U.S. GoldMining, gigantic gold rich porphyry funded through to PEA

[Music] welcome back we're at Beaver Creek and I'm with Tim Smith the CEO of us gold mining Tim good to see you thank you Peter for having me so um just kick things off a really brief company of you obviously you're a pretty new company or a spin out tell us a little bit about yeah so we just spun out of uh parent company gold mining Inc our name is US called mining Inc we just listed on the NASDAQ back in April of 2023 we raised 20 million dollars and the use of proceeds there is to basically uh reboot the Whistler project which is a a large gold Rich copper pull through deposit in Alaska good and just run us through obviously new company iPod just run us through your capital structure really stands at the moment yeah sure so uh we we put about two million shares out there at ten dollars uh per share or ten dollars per unit which include one full share and one warrant which is exercisable at 13 for three years and our parent camp Penny gold mining maintains about an 80 shareholding good okay um Whistler why the need for a spin out was it that you just weren't seeing appreciation of the value for within the within the parent company well I think we wanted to focus on the project to really move it forward and and a really efficient manner so you know as as a big chunk of uh of the gold mining portfolio which at the time was about 32 million ounces 16 million ounces and inferred 16 million ounces gold equivalent and indicated we wanted to take that and put it into a vehicle that we could uh provide focused funding and very focused management and board uh to to find the levers to to Really unlock the value in that deposit for for the new shareholders and also obviously to the benefit of the existing shareholders of gold mining good talk me through that you just mentioned part of it there but took me through the deposit as it is at the moment um so what sort of depth are we looking at what what's the grade what what's the size sure everything yeah okay so it's a copper gold for free but it's a gold Rich variant so by value about 70 of the value was in Gold uh the remainder is largely copper there's a little bit of a silver credit there as well it sits in Alaska it's about 100 miles from Anchorage it's it's at surface deposit so we're looking at it as essentially in the first phases initially as an open pittable potential deposit to break down the resource for you there's about three million or just a little bit under three million 2.99 gold equivalent ounces in the indicator category and another almost 6.5 million ounces in the inferred category and I should stress that's gold equivalent so obviously uh combining gold copper silver across three separate deposits so we talk about the Whistler project that includes the Whistler deposit which is obviously the namesake about two-thirds of the overall resource infantry in the Whistler deposit alone and then there's two separate satellite deposits Raintree which is just a kilometer from Whistler and then Island Mountain which is about 20 kilometers further south okay and have you have you done any pick and train views on this yet in terms of how this could look like in terms of mine plan and things other well we haven't quite got to mind plan yet certainly a mineral resource estimate is constrained within pit shells okay so so this three pit uh elements to the resource inventory for Whistler entry and Island mountain and there's a very small uh I would call it a proof of concept uh underground resource at essentially double the cutoff grade so we use a ten dollar per ton uh cut-off grade for the open pit resources and a 25 per tonne cut off grade for the underground resources and what's the what's the sort of grades looking like as a surface and as you get deeper as well yeah so so at open pit levels we use a 10 per ton which is equivalent to about a point three gram per tonne gold equivalent okay so our average grades are about half a gram gold uh and about 0.15 copper and when you combine that in Gold equivalent you get about a point eight uh gold equivalent grade in the indicator and about a 0.6 in the inferred but I'd also stress that you know if we look at that and this is uh in a resource grade sensitivity tables in our technical reports at 43 101 and sk13 hundred when we look at different higher cutoffs and we've run those numbers obviously to see how the grade tonnage changes if I just double that and I'll throw some numbers at you essentially over a twenty dollar per tonne cut off grade that cut off grade goes up to uh 6.6 grams per tonne gold equivalent and we see about uh two million ounces in the indicated and another four million ounces in the inferred gold equivalent so and and that is actually a nice concentric core of high grade just the way these paw free systems work they tend to have a hotter center with more intensive veining and then shells of moderate and lower grade around it so when we just look at those high grade cores that we see in Whistler Braintree and and Island Mountain they hold together very contiguously in the all come right to surface what's the what's the way that you're thinking about this at the moment because obviously you're doing a lot of drilling over the next year or two um but it's quite a sizable deposit as it is you sounds like you found the higher grade core yeah I mean it sounds like there could be an option potentially for starter pit the that's very cool yes how are you looking at this in terms of allocating resources and what's the plan what do you want to achieve over the next couple years little starts with the geology because a good resource and a good mine plant always comes back to having a good solid geologic model so the work that was done 10 years ago was sound work we're very happy with it but there's been a number of developments and technology in the way that we can image especially the geophysics so we've got a geologic team working on Up dating the geological model concentrating on whistling now because it's the biggest but in time we'll work our way out to re-entry in Island Mountain as well so initially I drill in right now is answering some geologic model questions and it's probing the geometry the the extents of the overall productive paw free system that's and by productive for free I mean has the potential to host golden copper mineralization we're also looking for incremental extensions and where we see those high grade cores and perhaps a lack of drilling is not allowing us to interpolate those properly within the model we're doing some drilling to answer those questions and really be able to understand the controls on the high grades and tripolate that better within the model so that geologic understanding should relate to an improved resource confidence overall we'll then take that put that into some mining studies we'll run some scenarios do some trade-offs between a you know bulk tonnage low grade versus a higher grade starter pit and everything in between you know we'll look at the curves we'll pick the value and ultimately we'll put that into a preliminary economic