Categories: Base Metals / Energy
Topics: General Base Metals / General Energy

Patriot Battery Metals (CSE: PMET)(OTC: RGDCF) President Blair Way on Game Changing Lithium Discovery Along 25 KM Trend in Quebec

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the suddenly very popular president of Patriot Battery Metals, Mr. Blair Way. Blair, congratulations. You have a legitimate discovery on your hands. I will let you provide the context on today's number. Spectacular news.

Blair Way: Absolutely, Gerardo. It's fantastic to be talking about this property in such a high sort of perspective, which we've always been confident or had a high level of confidence of what we were going to find here, and this first drill hole couldn't have delivered better. I can't think of a better result and we are just over the moon with what we've seen and we're seeing almost 150 meters at 0.93% starting at the surface. This is fantastic. As I said, the phone's been ringing off the wall and we've had a busy day today and we've only been trading for two and a half hours. So, I expect some big things over the coming weeks.

Gerardo Del Real: I can't imagine a better time for a significant lithium discovery to be made. Let me tell you a few of the things that excite me and then I'll temper that excitement a bit by saying this is just one hole, but given that it's just one assay here, the grades are on par to Critical Elements' Rose Project, right? And, we know that's a company that's got a market cap over $300 million. Obviously, they're much further along, but they're in the same region. They're neighbors. I think it's a fair analog. Once we get more results and we're able to start putting a geologic model around this, but let me tell you why I get excited. You're very clear in saying that the CV5 pegmatite trends for 220 meters and varies between 20 meters in width. The orientation is not well constrained and it seems like you're still wrapping your brain around that part of it. Walk me through why that trend for 220 meters, and that width of 20 to 40 meters is important, given the grades that you're getting at depth?

Blair Way: It's all about scale, for these types of deposits, for a lithium deposit, you need to have the grades, but you have the scale and ideally you also have the scale close to surface. So as you said, we've got 220 meter outcrop, so we essentially drilled holes underneath at an angle, as you will, to understand what's going on at depth. And as I said, the first hole we've drilled, we've found 150 meters of spodumene bearing pegmatite, and within that, we've got that average 0.93%. In shorter section, 73 meters is over 1%. 20 meters is almost 1.83, almost 2%. At seven meters at 2.9. This is all at surface and this is just around this CV5 outcrop. We have outcrops similar to this over a 20 kilometer scale.

And, we've done a lot of sampling over that scale and what's great about this drill hole is verifying what we have tested at sampling with our outcrop sampling is matching up with what we're seeing below. So, the scale of this thing is still tons of work to move to where we can be, as you said, equivalent to something like Critical Elements, but we've got an outcrop that we've been able to get understanding of what we see at the surface. We've now gaining understanding of what we see at depth and the depth of it certainly is in the 100 to 150 meter sort of range, and we still haven't constrained it. We essentially stopped drilling at, I think, our hole sort of topped out at around 200 meters.

So, we're seeing the scale, we're seeing the grade, we've got the results for three holes for this CV5 area that we've been drilling, and then we've got to look at all these other outcrops that we've identified with the surface results and look at drilling those and understanding what we have for scale, not even counting the fact that we have tantalum numbers in there that are pretty impressive as well. And, that ends up being just a sweetener for what we have. So, we've got some scaling that we're looking at, we've got shallow. These outcrops, obviously they're right at surface. So, we're not dealing with a whole crazy sort of stripping ratio. Obviously, there's a whole bunch of work we need to do to understand what that looks like, but when you have these sort of numbers at surface and going down to the 150 meter mark, we've certainly got a pretty good understanding, early understanding of what we have, and it does appear to involve a limited amount of overburden.

Gerardo Del Real: You were cautious in your description of hole one in saying that you were really encouraged by what you were seeing because you were seeing wide intervals of pegmatite, which had varying amounts of spodumene mineralization, and so I got to believe that I know you're going to be cautious because it's your nature, Blair, but when I read in the release that holes two, three, and four, some are 500 meter step outs, have wide intervals, again, of pegmatite containing varying amounts of spodumene. That's got to boost your confidence a bit in what you're going to see when you get some assays back.

Blair Way: Yeah, and we are just hanging out for that assays. The labs had a challenge with this and it's taken... We did say we'd get results by the end of November and we did. So, we feel good that the lab's been able to deliver on that, but they've had to retest a number of times because of the higher grades that we're getting. They want to make sure they get it right, and this is important to us. So, we actually did see some preliminaries a couple weeks ago, but because of the numbers we had to retest and retest and similar with what we're seeing on the next three holes, we want to make sure we get the numbers right. But as you said, our second hole is 275 meters deep.

