Categories: Base Metals / Precious Metals
Topics: General Base Metals / General Precious Metals

Almadex Minerals (TSX-V: DEX)(OTC: AAMMF) CEO Morgan Poliquin on Discovery Drilling at Paradise

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president and CEO of Almadex Minerals, Dr. Morgan Poliquin. Morgan, we talked a bit off-air, interesting times everywhere. First and foremost, how are you, sir?

Morgan Poliquin: I'm doing excellent. Thank you for having me on. How about you?

Gerardo Del Real: I am well. It's turbulent everywhere. We talked a lot about how geopolitical instability and jurisdictional risk being mitigated was going to be a prevalent theme here over the next couple of years. And you've done a, I'll call it a brilliant job, of pivoting into Nevada and the Southwestern US and doing what you do best, which is find projects and belts and geologic ideas that haven't been tested properly, coming up with new models, putting drills on them and drill testing these things for significant discoveries.

We talked last time about this year being a year of discovery for Almadex. You're cashed up, you're in an envious position as far as the treasury goes. You own your own drills and you have plans to drill at Paradise, which excites me because that project is in Nevada. And so I believe that you're looking to commence a drill program of an initial 2,000 meters, correct?

Morgan Poliquin: That's right, yeah. We're getting organized for that right now and hope to start by the end of this month. And yeah, you're right. We've been focused on an idea that I came up with in 2007, 2008, a long time ago, that we had some initial success with Willow, a project we staked and the earliest claims. We staked that at this project and then we got distracted by some discoveries we made elsewhere, which focused us for very good reasons.

And we're back and we feel that there's a bigger belt that we're working on, I’ve alluded to in our news releases, that control porphyry copper gold systems and we feel that we understand it and we feel that there are things to stake, which is what we've been doing. So this project here will be the first, I hope, of a number that we drill and it's the most advanced, and we've basically defined a very clear, in my opinion, porphyry target.

So we've got geochemistry in soils that are indicative with a very, very nice focused molybdenum high and with gold on one side and all the right sort of things you want to see. But the key is one of our techniques is to really focus on alteration. And we have a very expensive instrument that allows us to map alteration in great detail. And what we know is that there are minerals that are indicative of the up flow zones out of porphyry that might not be exposed at surface.

And that's what we think we have here is we have the hot minerals that are telling us, "Hey, these have formed above a porphyry system." They've formed by fluids that have moved away and out of a porphyry system and perfectly fits with where we've got these anomalies I was describing before. So obviously geology, you never know what's happened over time. There can be faults, there can be this or that, but we've got a great target and we're really excited to go and we'll be poking. Well, there's actually two areas of alteration that we'd like to drill, but we're going to drill the X marks the spot, in my opinion one, first.

Gerardo Del Real: Me being a non-geologist and not having a formal education, mind you, you've been great at providing so much literature. You and your father have been amazing to me and generous in providing material for me to study on. But listen, I'm not a geologist, right? So when I think of targets and I think of systems, I always ask what the analog is. Is there an analog or analogs that are similar to this potential deposit type?

Morgan Poliquin: There's a lot of copper gold porphyries around the world that are associated with the kind of geochemistry that we have here. So analogs you find them in the Andes you find them in... I hate to point to something with a particular size or grade because those are the things that vary tremendously. But copper gold porphyries produce, I think, 20% of the world's gold now, and I believe it's 80% of the world's copper. And they're very particular in terms of how they form, and they give off very clear signals. So what we think we can do very inexpensively is identify those signals. What we now know after 30 years of research in universities and so on of deposits that have been found is that there are indications that tell you definitively that a porphyry system was there. And one of those is the alteration minerals. And the other one is fluid inclusion.

We allude to that where you can take a quartz vein and the fluid that forms the quartz vein will be trapped as bubbles in that vein. And you can go and look at that under a microscope and see that the right pressure, temperature conditions existed. So there's very cheap methods that we employ to basically target areas where the porphyry isn't exposed. Because let's face it, if a big copper zone was exposed at surface, it would've most likely already been identified. And so we're looking at these alteration zones that cover porphyry systems. So an example of an absolutely fabulous one, and by no means am I saying that we're going to... What we'd like to find, put it that way, is Vale found in Indonesia, something called ONTO, O-N-T-O, and it's probably one of the largest copper gold endowments in the world now.

And they drilled, it was found 700 meters down, and they found something that's over a percent copper and around a gram gold, and it's 3 billion tonnes and growing, and they found it under barren alteration. And there's been a number of these kinds of discoveries around the world now, where you can actually target the right conditions and you know you're in the right wheelhouse.

So as opposed to going and just drilling any old copper property, you're starting off searching for something very specific from the get-go. And a porphyry systems tend to be very large. They're large tonnage, lower grade copper, and they're the world's largest supply of copper. But what we're looking at is ones that come with gold. And the good news is that in this part of Nevada, there's the indications that these things are mineralized. A high sulfidation system which forms on top of porphyries is nearby called Goldfields, and it produced, if I'm not mistaken, historically 10 million ounces of gold. We're right five kilometers away from Paradise Peak, which produced I believe around 2 million ounces of gold. And there were indications of a porphyry underneath it historically. So we feel that we're in the right wheelhouse for sure.

Gerardo Del Real: Right wheelhouse, perfect timing. It's going to be a great second half of the year. What's the cash position look like as of the last reporting period? Just to remind everyone?

Morgan Poliquin: Yeah, we just put out our financials with just over 15 million in cash. And of course we've got equities and other holdings there, so the working capital is larger. We also own our own diamond drills, which enable us to go out and drill internally as we see fit and without contracts, and we believe quite a bit cheaper.

Gerardo Del Real: Morgan, it should be an exciting time. As you know, you've known me throughout the years for some time now, I love adding value via the drill bit. It's the single most exciting way to get it done. Not always the most successful way, but man, when it happens, it's magic. And I'm looking forward to you reproducing that. You have several excellent discoveries. Some of that have been compromised by jurisdictional risk for the time being, but I have absolutely zero doubt that there's more in your knitting there here soon. Anything add to that?

Morgan Poliquin: Well, I really appreciate those words. We have decided that, you alluded to geopolitical issues. Well, the world is shifting. I think everyone knows that. And we've decided that the best place to work, we're North American and we feel that there's spheres of influence in the world that will shift and change in the best place for us, being North American based, is to explore in North America and particularly in the United States. We feel that the Western United States is amazing in that it has profound geologic, historic production and resources and opportunities and potential, but it's also combined with, in my opinion, tremendous opportunity. Not everything has been done and there are ideas and concepts that you can go out and chase. And so for me, it ticks all the boxes for this very, shall we say, uncertain world that we're in right now.

Gerardo Del Real: Good stuff. I know this is one of many drill programs this year and next. We'll stick to this one for now. Best of luck and looking forward to having you back on here with the details there, Morgan.

Morgan Poliquin: Very good. Thanks so much.

Gerardo Del Real: All right, cheers.

Morgan Poliquin: Bye.

Click here to see more from Almadex Minerals