Categories: Base Metals
Topics: General Base Metals

Aldebaran Resources (TSX-V: ALDE)(OTC: ADBRF) CEO John Black on Best Drill Hole to Date at Altar Copper-Gold Project

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Aldebaran Resources, Mr. John Black. John, how are you this morning?

John Black: I'm doing well. Good to hear from you, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: It's great to have you back on. You had some news a few days ago that has me really excited because there are some words and some descriptions in this release that are all the right things you want to hear if you're a shareholder.

Let me start with the headline, which reads:

Aldebaran intercepts 111 meters of 1.4% copper equivalent within 333.1 meters of 0.86% copper equivalent, and also within 629 meters of 0.61% copper equivalent in hole QDM 2142 at The Altar Project in Argentina.

Congratulations. Those are some excellent, excellent numbers. Two things that stood out from the release to me is the focus on the next field season. You describe it as a program that will be much larger in scale. And also this is, I think, one of the best holes that you've drilled on the project, correct?

John Black: Yeah. We have some internal debate going about whether it is the best hole or not. We've had some other holes, including nearby to this, that had pretty good results on it.

But in the end, I agree with Kevin Heather, our Chief Geological Officer, that this is the best hole to date. Not that it's better than some of the other holes, but what it does is it opens up the size potential in this new zone.

And the Radio Zone, as I mentioned, has had a little bit of drilling in, but it currently doesn't have any reportable resource. We just didn't have enough drilling to begin to show the size. And this indicates that we do have that size potential. We'll have a fun year in the next field season, starting here in only a few months really, to drill this off and see how big this is and what we have.

Gerardo Del Real: You describe the hole as transformative, but it should be noted that hole 219, you also mentioned that that's an encouraging hole because you could be on the edge of another new porphyry system.

Again, we already have a robust resource. You now apparently have the best hole, or close to the best hole, that's a good debate to be having, at radio. And then you have this hole 219, which seems to indicate that you might be near another porphyry system nearby.

John Black: Yeah, just as a recap, we have that large resource that we've already reported. And it's a large deposit, it's a moderate grade deposit. But what we're really looking for now are these higher grade zones. These zones of much better characteristics. They'd be the points where you really start what drives the project going forward.

And we see evidence of a number of these zones. And so what we've been doing over the past couple of years is primarily collecting the basic data we need to be able to identify these zones, image them, and lay out our drill programs. And that means we've had some drill campaigns, but not very extensive in nature over the last two years that are reporting these types of results.

But now we're set up to come in next year with a much more aggressive program, which will certainly include a drill out of this QDM radio zone where we're 42 comes from. But there are a number of other targets similar to what we may have just hit the edge of in hole 219.

So a lot of work. We're pretty excited. In the next two months or so we'll be able to lay out the full drill plan for everybody to take a look at and get ready. We anticipate we'll be moving into the project in October.

Gerardo Del Real: October, well you answered my next question, John. Again, excellent numbers. Congrats on the news. I'm excited for the next field season. Anything else to add to that?

John Black: No, just that I think I would add that Argentina is a pretty interesting place to be right now. As I've mentioned, we're going to have a pretty aggressive program, but we're not alone. A lot of our neighbors are putting out some pretty good results.

And the Argentine government is being very supportive, particularly the San Juan government, the province that we're in, is very pro mining and certainly encouraging us to move forward. Our biggest challenge will probably be availability of resources. There's going to be a lot of drilling going on in Argentina and we're happy that we've got some great targets to be throwing into the mix here.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, all good problems to have. I'm looking forward to the next field season and having you back on. Thank you so much, John.

John Black: Okay. Thanks. Look forward to catching up with you as we get started towards the end of the year here.

Gerardo Del Real: As well. As well. Take care.

John Black: Okay. Thanks, bye.