We know what we've seen in there, we're just waiting on the assays, and again, it's fantastic to have this first hole deliver such amazing results, and we can't wait to get the results for these next three holes, so it can start to give us a mini model of what we have here, and keep in mind, it's just at one of these outcrop areas, CV5, and it is amazing to be honest, and we can't wait to get the results.

Gerardo Del Real: You mentioned the tantalum. I know it's a byproduct, but it may be an important byproduct being that there are relatively common mineral processing techniques that could make it a contributor in a future economic study when you get to that point.

Blair Way: Absolutely, tantalum is something we've identified as a value add, and we’ve been testing for many elements and certainly the tantalum came up as we expected because we did see it in our surface sampling as well. But again, it's delivered some fantastic results where we had a couple 145 PPM for what was it, 50 meters. So that's, again, sits well within that... The lithium grade, we see this tantalum decent numbers as well, and all that does is just make the economics work that much better. So, if you combine a tantalum offset, we've got shallow relatively based on what we've seen so far, relatively shallow deposit, and it's longitudinal, so in the east, west sort of trend and coming to surface in a number of places, it certainly gives us a high level of optimism of what we have here has a very decent deposit that has good potential economics.

Gerardo Del Real: I don't want to be greedy, but I can't help but think out loud. This lithium trend is a 25 kilometer long trend, but you also have a 10 kilometer long gold copper trend that gold, silver trend. Copper, gold, silver trend, excuse me that I know is least well understood because there's been least sampling there, but you have 10 holes pending from that trend as well, right?

Blair Way: That's correct, and those will be later. They were the later holes, so I'd be surprised. We'll start to see some of that coming in January, but that's absolutely right. The lithium is overshadowing what we set out, and what we set out in this program was to drill the lithium and to drill the copper. We've done both the first hole of this program, this 14 hole program has delivered amazing results and we still haven't even had a chance to see the results for the copper side of our exploration program. So absolutely, there's still a lot upside here for us to be working on as far as results.

Gerardo Del Real: I know your phone was ringing today. I imagine a lot of people are asking you when the next set of assays are expected.

Blair Way: Correct.

Gerardo Del Real: When do you expect them?

Blair Way: They should be in the next couple of weeks and I'm always wary of that because labs are just taxed beyond comprehension. As I said, we had preliminaries on this hole a couple weeks ago, but it took them two weeks to work it out. So, as far as just fine tuning the testing to get the lithium numbers to 100% sure they were right and I'm hoping that we don't have that same sort of learning curve because they now know what we're working on, but it should be in the next couple of weeks, but I hate making deadlines that I don't have 100% control over and this situation with a lab I don't, but we are relatively confident we'll have something in the next couple of weeks. So, that's putting us pretty close to Christmas. So, I hope we get some Christmas core.

Gerardo Del Real: I think it's going to be a good Christmas, a good holiday, whatever people celebrate. Congratulations, this absolutely looks and walks and talks like a significant, significant lithium discovery and I am looking forward to you doing what you do best, which is defining economic parameters. That's right up your wheelhouse, as you described to me, and I know it's something that you're looking at for early 2022, if the assay labs and the markets cooperate. Anything to add to that?

Blair Way: Well, you're absolutely right. Obviously, it's great. Discoveries are great, but you got to be able to turn them into an economic model and as you said, that's my wheelhouse is taking these sort of results and building into a drill program and heading down the path of preliminary economic studies on these things, and that's been my bread and butter for I'd say probably 30, 35 years, but I can't wait to dig into this stuff because this is what I love to do and the drilling is fantastic. We've found something meaningful here. Now, we've got to prove it up, and that's where the real sort of proof is in the pudding.

Gerardo Del Real: I hear Tesla might be setting up shop near your neck of the woods here soon.

Blair Way: Well, that's right. We've got all the... Quebec is such a mining friendly jurisdiction and they're always very innovative in bringing these sort of things together, and certainly they've been trying to build a battery industry in Quebec and there's all this chat with Tesla. So, it would be fantastic, all those pieces of the puzzle line up and they may well have a source for some of the commodities they're looking for.

Gerardo Del Real: Great work, Blair. We'll chat soon. Thank you.

Blair Way: Thanks, Gerardo. It was fantastic to be catching up on this.

Gerardo Del Real: Chat soon.

Blair Way: See you.

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