Categories: Energy
Topics: General Energy

Skyharbour Resources (TSX-V: SYH) CEO Jordan Trimble on Winter-Spring Drill Program that Doubled the High-Grade Maverick East Zone at the Moore Uranium Project in the Athabasca Basin

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president and CEO of Skyharbour Resources (TSX-V: SYH)(OTC: SYHBF), Mr. Jordan Trimble. Jordan, I'd ask you how you are this morning, but you had some good news that the market's really received well. So I assume you're doing well.

Jordan Trimble: I am, yeah. It's an exciting day. It's good to have the results from our winter-spring drill program back. We had delays with the virus, but good to have all 6 holes back. It was a total of just under 2,400 meters. Again, a focus on drilling and testing the underlying basement rock at the main Maverick Corridor. We did a couple of exploratory drill holes as well, which I'll talk about, but all in all a very positive result. 

The big takeaway here is we've expanded what's called the East Maverick Zone. We've almost doubled the size of it, a step-out of 50 meters east of the previously defined Maverick East Zone. We hit 0.4% over 4.5 meters and a high-grade zone in the basement rock of about 1.43% over 0.5 meter. So exciting news. And we also announced in there a summer program planned of 2,500 meters to follow up on the results from this program and to test some new targets as well.

Gerardo Del Real: Let's talk about that program because the one thing this release didn't have was the home run, right? We didn't hit that feeder zone that we've been looking for. Again, doubling the high-grade mineralization at Maverick is obviously important moving forward. You're adding pounds and you're doing so quickly and efficiently, but we all know we speculate in the space for that big, huge hit. I know you still believe it, I know the company still believes it exists. Tell me a bit about vectoring in towards the feeder zone and how you're approaching it moving forward with the upcoming program.

Jordan Trimble: Yeah. So look, there is a lot of work that goes into picking these targets. As we know with drilling and exploration, you're not going to hit in every hole. We've done a good job I think vectoring in on these basement-hosted targets. Keep in mind, as we've talked over the last year or so, there really hasn't been much work historically into the basement rock. So this is relatively untested territory. We know that there are high-grade feeder zones in the basement rock. We believe we've nicked a few of them. We see that with the results where you get some good grades, but over skinny widths. We think with additional drilling we will find that home run hole, if you will, that is longer width, much higher grade. We believe it's there. 

We've had historical results on the property at the unconformity, upwards of 21% U308. So we know there's high-grade mineralization there. It's just a matter of finding it. And keep in mind, it was a 6-hole drill program. So it wasn't a huge drill program. We did have a few of the holes, again, that we're testing the basement rocks at East Mavericks Zone that successfully expanded the zone and did hit some high-grade zones. 

I will note too, another hole, one of the exploratory drill holes in the program, which we drilled over at what's called the Viper Zone. Now this is about 1.5 kilometers northeast of the main Maverick zone. So it's a completely separate zone. We drilled a deeper hole there. About 250 meters below the unconformity, we found some very interesting rock, structurally disrupted and graphitic meta-sedimentary units that hosted anomalous values of boron, nickel and copper throughout these basement rock lithologies.

That's important because we're seeing well below the unconformity now these right host rocks for higher grade uranium mineralization. So like I said, we're confident that there is a much larger, higher grade zone, multiple zones at depth. We'll continue drill testing for that. But I don't want to take away from, and we talked about this in the news release. So we have a 4-kilometer long structural corridor. We've really only systematically drill tested about half of it down to the unconformity. So it's wide open still along strike and at depth. 

This is just one part of the property of Moore Lake. It's a big project with 36,000 hectares of ground, ideally situated just east of Denison's Wheeler River project, the access road, the haul road that goes up to McArthur River. So good infrastructure. So we check off all the boxes as far as location, but it does have a number of other high-priority regional targets on the project, about 10 other targets that are mineralized outside of this main Maverick Corridor that are mineralized and that we could look to follow up on. So it's an exciting time for us at the project. We've come a long way and we think there's a lot more to be found there.

