Categories: Energy
Topics: General Energy

Patriot Battery Metals (TSX-V: PMET)(OTC: PMETF) CEO Blair Way on Drilling Spodumene Pegmatite Over 22.4 m in First Drill Hole at CV13, and Extending Strike of Spodumene Mineralization to 2.1 km at the CV5 Corridor, Corvette District, Quebec

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the President and CEO of Patriot Battery Metals, Mr. Blair Way. Blair, we just chatted, I think, three days ago. I was teasing the potential for a discovery. It looks like we have that now. How are you?

Blair Way: I'm doing great. I'm actually at the site this week. It's a great time to be up here. It's a sunny fall afternoon now. We're looking out over the lake beside our base camp. We've had a great day back in the helicopter, checking out the various drill prospects. We couldn't be happier with what we've seen at CV13. It's again back to that mantra, "Drill, drill, drill."

Gerardo Del Real: Let's get right into it. Tell me about CV13. How many holes do you have into it? How far are the step outs, and how happy are you thus far, knowing that we don't have assays yet with what you're seeing?

Blair Way: Absolutely. As always, the assays take time. There's a lag, but what's great about drilling the spodumene-bearing pegmatites is that we can see the spodumene mineralization. So far, as mentioned in the press release, we've drilled a couple of holes. We put holes in the CV13 now. I think we're on hole number three, moving on to number four. As we progress, we are generally stepping out around 100 meters, but we're also teasing it out. A couple of them just dictated by terrain is only a 50-meter spacing. But it's very similar to what we did at CV5. You initially start close and working within the area that you believe is going to deliver what you want. So far, we're definitely seeing the spodumene mineralization and the pegmatite intercepts. We couldn't be happier. We just have to keep drilling, keep moving the rig. Now we're fighting the fall. We should get a couple of thousand meters into CV13 before the fall pushes us away.

Gerardo Del Real: You talk, in the news release, about a preliminary review of the core indicating that the mineralization style in both holes at CV13 thus far... And I'm assuming that you've now seen hole number three as similar to the principle pegmatite at CV5. That stood out to me. That's important, right?

Blair Way: Well, that just continues to what we've talked about throughout the drill program. We've talked about CV6 to CV5 to CV1. We're calling that the CV5 corridor now because it's such a mouthful. But we started out around one outcrop and then looked at joining CV5 to CV1. We drilled that over the winter. That was 1.8 kilometers. We made that connection. We then drilled out to the east and west; connected it to the west towards CV6.

Now, we've got 13, which is four and a half kilometers away from CV6. Most of that space is all under glacial till. It's not inconceivable. Still, the drill will have to tell us that because the geophysics really isn't that helpful to determine what lays underneath the glacial till. But there is certainly the potential that there could be a connection. We have to prove it with the drill rig. That's really what we have to do as we start drilling at CV13. We'll drill adjacent to outcrops first to find out what the configuration is, just as we did at CV5 and then around CV1. Then, you start seeing if you can join the gaps between those outcrops at CV13. But eventually, we will then be looking at teasing it out all the way. See how far it heads to the east and how far it heads to the west, just as we're doing with the CV5 corridor.

Gerardo Del Real: You're in the midst of closing. I should say the financing is just waiting on approval from the exchange to close that out. It's fully taken down. But you're waiting to close that financing. What happens next with the money there, Blair?

Blair Way: Well, as you can well imagine, it's flow through and flow throughs for drilling. We're planning the winter drill program. All things going to plan, we'll have permitted the snow road, which will make some of our winter drilling a little bit more efficient. We should get up to five rigs in the wintertime. That's probably starting to max out the limit when you've got five drill rigs drilling around the clock. That's quite a number of men just for the drilling and the support for that as well as the geological support, as well as the helicopters and the pilots and all the other ancillary people that you need. All going to plan, we'll have a five-rig drill program commencing in probably early January. That'll carry us all the way into spring.

Gerardo Del Real: A lot of news flow between now and then. I've seen some grumblings online saying it's going to be a quiet period for a couple of months. I suspect that you're still having conversations with some of the majors in this space regarding the potential scale of this district.

Blair Way: Yeah, no. It must be the opposite to what I'd say is being quiet for a couple of months. Obviously, we are in a financing. We do have restrictions about what results and stuff. We just basically ask the lab not to deliver any results until we close the financing. But that's going to be pretty quick. We'll see that closing in a relatively quick time. Then, assays will start flowing. We'll have a little bit of a backlog, but that's always good so people can get a real taste of what we've had for some of the summer drilling. But there's still a ton more to come beyond that. We're going to have assays taking us right to Christmas, coming back from the lab, let alone being able to talk in more detail about the winter drill program and what we're planning there.

As you said, as we continue to grow this thing and interest continues from all kinds of different other organizations that either, whether it's financial or otherwise or peers or something, we'll continue to have discussions. We do talk about this at length. Our goal here is to demonstrate the scale. That means we have to drill. CV5 corridor is surpassing all of our expectations. But we've still got CV13. We've still got CV8 and 12 and those other clusters beyond; yet to be drilled. That's going to be part of the winter drill program so that we can work on the blue sky: continue to work on the CV5 corridor. But we still don't know for sure that we started drilling at the best outcrops. When we drill these other clusters, who knows? Maybe we find something bigger. You just don't know.

Gerardo Del Real: I have to ask you. Again, I'm a biased shareholder, so I'm asking these questions for my own personal consumption. But as far as CV13 goes, you mentioned three or four holes thus far. How widely spaced are those? I'm trying to get an idea of the snapshot that we'll have when this drilling program wraps up; how much of a snapshot we'll have as far as initial potential strike length.

Blair Way: Yeah. I guess I gave a clue, but I don't really say that clearly. But if you look at the way that we've mapped out CV13, where the outcrops are, and then there's obviously gaps of till in between, we will drill adjacent and on each side of the outcrops to understand and determine what's going on at depth. If you can imagine each of those outcrops, so we'll drill probably by the end of this program. We'll have most of those outcrops with at least a couple or three holes on each side, similar to what we did those first few holes we did at CV5. I don't know if you remember hole number one, then hole number two was 100 meters away, and then hole number three was in the opposite side of CV5, drilling from the opposite direction. That gave us a real taste of what we had with respect to CV5.

We're doing a very similar process with these other outcrops. Of course, we only referred to CV5. We should have called it CV5 cluster because there's a whole bunch around them that makes our two-kilometer corridor. But at the time, every outcrop was getting a number. We no longer number the outcrops individually. We're now putting them under the word "cluster" because, otherwise, we'd be at a CV number too big.

Gerardo Del Real: It's a good problem to have. It's a great answer. It was a great clue, by the way. I just didn't think everybody would get it. I figured I'd ask in more specific detail.

Blair Way: No problem.

Gerardo Del Real: Blair, thanks a lot for that. I appreciate the update.

Blair Way: Cool. Always great to catch up, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: All right. I know you have a busy week of visitors, so we'll chat soon.

Blair Way: All right. See you.

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