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

Patriot Battery Metals (CSE: PMET)(OTC: RGDCF) President Blair Way on Hitting 1.25% Li2O over 58.1 m, including 1.80% Li2O over 33.0 m, in Third Hole at the Corvette-FCI Property, James Bay, QC

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

Blair Way: I'm great, Gerardo. It's been super busy, but super busy in a great way.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, this was pleasant surprise. I spoke with Darren last week and we talked about the delays with the labs. At the time Darren thought that we would get results from hole three and hole four maybe within two weeks. It's been just a little over a week, and here you are with more excellent news this morning. I will let you provide the context there and then I have some questions for you.

Blair Way: Absolutely. As everyone's aware, we've had some challenges with the labs and getting results, nothing new or unusual for everybody. We believe we got a bit lucky. Our hole number three and four came through. We've got some amazing... Again, we're super excited with results. Hole number three was drilled right across from hole number one, and we've seen almost 60 meters. 58 meters at 1.25%. Within that, there's 33 meters at 1.8. The fourth hole, which is just over around 550 meters to the west of CV5 at our CV6 pegmatite outcrop. We saw another 30 meters at 1.3. 10 meters at 1.6. And an overall 63 out of 64 odd meters at 0.64, and pretty decent tantalum numbers as well. So what we're seeing now is hole number one and two are across each other at 45 degree angles from outcrop CV5, and then hole number four is to the west almost about 550 meters.

So we're seeing some consistency in the pegmatite and now our job is to connect it. And of course we've got CV1, which is almost 1.8 kilometers, to the east. And our goal is to define those interrelationships between these outcrops and see what sort of connectivity we have. So again, happy, super happy with the results for both these holes. And yeah, we get a ton of work ahead of us now.

Gerardo Del Real: Well look for having four drill holes to already be able to have, as you describe it, clear insight as to the thickness of the CV5 pegmatite, that's got to be extremely encouraging. You've hit really, really great widths of mineralization in the first four holes. And I am not a geologist, but when I read the release and I see that you plan on drilling to kind of expand this out and test a scale of this. And I see that lake, that it's my understanding of be frozen over here within the next couple of weeks. There's no reason to believe that this pegmatite body is just a couple of outcrops here and a couple of outcrops there. It's starting to look to my amateur brain and my amateur eye, like all of this could connect as one big massive system. Is that an unreasonable speculation on my part?

Blair Way: It's a pegmatite body. So it certainly is quite possible that they are connected. And that's certainly the hypothesis that we're working to CV5 is outcropped for 220 odd meters. It's 30-40 meters thickness at surface. We've just drilled hole number one and number three at a 45 degree angle opposite each sides of that outcrop. And that's showing us somewhere of a 60 meter width. So it's actually getting wider or thicker as you go to depth, which is not uncommon, because obviously the flow or the source of the intrusive body came from below. And it starts out thicker and generally tapers as you get closer to surface. Then when we see the connectivity of that 60 meter odd thickness that we define at CV5, we can see the scale and size of CV1 outcrop and then also the CV6 outcrop, both the east and west.

And to expect some sort of connectivity there is not unrealistic. There's a shallow glacial lake in between CV1 and CV5. So our plan is to do some exploratory holes this winter over that lake because drilling on the lakes is actually much easier in the winter time. They're shallow, they freeze quickly, and you can plunk a rig on there with a helicopter pretty easily. And we'll drill and get an understanding of that relationship between the outcrops. But we certainly have a reasonable belief that there is a connectivity of some type between these outcrops.

Gerardo Del Real: A lot of excitement from the first four holes. You just raised $11 million. I believe you have just shy or just north $13 million. Walk me through how you're going to allocate that capital. Obviously 11 million of that was flow through. It's going in the ground, but what's the approach? And what's the goal here for 2022?

Blair Way: As we've mentioned in previous press releases and there'll be more details flowing out as we progress into the drill program, but we have basically planned a 20,000 meter drill program, which will be a winter program over the shallow glacial lake that we'll be doing the work on. And then that'll grow right into a summer program once spring breakup has occurred. The rigs will actually stay out there as spring breakup... Just waiting on spring breakup and then the boys will get back on the ground again, and we'll drill on the ground to better understand the relationships, as I said, between these pegmatite outcrops that we've identified CV1, 5, and 6. And there'll also be additional field work to go in more detail on the ground, looking closer at the outcrops that we have identified, taking more channel samples of those, and then quite possibly doing some drilling beyond the outer reaches of the CV1, 5, and 6 area.

But certainly our goal is to do enough drilling so that we can certainly see a path or have defined some form of preliminary resource in this particular area around CV5. But there's, as you mentioned, we've got 11 million to flow through. That money has to go into the ground and that's exactly what we're doing. And there'll be more news following in the coming weeks to just articulate exactly what that looks like. But it's basically drilling. There's not much complication to that. We just got a ton of drilling ahead of us.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. How important is the tantalum kicker there that you're starting to see? I noticed the grades increase in this release. The lithium grades are slightly lower in some parts and higher in others than the first couple of holes, but they provide a very clear, concise picture, I think. Again, a lot of information for just four holes, but how important is that tantalum kicker?

