Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Alianza Minerals (TSX-V: ANZ)(OTC: TARSF) CEO Jason Weber on The Hunt for More High Grade Silver & Exploration in 2021

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president and CEO of Alianza Minerals, Mr. Jason Weber. Jason, you keeping warm?

Jason Weber: Yeah. We have no problem up here in Vancouver, where it's much, much warmer than where you are.

Gerardo Del Real: And you have power, which is great. Right?

Jason Weber: Yeah. Yeah. No, we feel sorry for you guys. We had a cold snap here that just ended, but yours is worse than ours.

Gerardo Del Real: Yeah. You know, the energy grid failure down here has been an absolute embarrassment and we're fortunate here at home, as we were discussing off air, we've been spared. We've had running water and electric at our primary home, but we've had several friends and close family members that just have no power. It's been that way for three, four days, no hot water, so yeah. No, challenging times indeed. It seems like every time you and I speak, we're either talking about a pandemic or an insurrection, or now a energy grid failure in the largest energy-producing state in the country. It's been an interesting 2021 thus far.

Jason Weber: Yeah. Well, we're thinking of all our friends in Texas, so we'll keep you in our thoughts.

Gerardo Del Real: I appreciate it, Jason. Listen, you had some news yesterday. You announced results from the Haldane Silver Project, more good results and I love the part in there about future exploration. I want to get right into it. I'd love for you to provide a bit of context there. I know that the highlight hole was 0.89 meters averaging 342 g/t silver, 2.35% lead and 1.20% zinc. This comes on the heels of excellent results that you reported two weeks ago, and so let me let you provide the context on these results and what comes next.

Jason Weber: Yeah, and that was a nice segue you made for me, Gerardo, to the West Fault high-grade intersection that we announced a couple weeks ago, because this intersection that we got at the Middlecoff, the one that you quoted, the 0.89 meters of 342 grams silver is, it's kind of similar to what was hit at the West Fault prior to stepping out to the southwest and down dip, going a little deeper and hitting a much, much thicker, 8.72 meter wide section that averaged 311 g/t silver. So similar grade but over a much, much wider width. And so that just kind of backs up our sort of exploration thesis when we target these veins, is even a narrower vein that's got the right silver mineralogy in it is encouraging for us and that a key to keep exploring.

And we knew, moving to the south at Middlecoff like we did, we intersected this mineralization, in this hole we announced yesterday, about 30 meters to the south of the 2019 drill holes that were drilled in this area. And that was following up again on high-grade narrow intersections. We kind of figured this vein does continue to the south, because another, oh, let's call it 100 meters to the south, there is a historical hole that was drilled in the 1960s from underground that hit some very high-grade silver, almost 2,800 g/t silver over a meter. So we know this is continuous. What we're doing now is just systematically stepping out on it to try to intersect thicker veins that are going to be more representative of what a potential ore body would look like.

So just for context, the overall vein that we hit at Middlecoff's that was announced yesterday was over six meters wide, 6.7 meters in width, but in the core intersection, three meters wide. But a bunch of that was taken up with a quartz breccia that we think we've seen in a couple holes now. So for part of this area or part of the vein in this area is taken up by this quartz breccia that doesn't really run all that well. So it's kind of an interesting twist on it, but the fact that the vein is continuous, we're getting the right mineralogy, leaves us encouraged. And we know there's high grade to the south, so we're going to keep moving that way. And also drilling deeper on these structures, I think that's the other thing that we're starting to see is the, as at West Fault, going deeper and when you get into better, less oxidized mineralization, that's a key to getting more representative results.

Gerardo Del Real: You mentioned your exploration thesis. How good of a handle do you and the team feel you have on the controls and the direction that the vein is headed, and the veins are headed, I should say?

Jason Weber: Yeah, we've got very good control on the veins themselves. The ore shoots within the veins, the thicker and higher grade portions we're still trying to figure out. At West Fault, for example, there's only three holes there. So there's not a lot to go on yet. Middlecoff, there's more holes and in fact, when we drilled this hole this year, we thought we were chasing a more horizontal ore shoot that we don't think is the case now. Looking at it vertical or at least near vertical is probably the direction we need to be going. And just looking at the structural geology, the way these faults occur, cross faults and their interaction with the rocks is ... And then cheating a little bit, talking to our friends at Alexco next door, the vertical orientation is probably going to be the one that we want to be chasing. So that'll help define where we position drill holes in upcoming programming in April.

Gerardo Del Real: How valuable has it been having Alexco next door? Right? I've got to believe that's been helpful.

Jason Weber: Yeah. Besides the fact that their geological team there has been very helpful to us in sitting down with us, discussing the vein mineralogy, how these veins occur, even as how they explore for them. But I think even if we didn't get that from them, even if they weren't that gracious, just seeing them with very high-grade intersections very deep in these systems is encouraging. And there was a point in time exploring this district where it was thought that new veins became more zinc-rich at depth and then less silver value to them. And Alexco is clearly proving that wrong with the drilling that they're doing this year, so it's very, thousands of grams per tonne silver at wide intersections at great depth, so it's really encouraging.

In the background, we're obviously working on the other projects in our portfolio, and Twin Canyon and Tim are the two that probably rise to the surface as going to be the most news generating for us through 2021. At least that's the way it appears at this point. Twin Canyon, just for a refresher, is our gold project in Colorado, centered on the old Charlene Mine, which was a small underground operation, family-run gold mine targeting a really weird gold occurrence in really a petroleum-related sandstone. It's kind of a really neat target for us, and that's gone very well. We're proving this target to be much larger than what was originally identified at the mine. So we're in the process of getting a drill permit for that, which would allow us to, hopefully, drill that later in 2021, ideally with a partner. I think we'd like to have a partner coming in and test that project for us, and we've got a few groups that are interested in talking to us about that.

And then Tim, of course, is the other silver project in our portfolio, which is Southern Yukon, just north of Coeur's Silvertip Mining. Coeur will be commencing exploration here in the spring on that, which again, hopefully, leads to, I wouldn't say it's a given but there is a small chance that they could advance that to the drill stage, maybe get one or two holes in before the end of '21 on that project as well. So could be lots of drilling this year for Alianza, not just at Haldane.

Gerardo Del Real: Sounds like a busy year potentially, multiple projects, multiple commodity types. I know that silver is hanging in there between that $27, $28 level. You and I talked off air about how we thought that silver was leading gold, both higher and lower. I suspect that $30 silver isn't too far off. We'll see about that. But regardless, it sounds like you have a lot of accretive catalyst here in 2021, Jason.

Jason Weber: Yeah, certainly we're working on them. We've got more sort of in the hopper as well. Hopefully some new ideas come to fruition as well and we get some more of our existing portfolio option out to partners and make it even busier.

Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic. Fantastic. We'll chat again soon. Thank you, as always, for your time. And yeah, keep at it.

Jason Weber: Thank you, Gerardo. Stay warm.

Gerardo Del Real: We'll try. Fingers crossed. Thank you.

Jason Weber: Bye-bye.