Gerardo Del Real,
Editor
June 13, 2022
Publisher’s Note: Late last year, Gerardo recommended to his members what is turning out to be the hottest lithium discovery in North America, owned by Patriot Battery Metals. Members of Junior Resource Insider first financed it at C$0.16. After that, members of Junior Resource Monthly bought in at C$0.34. Shares have now run as high as C$4.50 — putting his readers up as much as 2,737%. It has the entire industry talking. Some are saying it could be the biggest lithium deposit in Canada and fetch a share price well north of C$10.00 per share.
Below, Gerardo catches up with Darren Smith, the VP of Exploration for the company. If you missed his initial recommendation, don’t worry, Gerardo has another company that’s onto yet another new lithium discovery. Its shares are moving higher fast. You might want to check this one out while it’s still under C$0.50.
—Nick
Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the Vice President of Exploration for Patriot Battery Metals (CSE: PMET)(OTC: PMETF), Mr. Darren Smith. Darren, it is a pleasure to have you back on. How are you doing today, sir?
Darren Smith: Great. Thanks very much. It's a pleasure to be back as well.
Gerardo Del Real: Well, listen, you and I spoke, I want to say it was less than a year ago but it seems like it was in a different time. At the time, we knew that the Corvette property had significant potential for a significant discovery. We didn't have an idea as to the grade or the depth or the scale but we knew simple things, right?
I like to tell everybody I'm a simple guy. I come up with simple premises and ideas and sometimes they work. And my simple idea was that you had all these outcropping pegmatites across a 20 kilometer trend and that there was no reason why they couldn't be under water. And now we fast forward, and let me just get right to the latest release.
You reported an interval of 70.1 meters of 2.2% lithium, including an interval of 40.7 meters of 3.01% lithium in the very first drill hole testing the CV1 pegmatite at the east end of the winter drilling corridor.
Congratulations on the hit. Congratulations on what is obvious to me now, a very, very significant lithium discovery. I'd love your take on how you're feeling about the project, and then we can get into the details about the potential and the scale and what comes next.
Darren Smith: Yeah, thanks very much. We're very excited about it. I mean, the program continues to exceed our expectations. We've drilled about 4,400 meters this past winter and we're about to go back for another 15,000 meters at least and expand our surface program as well. There's another dozen other pegmatites out there to explore and more to be found. But yeah, we test these pegmatites at-depth and basically test our interpretation that we've developed over the years that these could potentially connect.
When you have such a large system like this, pegmatites over 20-30 kilometers and a large amount of them in close succession here at this area, this main corridor, it really tells us that there's some depth potential here. Everything pointed to these could connect but, of course, you have to drill to really connect those dots.
And so we did. And the pegmatite, it does connect. CV1 seems to be either a splay or a fault offset of the main CV5 pegmatite, which seems to be much larger than we anticipated. To be honest, it seems to be widening at depth, which is great. You're always worried if it's going to pinch out at-depth or just maintain thickness or persist to depth to build tonnage. And this one definitely seems to be doing that.
And we see spodumene in every hole [we find pegmatite], different modal abundances of it. But we knew this hole 17 would be a pretty exciting hole but it definitely exceeded our expectations.
And it simply really highlights that there's going to be high-grade pockets within this system. So now it's about following up on that, identifying how big this pocket is, where it goes and continue moving along strike. It opens up a whole new corridor of interest now to the east out to CV4 so we're really excited. We have a plethora of drill targets to do outside of this infill that we're very excited to do.
Gerardo Del Real: Again, I want to provide proper context for those that aren't as familiar with the property as you are, or as I am, from the desktop armchair version of it, right? Hole 17, which was designed to test CV1, and correct me if I'm wrong on any of this, is approximately 1.1 kilometers to the north-northeast of, and on trend with the CV5 pegmatite. Is that correct?
Darren Smith: Yeah. Approximately that distance.
Gerardo Del Real: Okay. And then, what you're saying is at-depth, you have this blob that connects and instead of pinching, it's actually getting wider at depth. And obviously the grades, you hit into a pretty sweet pocket there, right?
Darren Smith: Yeah. We think there's really good grades surrounding CV5 and surrounding CV1 and we're pretty confident about some intersections in between. So the first order was to see if they connect because that really blows out your tonnage. And so we confirmed that. We're quite happy about that. And then the second was, what's it doing at-depth, and it appears to be widening. So this is blowing out tonnage as well, which is really what we want to see. So now it's about putting the grade together. We're pretty confident about the tonnage and the size of the system now. So yeah, it's going quite well.
Gerardo Del Real: I speculated early on that I thought this had the potential for a hundred million tonnes. And again, this is me. I'm not a geologist. I'm not the 43-101 compliant guy here. And frankly, I don't have to be. I'm a speculator that recommends stocks and writes checks if he believes in them enough. And I was lucky enough to write a check very early on and in subsequent checks as well.
