Categories: Base Metals
Topics: General Base Metals

Hannan Metals (TSX-V: HAN)(OTC: HANNF) CEO Michael Hudson on Large Copper-Gold System Confirmed by IP at Previsto Prospect, 100%-owned Valiente Project, Peru

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the executive chairman & CEO of Hannan Metals — Mr. Michael Hudson. Mike, how are you today, sir?

Michael Hudson: Good morning from down under… top of the world!

Gerardo Del Real: Let's get right to it. I have been eagerly awaiting initial results from the IP geophysical survey at the Previsto Prospect. And listen, as a shareholder, I think I've made no secret that Hannan is my largest single personal position.

I have high hopes, high expectations, and couldn't be more excited to get towards the drilling phase. And this is a big step.

The announcement this morning on some of the initial results, identifying a large copper/gold system, and, within that large copper/gold system, many high-level, high-priority targets. What's your take and what's the team's take on the results? And again, I'm not a geologist, so explain what all of the pretty colors mean.

Michael Hudson: It really was the confirmation, I suppose, of this copper-gold system and helping to dissect it. Somebody used the term that we're in the land of elephants, and we've certainly got an elephant, and we’re chewing at it bite by bite to try and pull it together to just understand the whole system.

And that's what this IP survey has done. It was a very bold survey across five or six kilometers. There were a couple of lines through this extremely large area, and it's the first time we’ve looked into the third dimension. And simply put, we have confirmation of chargeability. So what's chargeability?

Chargeability is showing that there's disseminated sulfides in the rock. So we run this IP-induced polarization. We put a charge into the ground and turn off that charge very quickly. Then, if there's sulfide in the rock, the remnant charge will dissipate more slowly than if there is no sulfide.

You measure the chargeability potential of the rock. Sulfides, of course, are generally associated with copper. And so copper is directly a sulfide at times, chalcopyrite, etc., is directly chargeable, and gold is associated with those sulfides as well.

So if we get chargeable anomalies, then that's great; we can directly detect the sulfides. And that's what we did. And we did that over multiple kilometers in context with all of the soils and rocks we saw at surface.

It was a first look at the survey, and it showed multiple areas where we’re now seeing where the porphyry-moly gold parts of the system lie. And then, these extensive epithermal systems, these gold-only parts of the system where we're higher up in the system, were also identified and dissected as well.

Gerardo Del Real: How important were those five epithermal targets? You describe it in the release as a significant advancement this season in identifying those. And I think, initially, when we looked at Hannan prior to this year, it was a really, really good speculation on finding giant copper deposits.

And then, the pleasant surprise for me as a shareholder over the last 9 to 12 months has been the development of these gold-only parts of the system.

How is that advancing, and where are you as far as your current understanding of what's now a 6 km by 6 km copper-gold porphyry and epithermal gold mineral system?

Michael Hudson: We really only found Previsto at the start of this year so this is our first and only field season on it. We've taken thousands and thousands of soil samples and at least a thousand rocks and have identified something at surface.

We’ve now looked at it in 3D. We flew in the mag a little while ago, which gave us the context of the aeromagnetics. So it's the progression and de-risking.

We've got 18 porphyries in the Valiente project, and we've worked on five or six of them with that kind of rigor now. And there are probably three different porphyry targets in Previsto itself. But what we've done is we’ve found the big one, Gerardo. And that was always going to be the challenge: what's the better porphyry to focus on? And big seems good. 

The other question is what's the grade now? And these things are leached at surface, and we're seeing very good grades in leached rocks at surface. Now, we need to ultimately get the drill permitting at Previsto. And then, as we're just starting to dissect it, another key point is to know which parts to focus on first. 

And we are very close now to identifying those drill target areas. And we can start doing all of the environmental permitting that’ll get us to drilling, which we're very close to doing 25 km to the southwest in the Belen area, which we can talk about in a moment.

So we've got this chain of projects, and the pleasing thing is that we're onto the big one. And it's amazingly impressive in scale and grade that we see at surface and especially the gold parts of this system and our understanding of them in how they fall above the porphyry environment and on the edges. 

We’re now seeing that and we can start to map that out. And we now have a choice on where to focus in terms of the gold-rich parts or the copper-gold-rich parts of the system.

Gerardo Del Real: It's a 6 km by 6 km system that's been identified thus far. You mention it and identify it and describe it as a globally significant mineralized footprint.

Have you reached the limits of that system yet, because, again, you're just now really starting to get into the rigorous exploration and the detailed exploration that you hadn't been able to do. Do we know that it doesn't get bigger?