Gerardo Del Real: You're planning 2,500 meters of diamond drilling later in the summer. I believe that's fully funded and permitted. Correct, Jordan?

Jordan Trimble: That's correct. We raised money a couple months ago, so fully funded for the summer program. We'll have news forthcoming on the details of that program. Just to add to that, we do have our partner-funded programs as a part of our prospect generator model. We had Azincourt announce results a few weeks ago. They'll be starting back up with the summer program here shortly. There's still a $200,000 cash payment that needs to be made. And then they'll have completed the 70% earn-in at our East Preston project. 

Orano completed a large geophysical and field program that they are planning to follow up on with some drilling later in the year. So we'll have some news out on the Preston project over the coming weeks here and look out for additional programs there. 

As I mentioned when we last spoke, we do have a number of other 100%-owned properties scattered throughout the Athabasca Basin. I'll say we're getting close to getting a deal done on one or two of them. And that will bring in additional partners and additional partner-funded programs to augment what we're doing at Moore and what our other partners are doing at Preston and East Preston. 

So there's multiple irons in the fires as we've talked about in the past, right? We want to offer investors and shareholders exposure to several exploration programs. It's a high-risk venture as we know, going in delineating high-grade uranium deposits in the Athabaska Basin. So if you have several partner companies helping out with that, it's a quick way to add value in a less dilutive manner.

Gerardo Del Real: Well done. Before I let you go, I have to get your take on the uranium space. I'm seeing a lot of new funds that are raising substantial amounts of capital to go and buy up uranium, right? Can you speak to that a bit, Jordan? What are you seeing out there?

Jordan Trimble: Yeah. Look, a lot has happened in the last four months, as we've spoken about. A couple of key themes to keep an eye on. Obviously the supply disruption and destruction around the pandemic. That's been a big one here. We've seen the spot price increase over 30% year to date, a big part of that being this supply disruption that we've seen. Again, I don't think it's as simple as just turning these mines back on. If you look in Kazakhstan which accounts for 40% of global primary mine supply, there's been a little to no wellhead development over the last several months. So for them to ramp back up to continue producing at the run rate they were previously, that's going to take a while. I think that that's still has yet to work its way into the market. I think as the months go by and we see less production out of Kazakhstan, I think you'll see the market and the price of the commodity respond by moving higher. 

We've seen the spot market drying up. And that's something we've talked about in our last interview where you had in April about 25 million pounds transacted in the spot market. It was the busiest month ever. It slowed down a little bit since then, but we are expecting it to pick back up here in July and August. Producers are expected, like Cameco, to be in the market, buying to deliver into their long-term contract. So as we see that those volumes continue to pick up, as we see that market clean out, and as we see less mobile inventory available for sale, that's all going to have, I think, a very positive impact on the market and on the uranium companies.

Then last but not least, we talked about the carry trade unraveling. That's a part of that spot market drying up. That's also important because I think that will be one of the main things that forces utilities back into the market, forces them to get back to some normality in terms of signing long-term contracts. So that's key. 

And just on the policy front, the Nuclear Fuel Working Group, we know that that's all but come to an end. We have some clarity now. We know that in particular in the U.S. I think we'll see these U.S. nuclear utilities now that they have some clarity there, there'll be able to step back into the market. And the Russian suspension agreement is another policy issue, which I think is, well, it's garnering some interest right now, but we're likely going to see the limits on the amount of enriched uranium from Russia to the U.S. at 20%. That's likely to be renewed.

So again, collectively those are issues that I think will help drive new utility buying in particular from U.S. nuclear utilities, as they get some clarity on where they have to buy from, or where they can't buy from. All of this is going to be positive for the market over the next 6 months. So I do see another leg up with the price over the next 3-6 months.

Gerardo Del Real: It's a good set of factors, both company-wise at Skyharbour and for this space. Jordan, thank you for your time as always, and look forward to having you back on soon.

Jordan Trimble: Thanks for having me.

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