Categories: Energy
Topics: General Energy

Patriot Battery Metals (TSX-V: PMET)(OTC: PMETF) CEO Blair Way on Bonanza Grades at High Grade Nova Zone & Blowout Zone Out West

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me once again, finally with some assay is the president and CEO of Patriot Battery Metals, Mr. Blair Way. Blair, I joke a bit, but let's be honest. All of us shareholders have been really, really eager to see some assays. I know it takes time. I've said it before, I'll say it again, you sure know how to deliver and make an entrance. How are you today?

Blair Way: I'm doing great. I'm here at the RRS show in the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, so we're sharing the news with a group here first thing this morning, but yeah, it's going good. We knew this coming down the pipeline, and I know it's frustrating for shareholders to have to wait, but at the end of the day, we're also waiting, and we get this big lump of assays come in and we have to process it. Poor Darren is busier than you can imagine processing this to make sure we get everything right, get the numbers figured out and fed into the model, so we can talk. And of course, you'll notice that we've had to change the scale on the map yet again. It's too small now. We've got to go to two maps to be able to show the eastern and western extension. So, I'm not sure what we're going to do long term. We need bigger pages, I think that's the problem.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, listen. It's a good problem to have. Let me get into the main points that I derived just on a quick scan of the release, which is all I've done thus far because the news just hit. The bottom line is the high-grade Nova Zone now is continuous for 1,100 meters. I joked off-air that most companies would love 1,100 meters of... 1% would be amazing, but the grades that you're hitting within those 1,100 meters are absolutely fantastic.

You also just drilled a continuous 93-meter interval of dominantly spodumene-bearing pegmatite in the most westerly drill hole and 139-meter interval of the same thing in the final drill hole over to the west. So, it's clear to me that it's pinching and swelling to the west, and it's swelling at just the right time. And then, obviously, having an 1,100-meter high-grade Nova Zone to go along with 3.7 kilometers, at the very least, of strike is extremely impressive. Let me read some of the headline numbers. 122.6 meters at 1.89%. That includes 8.1 meters at 5.01%. I could go on. You had 130.3 meter intercept of 1.56%, 101.3 meters at 1.44. You had multiple intervals in that high grade zone that include 52.7 meters of 2.5%, 28.1 meters at 3.00%, four meters of 4.13%. Just phenomenal results. I've said a lot. Provide the context for me, Blair.

Blair Way: You have said a lot. I mean, as I said at the start of this, we couldn't be happier. The Nova Zone continues to impress. Since we really started in the first holes on this, we thought we had something pretty special, and it just keeps getting better. And it seems impossible at times, we've got this high-grade Nova Zone now extending, as you said, 1,100 meters and the grades in it, especially in the shorter intercepts, it's clear that we're tagging spodumene crystals. That's how you're getting such a high grade and these sort of 8.1 meters at 5%, 5.01%. So that combined with the fact that it continues to the east and to the west, I mean natural logic is at some point you're going to find an end where it either plunges or terminates as a normal extrusive body would, but so far we're not finding an end.

So we extend to the east, we're going to continue to extend to the east in the lake with the rigs on the barges and then also continuing to the west over the glacial till we don't know what's below the till. But so far that western hole certainly indicates that the big intercept like that doesn't indicate it's pinching out at any time soon. But you never know. It does pinch and swell, but we're very optimistic now having extended this piece by piece, starting out at a 500 meter connection and a 1.8 kilometer connection. We were 2.2 kilometers this time last year. Now we're at 3.7. It really is quite incredible, plus the Nova zone inside that 3.7 kilometer over a thousand meters. So it really is amazing how this property, this CV5 corridor continues to deliver.

Gerardo Del Real: You're now targeting a July 2023 announcement for the maiden resource estimate. I love the reason why. The reason being that you want to include all the holes completed to date at the CV5 pegmatite through hole 190. Explain to me the reasoning behind that. I'll give you my quick 2 cents if you're going to put out a maiden resource estimate, I love the fact that you want to include all the holes. So as a shareholder, I'm happy about that. Give me some of the context of there Blair.

Blair Way: Well, as you know, whenever you put a resource out, when you're continuing to drill, you got to draw that imaginary line in the sand. And we have talked a number of times of putting that line in the sand. But then this winter we had this winter drill program. It was going to be 20,000 meters. It actually went exceptionally well. We were able to go into 32,000 meters in over 90 holes and so it just made sense for the sake of a couple of weeks, just put it in there. And then our natural line in the sand is the end of the winter drill program 2023. Now of course by the time we put that out and the second week in July is the target, it's already going to be out of date because we'll have been drilling summer for at least a month and a half.