But to me, a hundred million tonnes seems like that's not really a question anymore. It's how many more of these are possibly on the property. Am I wrong in thinking that? Am I wrong? And I know it's early days, Darren, I know you're cautious with your statements, but let me phrase it in a way that's easier for you to respond. Is it unreasonable for me to think that there very well may be, easily, a hundred million tonnes and possibly quite a bit more?
Darren Smith: I don't think it's unreasonable. I think we never want to put numbers on anything until we have a defined resource and so on but I think this is going to qualify as a large tonnage resource. The tonnage, the category, and the grade, are yet to be determined. But we're clearly onto something that surpasses what our initial threshold was in our heads.
And so we're quite excited about the potential of this. And this is just of this CV5-1 corridor. I mean, there's a dozen other pegmatites on there that I think have good decent tonnage potential as well to be added to the overall tonnage budget. So I think we're going to be on the map in terms of Quebec and perhaps larger.
Gerardo Del Real: Well, I think you're on the map. I think when it's all said and done, this is going to be, potentially, I think you may already be the largest, and I know we don't have numbers yet… but just the potential scale is there.
Darren Smith: We want to under-promote and over-deliver.
Gerardo Del Real: And I love it. And you have, and you have. But I think this will end up being, at the very least, the largest lithium deposit in Quebec. I think there's a strong possibility, if the drill bit and mother nature cooperate with that third drill rig, that's going to be more exploratory in nature. But if that ends up proving up other corridors that are as rich or possibly even richer tonnage and grade wise, and I think you’ve got the potential to be the largest lithium deposit in North America.
It's going to take quite a bit of work in drilling to get to that point. But let me ask you about that third rig. There's an upcoming drill program that will consist of three rigs. My understanding is that that third rig is really about being aggressive and testing the potential scale in other parts of this massive 50 kilometer trend. Is that accurate?
Darren Smith: Yeah. So we're going up from two to three rigs. One rig, we'll have it focused more on the regional pegmatite targets. So basically we'll refine those drill targets with a bit of prospecting and mapping. And then, we'll be focusing that one rig on drilling out CV12 and CV8 and CV9 and some of these other pegmatites we're pretty excited about. And then, the other two rigs are going to focus on infill and delineation of the main mineralized zone that we've found at CV5 and CV1. So one will focus on the land-based targets and infill, there'll be a couple lines to the north, which will really test it at-depth as well.
And then, we intend on bringing in a barge, as well, probably sometime in July. And then, the third drill will plop on that. And it'll basically drill it out at a hundred meter centers to start, which we expect will give us Inferred. We will have to see based on the deposit itself and how it models and hangs together but we're fairly confident. And we'll also infill the 50 meters at some of the areas where we want a bit more geological understanding or we really want to trace high-grade zones sort of thing.
Gerardo Del Real: Hole 17 was the highest grade hole to-date for those not familiar with the drill hole locations. Do you have holes around that? Are we expecting assays from other holes nearby that specific location?
Darren Smith: There's a couple holes nearby there. The geology there is a little more complicated. So we drilled in a few different orientations to get a sense of it, and we think we have a good understanding now of what it's doing. So our first few holes will be 50 meter centers over that area to really understand it and trace it out. But it effectively was drilled at the very east side of the deposit, if you will.
And so there's a lot of potential there. We've only drilled 4,400 meters in this thing; total 20 holes in this program. And to get results like that in that first initial wave where you're really starting to grid drill, it is very exciting. So I think there's a lot more upside and there's a lot more exciting drilling to be done.
Gerardo Del Real: Looking forward to it, Darren. Anything else to add to that? Congrats again. You're very accomplished, and I say it with all due respect, but I think it's going to be a career defining discovery for you when it's all said and done. I know it takes the team and the team's done a phenomenal job. It should be noted that while most people are just now hearing about Patriot Battery Metals, you've had this project since 2016.
Blair did an excellent job coming in and making sure the property was retained and then consolidating the 50 kilometers of trend and making it to where it is 100%-owned, right? And so congrats to you. Congrats to the team. Excited about the assays that are pending. And I hope we're chatting again soon.
Darren Smith: Yeah, thanks very much. Exploration is a cumulative effort and it's never less than a team effort. It takes everyone working together and people excelling at their own specific areas of expertise. And we managed to keep this one alive and recognize the potential. And we made sure to drill it, and it's all come together quite well. So I'm very excited to push this forward to the end game.
Gerardo Del Real: Congrats. Again, I am as well looking forward to it. Chat soon. Take care, Darren.
Darren Smith: Great. Thanks very much.
Click here to get a deeper dive into lithium, including access to the new lithium company I’m recommending that’s onto a hot new discovery.
Let's get it!
Gerardo Del Real
Editor, Resource Stock Digest
Click here to see more from Patriot Battery Metals Inc.