Categories:
Energy
Topics:
Lithium Stocks
Q2 Metals (TSX-V: QTWO)(OTC: QUEXF) VPE Neil McCallum on 347.1 Metre Interval of Continuous Spodumene-Pegmatite at its Cisco Lithium Property
Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the very happy VP of Exploration for Q2 Metals, Mr. Neil McCallum.
Neil, great to catch up. Meant to reach out last week. Was in Beaver Creek, but holy smokes, congratulations are in order. How are you, sir?
Neil McCallum: I'm fantastic. Yeah, we're just delighted to be able to share this news with everybody, and I think we're onto something really big, so it was hard to hold back telling people, but I'm glad it's out now, and we're not even past the story yet.
Gerardo Del Real: No, no, no, listen, amazing work. Kudos to you and the team. Let's get into it. You drilled a 347.1-meter interval of continuous spodumene pegmatite at the 100%-owned Cisco Lithium property. Far from a one-off. There were several, several holes with significant widths.
And so had to get you on. I would love for you to provide some context as to the scale, the intensity of the mineralization, and the potential here, because it looks like you have a world-class project on your hand.
Neil McCallum: Yeah, totally. It just seems like we were onto something, but now we're on to something even better. So we took the project from our property vendors. They put six holes in, and we liked it, but now, as we continue to the south, it just looks like it's getting incredible, these wide intervals with pegmatite. We don't yet know the true widths, but we will eventually find out. Those intervals that we're putting out, like the 347 in Hole 21, and then there's 215 in Hole 18, they're not going to be too far off, probably, the true widths, but we'll get there.
One thing to point out, though, is that these two 200-meter, 200-meter-plus intervals are not far away from some of the results that we have put out so far, which is Hole 10, that had 120 meters, at 1.7% lithium oxide, including some higher-grade intervals above 2%. So it looks similar. I can't say much until the assays are out, but I'm hopeful that the analytical is going to be just as positive as that Hole 10, which is really good. Time will tell, and we'll get that news out as soon as we can.
Gerardo Del Real: You answered my next question, which was going to be about assays and whether it looks similar to some of the holes where the assays have been reported. Clearly, everybody is waiting for the numbers on that. How big is the system you've defined thus far, and what's the approach to the drilling to map out the scale of Cisco?
Neil McCallum: Definitely. So right now, the area that we've defined with the drill bit is roughly about 850 meters long, by about, in total, 600. But the wider intervals are those widths of 200 or 300 meters. There's all sorts of other pegmatites that are probably offshoots from the main body, and then top to bottom, vertically, that's roughly about 400 meters, top to bottom. So already, it's showing quite a decent size potential.
And then the second part of your question is next steps. What do we do? We have two goals. The first one is going to be to close up the drill spacing in that area. We're doing pretty wide step-outs, probably about 200 meters on average. We've got to tighten that up just a little bit so that we can put some more accurate boundaries on the edges of this large pegmatite.
But the other and more exciting goal is to fully test the surface mineralized area, which is about 1.9 kilometers, roughly north-south, by 1.5 kilometers. So the area that we've drill tested is only 18% of what we've defined at surface, so we are just getting started, and that's the exciting part, I find.
Gerardo Del Real: Incredible work. It's not a coincidence that the stock is up some 200% since the last financing, which luckily for us on our end, me as a happy shareholder, and a lot of our subscribers that participated in that financing, couldn't be any happier. Exciting times ahead.
Can I get your thoughts on the lithium space in general? We had some pretty big news out of China that was material with some significant amount of supply coming off, and speculation that there should be a lithium price rally to the tune of 20% here between now and year-end. Can you speak to the space a bit?
Neil McCallum: It's hard to predict the future on what's coming out of China, just because it's such an opaque industry, but having heard some of those woes that the Australian producers are seeing, a few projects going on, maintenance, that doesn't make any sense, fundamentally, that the price of lithium is not making these mines feasible.
So in my mind, the only way to go, as long as there's continuing demand, is for those prices to go up. So that's where I see the shining light in the industry, is that the pricing just doesn't make any sense at this point.
Gerardo Del Real: Do you think there's a disconnect? And it's a hypothetical question, but do you think there's a disconnect between the Chinese spot price and what a real market-based price should be, specifically for North American lithium?
Neil McCallum: Yeah, I think if you took China out of the equation, there would be a completely different price. It's going to reflect the actual cost of production, from shovel in the ground to final end product, and that's not where I believe we're at. I think there's no true sense of the price of lithium, just because there's so much government involvement in China that there's no true reflection of the production of that commodity.
So yeah, things have definitely got to change, and the more production we get out outside of China, the better, as far as I'm concerned.
Gerardo Del Real: Agreed. Exciting times. Can't wait for the assays. Can't wait to have you back on. Neil, congrats again. Can't wait to see what the numbers look like here in the next several weeks.
Neil McCallum: Yeah, I'm on the edge of my seat every day, waiting for those assays to roll in, so we'll get those to market as soon as we can.
Gerardo Del Real: All right, chat soon. Thanks again.
Neil McCallum: Okay, thanks. Yep, bye.
Click here to see more from Q2 Metals