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

Chakana Copper (TSX-V: PERU)(OTC: CHKKF) CEO David Kelley on More High Grade Copper-Gold-Silver at Soledad & Imminent Resource Estimate

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the President and CEO of Chakana Copper, Mr. David Kelley. Dave, happy new year. How are you doing?

David Kelley: I'm doing great, Gerardo. Happy new year to you as well.

Gerardo Del Real: 2022 will end up being a very, very pivotal year for Chakana Copper. You just reported additional high grade copper, gold and silver mineralization. And I know that you're finalizing the first ever resource estimate on the Soledad project. Let's get right into the news. You reported 50.7 meters of 4.89% copper equivalent. And if you want to break that down with the gold, copper and silver grades, it was 0.63 grams per tonne gold 3.46% copper, and 118.8 grams per tonne silver at Huancarama. Obviously, excellent grades. Excellent widths. You got to feel good about the way you're starting 2022.

David Kelley: Yeah, for sure. Gerardo, those are great numbers and we've seen good numbers come out of Huancarama before, so it's not too surprising. It's nice to see. We had three holes in that zone and they all three came back solidifying the significance of those grades in that zone. And that's really what you want to see for the resource estimate, right? You want to see these things hang together and really no surprises. And so it was great to see that. Very, very strong numbers. We're excited. This represents the last news release on the drill results and the next step for us is get that resource estimate out.

Gerardo Del Real: You know something that was interesting to me was Hole 271 ended with, or intersected, I should say, 36 meters of 0.26% molybdenum. Can you speak to that a bit?

David Kelley: Yeah. Well, the first thing to comment on is that's really high molybdenum. Byproduct molybdenum that comes out of porphyry copper mines, which is where most of the molybdenum in the world is mined is usually on the order of, 0.02 to 0.06, 200 PPM to 600 PPM. And this is point... this is an order of magnitude higher than that. So it's very significant molybdenum mineralization. And we've seen this a few times as we've gotten deeper in pipes, we start seeing an increase in the molybdenum and we've interpreted that more geologically as indicating that we're getting closer to the intrusion that had the mineralizing fluids, because presumably when we get to that intrusion, it will have higher amounts of molybdenum in it. That's generally what the model predicts and that's what we're seeing. We just haven't seen that intrusion yet. So it's pretty enticing to start seeing those kind of numbers and to think what could be below Huancarama in terms of what the intrusion that might fit a depth.

Gerardo Del Real: You've only tested 16 out of what so far is 110 targets on the property. I know that the resource estimate is going to be but a peek at the potential that the Soledad project has. And I know that permitting is well advanced in another very prospective portion of the project. Can you speak to those three things?

David Kelley: Yeah. And that's really the important story at Soledad. It's really what's the upside, how big can this project scale up to be? And that's why Gold Fields is there obviously, right? They see big scale potential of the mineral system. And if you look at what the resource will be the initial resource on six or seven pipes, just in roughly the top 300 meters and think about how many more targets, how much of the property we've explored, how the breccia pipes are open at depth. And you really start seeing what the upside potential is. And that's a real important message here. It's not so much about what the initial resource is. It's more important about what that tells us about what the ultimate potential of the project could be.

Gerardo Del Real: The geophysical surveys are really helping identify and prioritize targets. How is that coming along?

David Kelley: It's going great. We just got the guys restarted after a short break over the holiday season. And they've got about two months to finish the offset IP or the 3D IP that we're doing. And that's the really important one that gives us a three dimensional block model of resistivity around our primary targets. We've got some beautiful targets that have come out of that work and the gradient array IP. So that's going to be a big part of our exploration planning for next year or for the rest of this year and integrating that with the existing 110 targets that we have, no doubt we're adding lots of new targets. We'll refine and rearrange some of the existing targets, but we have so many targets to test. It's going to be really exciting to fire up the drill rigs again this year and get after that.

Gerardo Del Real: I have to assume, and correct me if I'm wrong in my assumption, but that this resource estimate is pretty imminent.

David Kelley: You are right about that, Gerardo. It is definitely imminent.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, we'll be chatting soon. I appreciate the update. Happy new year, and we'll talk to you soon, Dave. Thank you so much.

David Kelley: Sounds good. Happy new year to you.