So we have to live with the fact that we're going to continue to drill and the resource will be out of date. But we just felt compelled to include that 30,000 meters in just simply because it was a big chunk. It was almost twice, well, it was over twice what we did last year. So it doesn't make any sense. The assays have been flowing, believe it or not, pretty quickly from the labs. But of course when we have these high grades, we do have to go back and validate them and verify them and then feed it into the model and make sure we're interpreting everything properly. And look, I know everybody's been busting and certainly they bust my hump here in Australia for sections and let me see what it looks like. And there's all this sort of normal jibber jabber that goes on around, you know, "How come they're not putting sections out? How come we're not seeing this stuff?"

It will be all revealed in this maiden resource that we're putting out. And then we're pulling it from the model, which is defined through the independent QP and all that sort of stuff. So we're putting... People will be, I think more than satisfied with what's coming out in with this maiden resource and we just ask people to be patient so they get the real data rather than sort of cartoons that may or may not satisfy certain people's expectations. But what we have coming down the pipeline, we're going to have over 60, well 60,000 meters drilling in this maiden resource. So that's pretty substantial and I think our investors and shareholders will be happy with that.

Gerardo Del Real: 27 drill holes that have been completed remain to be reported. You also talk about recommencing drilling for the summer fall program in late May. It's mid May already, we're talking what, a week and a half or two?

Blair Way: That's right. The guys are already starting to mobilize to site so that we can get prepared for the commencement of the summer and into the fall program. So it's busy time as we've mentioned before. We're building camps we're, we have an awful lot going on at site. Plus we're putting out this maiden resource. We've still got the remaining 27 odd holes to feed into this maiden resource. So that'll be coming out in a news release. I'd say that's probably still a few weeks away. And then the maiden resource won't be long after that. As soon as we get those assays, we can stitch this thing up. So that's really the goal and are moving well on this maiden resource. We just need to get these last few assays in there and then it'll be pretty much stitched up.

Gerardo Del Real: There's a portion of the release and for those that want cross sections and models and they actually want to do the work, you're actually able to pull the info. If you look at the website, patriots pretty good about providing what you need in order to model this thing. It just takes some work, but you have a part in the release where you disclose the pegmatite intervals over two meters for all the drill holes completed during the winter program. It's in table two. Can you speak to what you're seeing as it relates to the pegmatite?

Blair Way: Yeah, I mean, we do report the pegmatite from time to time just so that… people are insatiable for their desire for information. So when we get caught up on assays and on logging, as you can imagine after that drill program, there was a lot of backlog of core. So as it got caught up, we didn't put the intervals in that previous sort of update on the drill program. It just wasn't finished. So we provide those pegmatite updates so people can take that table, they can model the pegmatite, and then as the assays feed into that, they can also model the actual assays within the pegmatite. So it really is just providing people with a bit of texture. But at the end of the day, pretty much every hole we're drilling here is delivering something that we're pretty damn happy with.

Gerardo Del Real: I know you likely won't comment on this, but with the maiden resource estimate coming up with these kind of results, with the scale that Corvette has and the fact that you've drilled a tiny portion of this massive, massive land package, I've speculated that you're going to likely get a major or two wanting to come in and at least take a minority interest in the company. Do you care to comment on whether or not you're even having conversations with majors?

Blair Way: Well, I think we've discussed previously, we are what we would deem... In fact, the lithium space is actually pretty friendly. A lot of the lithium companies will talk and certainly look at possible future collaboration or whatever we may be able to do down the track. At this stage, it's still premature. We are an exploration company and we are drilling, we're putting out our maiden resource, we're heading down, taking CV5 down that pre-feasibility pathway and towards permitting and defining path to production. However, the remaining proper aspect, you know, we've still only really drilled four odd kilometers of this 50 kilometer trend.

We have a remaining five decent size targets yet to drill. We have the remaining field work on the last 25 kilometers of the 50 kilometer trend that we may identify more targets. We fly over it, we see pegmatite from the helicopter, the guys have dropped down taking a quick look, but we haven't done the detailed fieldwork, peeling back the moss, doing channel sampling and finding out exactly what we might have there. So there is just so much ahead of us. We have to keep our head down and focus on that. We raised a bunch of dough in the spring here, well, late winter, we just got to keep doing that work and at some point there may well be those sort of discussions. But as I said, we're friendly to everybody, but we also have a ton of work to do and we need to be focused on that.

Gerardo Del Real: Blair, I'll let you get back to it. A lot to like here. Congrats again, and I suspect we'll be chatting soon. Good luck out there.

Blair Way: Sounds great, Gerardo. Always good to catch up and we'll look forward to talking next time.

Gerardo Del Real: Cheers.

Blair Way: See ya.

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