assessment okay so mixture of infield one step out mainly and Whistler at the moment and then potentially some some targeting on satellites well that's right yeah thank you for mentioning that there is a third element to the drilling and that is that I'll throw a concept at you the the poor free cluster concept so we see it very deep in the magnetics every deep seated atholithic causative pluton which is shooting up these higher level apophises that are hosting the gold copper mineralization we've got two so far in our resource we see multiple Targets in our magnetics very exciting potential for you know obviously the objective is a new discovery a new Port free on the books good I guess I guess for you at the moment because they're they're silliest optionality out there right but I guess the powerful word is given for free such a large deposit they're usually quite expensive to build in terms of capex is was part of the thinking around the IPO that obviously it's then easier to then JV or partner with someone on a singular asset rather than obviously through the apparent company or and obviously shine a bit more of a light and a bit more attention on this asset to sort of get it there or are you more thinking that you want to take this as far as you can and and maybe look at the various options for startle pits or maybe get there yourself yeah I think it's the letter you know nothing's off the table in the future but there's no for sale sign out we're not actively seeking partnership about 20 million dollars the use of proceeds will take us through the completion of the Pea in two years time at that point we'll assess and if it makes sense for in terms of return uh value to our shareholders to go It Alone into feasibility we will do that if it makes sense to bring in a big brother a strategic partner for example perhaps a via Equity or or a joint venture obviously all those options are on the table for consideration further down the track obviously been in Alaska um I guess most investors are looking at it if they haven't looked at the project in there for well first thing to come to mind is infrastructure and cost of of being there um what can you tell us about that how how tough is it where you are well you know Alaska's vast right you can fit California Montana and Texas into the area of Alaska and yet the infrastructure is very poor so there are a lot of very remote projects one of the key uh I think attributes for Whistler is that it's just 100 miles from Anchorage uh which is obviously the main population Center and a major Transportation Hub uh obviously has a future potential demographic for uh uh you know employees for a future line infrastructure and development uh it has power it has Highway it has rail it has ports good so one of the key uh developments recently uh under uh the current uh state government is a roadster resources concept and they've undertaken a number of studies one of which is the West Sioux City access road so Whistler sits in an emerging uh allergenic District that we're calling the West susitna mining District just 100 miles from Alaska across an alluvial plane so a lot of people also think of mountains and Glaciers and yes we're in we're in the Alaska range but the actual terrain at whisker itself is quite shallow gently sloping topography almost plateau-like and it's connected uh across an alluvial plane you can you can fly there from an airstrip in Anchorage inside of 45 minutes to our strip we're serviced in the summer via airstrip uh in the winter via a winter Road in terms of partnering with the state on this Roadster resources concept A couple of key Milestones recently one of which is that the state has announced that the Department of Transport they've put 85 million dollars of funding into their state transport infrastructure plan which will include the first 17 miles build of that road tapping into federal funds and a major bridge over the largest river the Sioux City River so that's a huge um you know platform to to then Branch off of to build the rest of the road out to the Whistler in in the west who sit in the mining District we're partnering with another uh State uh infrastructure Bank essentially the Ada the the Alaska infrastructure development exploration Authority the concept there is a a public-private partnership or potentially a toll road agreement and there is a precedent for that the road into Red Dog Mine which is up in the far Northwest uh owned by Tech uh far north west of Alaska that was a a toll road and that has you know returned uh uh on the capital investment so essentially for us you know this this is a huge advantage in terms of the design the stakeholder consultation and the permitting of that road access and ultimately potentially a sharing of the capital to build that access that will link Whistler with a ready-made Port facility a port called Port McKenzie which is just on the Harbor opposite Anchorage Port so we can eventually uh with the potential Mine Development truck our concentrate 100 miles directly down to port for shipment good okay and just to finalize things obviously you've touched on a few obviously a lot of the focus on drilling at the moment but talk us through the next six months 12 months what are we expecting to come out yeah so we're drilling right now we just announced a couple of weeks back that we'd commence drilling uh so we got right to work as soon as uh the financing was closed we got teams in the field uh we built at our camp we had a pre-existing camp that needed a bit of a tidy up we needed to get it to code we did that we brought the drilling we've started drilling we're going to keep drilling for another couple of months now uh we expect to get a couple of thousand meters through to the uh sort of the middle of the fall at some point we will take a pause we'll we'll take that data we'll work on updating the geologic model through the winter we'll come back and drill off the balance of ultimately a 10 000 meter program at the start of next summer all the equipment's on site will be ready to go and just turn the key next to me so ultimately complete that ten thousand meters of drilling about 50 on building out and de-risking the existing resources the other 50 you know exploration for new discovery we'll take all of that data we'll put it into some mind scoping studies and ultimately uh the the plan is to start on the pre pea preliminary economic assessment in the second half of 2024. perfect Tim thank you for your time thank you Peter pleasure to be here

Channel: Mining Network

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Keywords: mining, Mining Network, Peter Gadsdon, kitco, kitco mining, crux investor, mining news, mining stocks, mining network, gold, investing in gold, whistler, alaska, gold investing, porphyry, copper gold porphyry, gold mining, exploring gold, whistler project, U.S. GoldMining, goldmining, U.S. Goldmining inc, Whistler gold-copper project, USGO, NYSE USGO, nasdaq, nasdaq USGO, Goldmining inc, gold royalty, tim clarke

Id: zYQLI2x7Oyo

Length: 12min 49sec (769 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 25 2023