Categories: Energy
Topics: General Energy

Patriot Battery Metals (TSX-V: PMET)(OTC: PMETF) CEO Blair Way on Best Drill Intercept to Date at World Class Corvette Lithium District

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president and CEO of Patriot Battery Metals, the very popular Mr. Blair Way. Blair, congratulations. You just announced the best drill intercept to date with 159.7 meters of 1.65% lithium. That includes 4.12% lithium over nine meters. Look, we'll get into the details here in a second, but first off, congratulations. How are you and the team feeling? You have to be excited. You also just extended the strike length to at least, and that at least comment isn't lost on me, to at least two kilometers. So congratulations. How's the team doing?

Blair Way: It's just fantastic. As you know, we've been very bullish and excited about the property, but we just couldn't imagine getting results like this. This is just within the first 10 holes of the summer drill program. We still have another 30 plus holes pending. So yeah, the team is just over the moon. This drill program, I don't think you could make it go any better right now.

Gerardo Del Real: Listen, I referenced the 159.7 meters of 1.65% lithium. There were also 86.2 meters of 2.13% lithium. Again, it's not lost on me, the tantalum grades seem to be improving as well. Talk to me about that statement saying that the strike length has been extended to at least two kilometers. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but the language is interesting to me.

Blair Way: Well, of course we have to report what our assays reveal. So we've been drilling now all summer. We're at hole number 67 or something like that. So we still have another 30 holes beyond this. We've seen the pegmatite intercepts. We can have our high level of confidence what we're dealing with, but until we have the assays, we really need to sort of stand true here. What we have the assays on has extended us to 2,000 meters.

Of course, the winter program was only at 1.3 kilometers because we drilled from CV5 to CV1 through the lake, and now we've drilled from CV5 down to CV6 to the west, and we're continuing to delineate the infill some of those other holes in the lake that we missed over the summer. But what this is doing is fleshing out this two kilometer corridor but we're also able to extend it with the drilling. As we get those results, we certainly can report on them. But two kilometers, we're pretty happy with two kilometers as you can well imagine. The results that we're seeing are just fantastic, truly fantastic.

Gerardo Del Real: There's an intercept of 1.15 meters of 6.74% lithium, Blair. Can you speak to that a bit?

Blair Way: That's something I hope people pick up out of the press release. It's a little further down. It's a technical press release. So it's going to take time. People are going to have to read this a few times to really get into it and understand what it means. But what that essentially means, we've reported large spodumene crystals. We've reported our metwork is able to work with the coarse grain spodumene more effectively.

But this is a particular hole that just happened to obviously tag a spodumene crystal. It's 6.74. That's actually higher than your average spodumene concentrate and 1.15 meters. We've had smaller intercepts and we have reported them, but this is the biggest we've had to date. Essentially, it just lined up perfectly that the drill hole at depth drilled right down the guts of a spodumene crystal, but 6.74% over 1.15 meters is pretty spectacular.

Gerardo Del Real: The fact that it's this early in the drill program and that so few holes have been drilled to explore what I think is going to eventually be, and I've said this on the record publicly before, a district with four, five big deposits. But the fact that Ken Brinsden at this early a stage says that the Corvette project remains highly prospective beyond what we have found to date and is one of the world's great lithium raw materials discoveries is striking to me because he's generally, from what I know of his background, conservative in his enthusiasm.

So I have to believe with these kinds of results, Blair, that your phone must be ringing for potential off-takes or for potential partners. I know you likely can't speak to that too much as far as specifics go, but we've seen deals at a substantial premium in the market here recently. Given the scale, given the fact that this is open along strike to depth on all sides of it, how is that aspect of this discovery playing out for you, as much as you can speak to it?

Blair Way: I guess it should be I hope relatively apparent with Ken coming on board and his experience and skillset. We come from a sort of similar background, but obviously Ken has recently delivered a lithium spodumene concentrate business from beginning to end. That's really what we are setting ourselves up for here is obviously there's people interested in the scale of what we have, but we said this many times, I mean, we're only early stages. We're looking at hole number 42 or 43 that we've released.

So we have a long way to go in order to prove up the scale. Really, we want to be able to demonstrate not only the scale, but the capability to take this through the course of getting it into a mine and an operating facility. Lots of steps to get there, lots of processes to get there, but we have to drill. We have to drill to demonstrate the scale.

So yeah, the interest is very flattering. However, we need to move this, continue to move this forward. We need to do the drilling. We need to prove up what we have here at the CV5 district area. We need to work on CV13. We've got a number of other outcrop clusters that need the work, and then we can build and demonstrate the scale of what we have here. It's great to have the interest, for sure, but we also want to be able to demonstrate our ability to take this forward right to the point of being able to develop and build a production facility to produce a spodumene concentrate.

That will also demonstrate our resolve with respect to this property. This is a fantastic property and deserves the attention of the drill bit initially, and then the next steps obviously taking it through the whole development cycle. That's really what we're heading for. As people get interested, who knows what that looks like down the track, but obviously based on our activities that you can see, we're bringing in the right team so that we can take this right through the process.

Gerardo Del Real: You're going to hit this sweet part of a lithium bull cycle. You have phenomenal scale. I couldn't help notice because I actually read the entire release that you mentioned the fact that there's three rigs going and you plan on bringing along another rig, or one of the rigs I should say is planned to move to that CV13 pegmatite cluster that you just referenced. That's 4.3 kilometers on strike to the southwest of the current drill area. So I'm excited to see what that turns up. Blair, congratulations. I'll let you go ahead and provide any further context before I let you go. I know your phone is ringing off the hook. I appreciate you jumping on a call with me on such short notice. Anything to add to that?

Blair Way: No. Just obviously we're super excited with the results that we've put out today. We've got CV13, which we've spoken about in previous news release. Yeah, we just have a great deal of work ahead of us. We're going to put our head down and just keep working the ground, and yeah, let the ground deliver because it's done a fantastic job to date.

Gerardo Del Real: Keep at it. I suspect we'll be chatting again soon. Thanks a lot for the time, Blair

Blair Way: Sounds good, Gerardo. Always happy to chat.

Gerardo Del Real: Cheers.

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