [meters] a hole. So that's how the resource has grown. 

It's grown off the back of additional drilling that's been done over the last decade or so. And we see a lot of opportunity to expand that resource because it's open in a number of directions. 

Basically, the majority of that mineralization that forms our resource is located from the surface to a depth of about a hundred meters. So it’s all very shallow. And that resource is actually also called a pit constrained resource so we run economic numbers and gold prices to work out that that's got a really good chance of one day being extracted.

Gerardo Del Real: I really like that the bulk of the resource is in the Indicated category, right, 433,000 ounces are in the Indicated category at a grade of 0.73 grams per tonne gold. 

You mentioned that the bulk of it is very near-surface. And you also mentioned the drilling and that you plan on expanding this resource. I understand a drilling program is imminent. Can we chat about that a bit?

Cherie Leeden: Yeah, absolutely. So we've got about 8,000 meters planned and we've decided to do that in two phases. We're going to do the first phase of 3,000 meters. And then we're going to have a break in order to get our assay results back. And then we're going to go back and do the other 5,000 meters once we've worked out what our best targets are. 

We’ve defined those targets based on a combination of this resource work where there are a number of holes, for example, where they're open and 10 grams a tonne gold. So they're obvious targets where we'll go and drill those targets to see just how far those high-grade gold mineralization zones extend. 

Then we've also got a couple of new targets that were defined by ground geophysics called IP. They're really interesting and exciting because those ones have never been drilled before, yet they really pose some interesting numbers at the surface and now correlate with these big geophysical anomalies.

Gerardo Del Real: I’ve got to believe that the geophysics helped select new targets and probably motivated the decision to expand the land position, which you also did recently, correct?

Cherie Leeden: We did, yes. We've expanded it by over 26 percent. And now we’ve got a massive landholding; it was big before! Just to secure such a large perspective zone, which was essentially open ground… so it hasn't cost us very much at all. 

And it’s kind of hard to believe when the gold price is over $1,800, and we're in Nevada, and you’ve still got these gold targets sticking out of the ground. So super excited about those that they're a little more early-stage. And we'll attack those in our round two drill program.

Gerardo Del Real: You've added 24% to your land position at Sandman. You've added 60% to the resource estimate. I'm starting to think you're pretty good at this, Cherie!

Cherie Leeden: Let’s hope so! Yeah, I mean, this year for us is all about adding ounces. And Sandman is our most advanced project at the moment. And now it's got almost half a million ounces of gold. It's sitting next to the mining town of Winnemucca. So those kinds of numbers and ounces sitting at the surface… it's looking like a really attractive project. 

This year, we're going to try and add some more significant ounces via our upcoming drill programs. We've got a great exploration team who are more than capable of finding us more ounces. If they're there, we'll find them! And I'm also working in the background. It's a new opportunity. 

Again, our approach to adding ounces is twofold: via exploration success and also via additional acquisitions where there's a potential to sometimes acquire ounces cheaper than we can define them ourselves. 

Gerardo Del Real: You answered my next question, which was going to be that, I have to believe, you're working that deep network of yours and sourcing and vetting other projects. The last time you and I chatted, you talked about the very ambitious, and aggressive, and exciting 5 million ounce target by the end of 2021. Is that still the goal?

Cherie Leeden: Certainly the goal, yeah. We're working on it. We're in negotiations. And I should say about half a dozen really interesting projects all over the US; gold focused. Not all within Nevada but all within mining-friendly states such as Arizona and Utah. 

And watch that space. It's something that is going to be evolving slowly. We're doing detailed due diligence and making sure that we're going for the right assets.

Gerardo Del Real: Sounds like an exciting 2021! When do you anticipate the drills turning at Sandman?

Cherie Leeden: So we're just waiting for one tenement to be transferred from Newmont's name to our name. And as soon as there’s news that that tenement is transferred into Gold Bull’s name — we'll be commencing. 

And I'm really hoping that permit is in our name by the end of this week-type thing. And then we can set our earthworks and hopefully have a rig there by the third or fourth week of February.

Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic! I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to drilling at Sandman. And I am really excited about the M&A potential here, Cherie. Congratulations again and thank you so much for your time today.

Cherie Leeden: I appreciate it! Thank you, Gerardo.