Michael Hudson: One thing I know as I get older, Gerardo, in exploration, is don't assume too much. Just go out there and collect the data and be rigorous and be systematic and be bullish. Don't loiter around. 

And we've done none of those things this year at Previsto but there's a whole chain of magnetics and potassium from the radiometrics anomalies that extend, I haven't got that number in my head, but probably another 5 km to the north that have had very little exploration. So there's upside there. 

The southern part of the IP survey that we released here, but not really discussed in the release, if you look toward the southwestern portion of the IP, it had a 1-km-plus chargeable that was unexplained. That's all we put, “unexplained,” because we hadn't done any of the soil or rocks or anything out in that part of the world.

So this can get bigger. And we bias it in the same way we've explored it… just working on ridge lines because they're the easiest way to take soils, and we'll find some of the softer rocks that will be the ones that contain the metal when we just do more and more work.

We're currently only looking in the more resistive rocks at the moment; that’s the first way you do exploration. So there's a lot more to be done.

Gerardo Del Real: Let's talk permitting. Let's talk Ricardo Herrera. The targets there at Belen. A lot to be excited about there. We're getting close to the end of the year. We're anticipating, from the last time we chatted, a favorable permitting decision at Valiente for those projects here within Q4. How is that moving along?

Michael Hudson: It was very close to the end of the process. Frustratingly, we were asked, just over the last few weeks, for another round of inquiry from the water authority. 

So we've satisfied the forestry; we've satisfied the mining authorities. But the water authority came back with four or five more questions, which we hit back, like a good tennis player at the net, straight back to them with our hydrologist. And only Peru can get in the way of itself here in terms of the process.

We've done everything. We're following the rule of law, and we've got the support of the local people who, really, their only frustration is that it's taking too long for them too. They want more work, and they want to develop this exploration project and see where it goes.

So we're waiting with bated breath. It's back in the authorities’ hands now, and we're optimistic we'll see something this year. Of course, we can't guarantee that. But that's the way we're playing it at the net.

Gerardo Del Real: Ricardo Herrera, Sortilegio, and Vista Alegre have over a 9 km combined strike. Those are the first of what I describe as “projects” and you describe as “targets.”

Those are the first projects where we'll see the truth-machines, right; the drill bit. Can you briefly touch on those targets and why you're so excited to get into those, putting the monster aside for a bit, while we work through that process and digest more information as it comes in?

Michael Hudson: Yes, at Belen, between Ricardo Herrera, Vista Alegre, and Sortilegio, over that 9 km, we're doing a lot of IP now just to refine the drill targets. We did some IP there about 18 months ago as a preliminary survey. Now, we're doing around four or five times as much there. So we anticipate those results with great interest.

Ricardo Herrera is a porphyry over a 1 km by 1 km area, and it gets bigger, at least in the initial IP, where we see it progress to depth. 

To the south, Vista Alegre is a gold-rich system and is somewhere between an epithermal/porphyry environment that we really don't understand at the moment. But we've got lots of, call it, ore-grade-gold for about 3 km along that trend where we're doing rigorous IP.

And then, Sortilegio is a different looking porphyry. It's an alkalic porphyry so it'll be gold-rich. The crews will soon get to that area for IP for the first time.

In itself, Belen is a company-making asset. Forgetting about what else we have in Hannan, it's the one that's closest to drill permitting that we own 100% outright. And so, bring on the rigs! We're working very closely with the top levels of government to make sure we can get that permitted in a shorter rather than longer timeframe.

Gerardo Del Real: I'm excited for that. I'm looking forward to letting the process play out as it should. I can't wait to get more of these IP results as you continue to get that data in. As far as the timeline goes for that data, do you have an order of operations for the next bit that we'll see… and what's to come afterwards?

Michael Hudson: We are just getting data in from the Ricardo Herrera area and then moving up to Vista Alegre shortly thereafter. So it's really over the next month or so we'll see that data come to hand. And then, it will be all quality controlled and, hopefully, we'll have something out before the end of the year on that data.

But yes, we're waiting with anticipation. It’ll just put everything in a much greater context for us. And we already have the 40 drill platforms planned. We're pretty confident where they’ll go. But just in terms of which order and priority of the drilling, that will be very much supported by this new IP data.

Gerardo Del Real: Mike, always great catching up. Great work out there. Thanks for your time. Let's chat again soon.

Michael Hudson: Thanks, Gerardo. Always great to chat.

Gerardo Del Real: Cheers.

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