Categories: Energy
Topics: General Energy

Patriot Battery Metals (CSE: PMET)(OTC: PMETF) CEO Blair Way on Drilling 1.25% Li2O over 96.9 m in First Drill Hole of Summer Program, and Extending Strike Length of Pegmatite to 1.9 km, Corvette, Quebec

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me once again is the president and CEO of Patriot Battery Metals, Mr. Blair Way. Blair, it's great to have you back on. How are you today?

Blair Way: I'm doing great, Gerardo. We've just got out some good news as you've probably seen today, and yeah, our drill program is going fantastic.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, let's get right into it. The last time you and I spoke, I thought that you set the table well. You mentioned there would be a lag in assay results that you thought would take about a month, to a month and a half to work through. That month, month and a half is now behind us. You just reported an intercept of 1.25% lithium over 96.9 meters, in the very first drill hole of the summer program. As important, you extended the strike length of the pegmatite to 1.9 kilometers and this thing is still open in all directions and is looking to be an absolute monster. I'll let you provide the context Blair, but congratulations, heck of a start.

Blair Way: Absolutely. It's a great way to start the summer program. We had a really great winter program. We, as you said, had that lull in between for the spring breakup. The rig started turning again in June and the lag time to get the core to the lab and the assays back, and we're back in the assay mode again. So we'll be seeing assays at least every couple of weeks. As we've fed them to the lab, they just get caught up and they get sent through on that sort of five week turn-around is roughly what they're doing, give or take a few days and weekends. And of course it's summer time and a few long weekends and holidays, but yeah, we just have kept drilling.

The third drill rig, as we've mentioned, is on site. The barge is there. We hope to be able to collar a hole pretty soon with that, and then we've got three rigs turning one in the water infilling some of those holes where you were not able to complete on the ice in the winter program. So yeah, we've proven up 1.9 kilometers and we are still drilling outwards towards to CV6, so we will soon have that extended a little bit further, but yeah, it just couldn't be going better. It really is amazing, the scale of what we're finding here.

Gerardo Del Real: Walk me through the work program in the field that you conducted recently. I expect, and I hope that we get some results here soon. I know it's been busy. You referenced that the last time that you and I spoke, that the team was doing a phenomenal job. How is the processing of that data coming along?

Blair Way: Well as you can expect, the more outcrops we find, we do channel sampling, those channel samples go in and we do assays on them. Some of them we can rush, but really the guys have gone back, and the initial field program that found the 12 odd, up to CV12 outcrops, that was done over a very short period of time, over a couple of visits, and that's maybe five or six days, or somewhere around there. We've now had five weeks on the ground with a crew of four, and they have done a spectacular job of not only going back to the outcrops that were identified and see what more may lay around them, but also walking the ground interconnected between them, and we will be putting out some maps and some further information once we get assays back and are sure, but when we see spodumene crystal the size of your thigh in an outcrop, that's a pretty good indicator. But we still have to do the right thing and get the assays, and we expect those to be relatively soon.

I don't want to commit to the timing. It takes a bit of time to coalate all this stuff, but they've done a great job. We have found new outcrops and we've found more, or been able to get more detail around the outcrops we've identified, and that's helping us to ultimately look at each of these sort of occurrences or clusters if we want to call them that, and then we will shortlist the ones that are going to get a drill, and ideally we get time this probably later in the season, maybe September, we'll be able to put some holes in around some of these, to see if we have another corridor, like we're working on now with the summer drill program.

Gerardo Del Real: You have the three rigs, you have what I'm describing as a monster deposit or deposits, because I think ultimately this is going to turn into multiple deposits. You don't need to go to the market for money. You have a substantial amount of cash sitting in warrants that you could call in at any time. It doesn't sound like there's going to be a shortage of drilling any time soon or assays. Am I off on that?

Blair Way: No, absolutely. As you correctly said, we've got a ton of warrants that are in the money. I think it's in the order of about but 18 million 75 cent warrants that are under escrow until Christmas, and then the next batch are until next March. But as we wish, or as the board can choose to take that escrow off, it was a voluntary escrow, and if that was to suit our needs in order to continue to do or fund a winter drill program, then that's the way to do it, and what's great is that we have options and that's the key to this. We need to keep drilling, and we have options in order to be able to continue to do so.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, Blair, now that assays are coming in, it sounds like you and I will likely be chatting every week. Congrats on an excellent start to the program. I can't wait to see how much more you extend this what's now 1,900 meters of strike, and I also can't wait to see the details of the field program, because I think there is going to be a lot there to chat about. Anything to add to that?

Blair Way: No, I think you've touched on the key things. We've got a great summer drill program ahead of us, we've got a bunch of meters that we've got to work on this two kilometer corridor, which we will be doing all summer, and then we've got these identified outcrops, the satellite outcrops from the field program that ideally we'll be putting some drill holes in later this year. But we have an incredible summer ahead of us, and yeah, I can't wait to get the assays flowing on a regular basis and be able to share with investors just what we have here and the scale of what we have here.

Gerardo Del Real: There's also the ASX listing which I know is going to be a pool of eager buyers that really understand, I believe, just how special the opportunity is here. Blair, we'll get an update on that the next time we chat. Thank you so much.

Blair Way: Thanks Gerardo, it's always great to catch up.

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