Categories: Energy
Topics: General Energy

Patriot Battery Metals (TSX-V: PMET)(OTC: PMETF) CEO Blair Way on Extending Strike Length of the CV5 Pegmatite to 3.15 km & Drilling for Multiple Voisey’s Bays

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me once again is the president & CEO of Patriot Battery Metals — Mr. Blair Way. Blair, it was great catching up at PDAC; it's great catching up in a public forum again. How are you today?

Blair Way: I'm doing good. My voice is slowly coming back after multiple weeks of talking to hundreds of people. But yeah, PDAC was quite the event, as was BMO before that in Miami.

Gerardo Del Real: Let's get right into it. You had a drilling update this morning that should excite anyone that is a shareholder or thinking about becoming a shareholder of Patriot. You just extended CV5 to 3.15 kilometers. You also just finished closing on a C$50 million financing that's all going into the ground. 

I listened to an interview with you, and I also listened to a separate interview with Ken [Brindsen], and it struck me as interesting how much more comfortable the both of you seem in talking about the Corvette lithium district in the same light as, potentially, not just a Voisey's Bay but, potentially, multiple Voisey's Bays. 

And so, let's start first with the drilling update because all of us are eager for assays. We know there was a quiet period with the financing. How are things coming on that front? You’ve got to be excited to get CV5 over to 3.15 kilometers.

Blair Way: Absolutely. With the drill program that we've had this winter, we're just plowing through it. And as you know, my mantra has always been we drill, drill, and drill. And that's what we've been doing. The financing was an important financing because it brings in more money for drilling; C$50 million for exploration drilling. 

So what that's doing for us, of course, is allowing us to have this big runway ahead of us so we can continue to drill the Corvette Property with multiple drill targets yet to be drilled. But the drilling we're doing at CV5, I can't see how anyone would be disappointed in what we've been able to produce in this winter's drill program so far. 

To extend CV5 by 550 meters to a total of 3.15 km. We're also drilling westward, which people seem to probably forget that CV5, we're drilling westward with the drills now heading towards CV13.

We’ve drilled over 20,000 meters; that's almost as much as we drilled all of last year. So as the assays start flowing in — and as everyone knows, the assays come in in a normal four-week turnaround time. However, as the results are, how should we say, more impressive than sometimes, those turnaround times take longer because they have to retest. It's just a simple over-limit situation. And people can speculate, or what have you. 

The lab has been producing to schedule. However, we're getting the sort of results that need to be checked. And we're going to make damn sure the results that are coming out are accurate. And also, we had the financing that put a bit of a quiet spell in there. And I know I committed to everyone to do weekly news releases… but I hope people can sympathize with the fact that, when we are in financing, I do have to change that program. 

But we're working on a runway now beyond Easter and into the spring. So we will get back on track and aim for regular news releases on a weekly basis. Maybe around Easter, it might quiet down again. But we have a lot of news flow ahead; massive drill program, well funded. I can't see why people aren't going to be excited by this.

Gerardo Del Real: You mentioned the extension of CV5 to 3.15 kilometers. If my math is correct, and I'm just freestyling here, you're probably only a kilometer and a half away from CV4 now. I speculated early on that I think, when it's all said and done, a lot of this is going to be just one big blob underneath some lake cover. 

And it sure seems that it's going in that direction. Is there anything with the drill bit, thus far, that disproves my crazy speculation that I had early on?

Blair Way: I like your deep technical evaluation of a deep blob, which is probably a good way to describe a pegmatite! It is kind of a blob, like cookie dough, being squished through cracks, or what have you, or fissures in the ground. But it does appear to continue. 

And look, we know CV4 is a spodumene-bearing pegmatite. How it extends up the lake, really? Well, the winter has not been a super cold one so we haven't had as many rigs on the ice that we'd hoped. But fortunately, we've been able to drill. With our snow road and the trails we've been able to make, we've still been able to put the trails along the shoreline and do the drilling from the shore. 

This summer, we'll have a second barge, so we'll have two rigs on a barge to continue with the delineation and also continue up towards CV4. But it's been unfortunate that the ice hasn't been as thick. It's up to, in some cases, a foot and a half, two feet thick. But that's not quite enough to put the rig on, and we're not taking any chances with losing a rig through the ice. 

So we've been very sensible but we've still, obviously, been able to drill tons of meters and continue to delineate the extension of our blob up towards CV4. But it certainly does look like it. And it's typical of a pegmatite occurrence that it does have some form of continuity. 

Now, it can pinch and swell as you go east and west and north and south and to depth. I don't know if you remember, we talked about this a long time ago, when we were going to connect CV5 to CV6; that was 500 meters. Like, woah, that seems a bit crazy! And then, we did the 1.8 kilometers to get to CV1. Well, it didn't connect to CV1; it went past CV1! 

And now, we're heading up to CV4, and we only have a kilometer and a half. So we remain optimistic that there is this sort of connectivity. And that's another reason why we're heading west from CV5 towards CV13. Now, that's four and a half kilometers away. Does it go all the way? We just don't know. And the only way to define that is with the drill bit. We can't see through the glacial till; there's no geophysics or remote sense. What truly gives us any clarity is the drill bit. 

And that's one of the reasons why raising another C$50 million in charity flow-through — which is the most efficient way to raise money for the company to drill holes in the ground to prove the value of what we have here — and that's exactly what we're doing. We go back to the same mantra that you and I have spoken about many times: drill, drill, and drill!

Gerardo Del Real: I speculated about the blob; so far so good! I'll speculate that the assay delay is, in part, related to the fact that the Nova Zone is likely going to continue to produce blockbuster results that require multiple tests. When can we anticipate assays, Blair? I have to ask you because, if not — they'll kill me! 

Blair Way: No, I know! It's the million-dollar question or multimillion-dollar question. And we have to rely on the labs to give us the information accurately and in a timely manner. And we do expect some assays to be coming soon. 

I'd like to think they'll be next week. But when we get the assay results, we then have to correlate them in with the existing; tie it into the model to make sure we interpret that data correctly. So hopefully, next week. But if not, it'll be the week after, and we'll have something flowing through.

But meanwhile, we have lots of other news to talk about. We'll continue to provide updates on the drilling. And that's always interesting for people to at least understand what the pegmatites are doing. And then, as we get the assays, that then tells you what the spodumene, or if the spodumene mineralization, and how it continues throughout the pegmatites. 

But we also have some other activities going on in respect to environmental study work, which we'll also provide some updates on. And we’ll also start demonstrating or talking about the plan that we have for our summer drill program. And that's looking to be quite an exciting summer work we're going to have here… and 2023 is going to be an amazing year for Patriot.

Gerardo Del Real: I was going to ask you about that summer drill program. We'll leave that for another day. Let's hopefully be chatting next week. Blair, thanks for the update. Great catching up.

Blair Way: Sounds good, Gerardo. Always great to catch up.

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