Categories: Base Metals / Mining Stocks
Topics: General Base Metals / Copper Stocks

Intrepid Metals (TSX-V: INTR)(OTC: IMTCF) CEO Ken Engquist on Long Widths of Copper Mineralization From Surface

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Intrepid Metals (TSX-V: INTR)(OTC: IMTCF), Mr. Ken Engquist. Ken, great to have you back on. How are you, sir?

Ken Engquist: I'm doing great, Gerardo. How are you doing?

Gerardo Del Real: I am doing excellent. Listen, we have copper surging above $5.10 on the futures. It's clear to me that the structural deficit that we chatted about last time is starting to really take effect. I think we're going to see several years of this. This bodes really, really well for Intrepid, given the fact that you're in the US, that you have a combination of higher grade copper mineralization combined with long widths of, let's call it lower grade copper mineralization. And you better than most know how important it's to have a combination of both if you're going to have an economic deposit. So I wanted to talk about the 204.25 meters of 0.32% copper equivalent, importantly, from surface at the northernmost hole to date at the Ringo Zone in Arizona. Can you speak to that and provide some context there?

Ken Engquist: Yeah, I can absolutely do that. The significance of that is is that, you just said it, it's at surface. We are seeing mineralization outcropping, and going to depth in long intervals at good solid minable grades. When you see something like that, you're looking at these economic models where a lot of times with an open pit, you're going to have a strip ratio. You're going to have to strip over burden, and that initial CapEx takes away from your net present value and your IRR and these economic calculations. And we don't have that. We're right into the ore body right away at good, solid grades. And then as you go down, some of those intervals get even more economic and go over 1%. So it's a good solid grade that just contributes value and just contributes value to the overall model, which we have excellent infrastructure. You're seeing things, it's a great time to be in the copper sector, and I'm sure you've seen this past couple of weeks the news that the supply, the London Metal Exchange have been dwindling.

Gerardo Del Real: Absolutely.

Ken Engquist: And just getting, yeah, they're getting lower and lower and putting more and more pressure on that copper price. We're finally starting to see some upward movement on it, and just recently we've been seeing that the copper smelters in China are offering negative TCs, RCs, so the transportation and the refining costs. So they're paying a premium to take in the concentrate, and they're not charging an overhead cost to the concentrate providers. It's incredible. It's amazing. And then all of that feeds to the bottom line of these economic models. So it's just going to make our situation, which is already low risk. We don't have any jurisdictional issues. We don't have environmental issues. We've got great infrastructure, 600 megawatt power plant that's mostly powered by solar just down the road from us. We've got nearly paved roads to our core shack, which is just like a couple kilometers from Ringo. The infrastructure just couldn't be better. So we're really happy about being able to be where we are and then also have an economic ore body.

Gerardo Del Real: You have assays pending. I got to ask, how important is the continuity of the mineralization? Because I know the grade's important. Everybody wants higher grade, but the continuity I think is under-appreciated when you're looking to put together an economic deposit or economic deposits.

Ken Engquist: Yeah, definitely. For sure. We've got a lot of land to explore. We're just tapping into these first couple of zones right here. What we're seeing is some really good continuity in just these zones that we're into right now. But we've been continuing to map the property and doing some rock sampling, and we've got plans for some more geophysics and all of the right indicators are there. And so we're expanding our program right now as we speak. In addition to continuing to look at the CRDs, the carbonate replacement deposits like we have at Ringo, Holliday, and Earp, we're expanding to focus on the porphyry targets and porphyry sources. We've got several porphyry targets identified already in large areas, but we're going to do some more of the fundamental work to refine those targets and bring it down into a higher probability for hitting something.

So we've got lots of prospectivity in the porphyries, and we're going to start surfacing more of that, because it's very analogous to the Copper Queen Mine, which is down in Bisbee, Arizona, about 50 kilometers to the south, which is essentially the same geologic system. It's identical host rock mineralization. We call it the Abrigo Limestone. And we see a lot of similarities between the two systems. And as you know, Copper Queen, I mentioned it in the past when we've talked, it started out at 53 million tonnes at 6% for a CRD, And then they got into the porphyry and they mined it for another 60 years. So we're seeing very identical types of geology and mineralization and the alteration in the rocks as well over at Corral. So we're excited to move forward and start surfacing the porphyry story.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, listen, I think your timing is impeccable. I'm looking forward to seeing how further assays continue to kind of outline what I think is going to be a producing mine right here shortly. I don't think because of the infrastructure, you don't have a lot of the challenges that a lot of companies and projects have. So I think it fast tracks a lot of things. I think it presents options other deposits aren't going to have, and so no look, couldn't be more excited for you guys. Anything else to add to that, Ken?

Ken Engquist: Yeah, stay tuned. We've got lots of news flow coming up through the summer, and we're going to be trickling out news results on all the drilling that we've done so far. We've got some more results coming out, and then other things around land acquisition and those sorts of things. So we're doing a lot on the site and we'll be putting some information out on the porphyries as well.

Gerardo Del Real: Good stuff. Listen, looking forward to having you back on. Let's do an interview on site here, a video one soon. Thank you so much, Ken.

Ken Engquist: Yeah. All right. Thanks, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: All right, cheers.

Ken Engquist: Cheers.

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