Blair Way: Well, the tantalum credits, I think, and again, it depends on how you interpret the valuations. So we have to be careful how to define those offsets, but looking at our peers, you sort of see that they... A hundred PPM is 0.1%, I think, as a broad brush, depending on metallurgical and values of tantalum and stuff like that. But it certainly does give us a kicker to our effective lithium numbers. And that's all fantastic. And as you said, we are seeing some higher tantalum numbers in there, which is great because that really is icing on the cake. We're seeing great lithium numbers and to see the high tantalum on top of it. And there does appear to be some sort of correlation. The higher lithium numbers are also giving us a higher tantalum number and I'm sure a pegmatite body of this size and scale that we believe we have here, there are going to be ebbs and flows and variations within those concentrations of lithium and tantalum.

So, we're going to have to define those as we move through this sort of development process of drilling this thing out. But yeah, so far we're seeing numbers that are definitely in favor of continuing and defining what we actually have here.

Gerardo Del Real: I'm very well aware that lithium is the focus. Lithium is the driver. Lithium is why I wrote a check, the multiple checks now, and I'm happy to write another one if the opportunity presents itself at higher prices, but it's also clear to me that there is significant potential for a copper and gold discovery. And we have, I believe, what 10 holes in the lab right now that we're waiting on assays from.

Blair Way: Yeah, that's right. So yeah, there's another 10 holes plus there's one more lithium hole and I'm not sure of the timing of that yet. The lab hasn't even shared that with us. So the 10 holes are going to be coming through and they're probably going to... Some of those will be lumped together as the lab releases them, so we'll certainly put them out, but you're right. We haven't really even talked about copper gold potential here, and the property does have that. And again, we'll see what is revealed in these first 10 drill holes that we've done in that Maven copper trend.

And that could just make our lives even more complicated, but in a good way. So not going to be any complaints there. We are very happy with what we've found in our first four holes in respect to drilling the pegmatites and finding fantastic hits of lithium and tantalum. And if our Maven trend does the same thing for us with the copper, well, we'll be even more over the moon. So at this stage, we have to wait on the labs as we have been very patiently doing since we finished the program in late October, but when those results come, we'll certainly be sharing them.

Gerardo Del Real: Your more advanced peers near you in the same region have market caps in the hundreds of millions of dollars based just on the lithium and based on I think, we're going to see comparable or a resource that exceeds some of the tonnage of some of those peers. Where is Patriot's current market cap?

Blair Way: Yeah. We've been hovering around 30 million and it's when you consider the fact... Yeah, so we're at 30 million and a half. We've got 13 million in the bank. So we're somewhere between 15 and 17 million enterprise value, which is crazy. It's the way the world works until people really understand what we have here then, but we're seeing some indication that people are starting to get what we have here. And I certainly see our valuations being significantly more than what we're seeing now, simply because of what we've defined even in these first four drill holes.

But as we drill more, there is high expectations that we're going to be on par if not better than some of our peers in the area, because we do, as I mentioned many times before, we've got a 25 kilometer sort of lithium trend that we're working to. And we're only looking at really the first 500, 600 meters. And of course upwards or eastwards to CV1, that's another 1.8 kilometers. So say we're looking at two, two and a half kilometers. We still have another 22 and a half kilometers to explore. So we've only just scratched the surface. And so far what we've found in this first four holes of scratching has been fantastic. So I think there's some huge upside here for sure.

Gerardo Del Real: Blair congrats. You're on to what I believe is a legitimate discovery. That's going to end up being really, really significant for the region for yourself and for shareholders. So congrats on that front. A lot of work. It's early stage, but a hell of a way to start a program and follow one up with, right?

Blair Way: Yeah, absolutely. It's always great. You don't usually get this lucky on the first couple of holes, but we did plan the holes carefully and that has paid off, I think, in respect to the results we're seeing. And we'll just continue to apply the same sort of diligence moving forward. And I think the shareholders will be very happy with the work that we're doing and, and happy to do it. And I think it's a fantastic, fantastic result. The company is... We've been working hard to get to where we are. We've got a ton more work to do, but it is delivering results. And that's really the name of the game here is to get to work on the ground and deliver something that no one's ever seen before in the ground, in a new area like we are.

Gerardo Del Real: A lot to like for 2022. I'm looking forward to having you back on. It sounds like we're going to be chatting pretty frequently, Blair. So thanks again.

Blair Way: Sounds good, Gerardo. Always great to catch up. Look forward to chatting again.

Gerardo Del Real: Awesome. Take care. Bye now.

Blair Way: See you. Bye.

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