Please start by giving us an overview of your four projects in the U.S. (Eldorado, White Rock, Mineral Hill, and Silver Bow). What are their inherent advantages?
Our initial plan was to acquire solid exploration projects in favourable locations. The projects must have significant size potential; have enough historic exploration to show the project is real and not hypothetical; be shallow for inexpensive exploration; and have no obvious serious problems for exploration or development. I believe we have succeeded way beyond our initial hopes and, in our belief, 2022 will substantially reinforce this.
What is it about Provenance Gold’s operations and financial structure that makes you different to other juniors operating in the North American exploration space?
We have been extremely mindful to limit dilution for our shareholders which starts by putting a large majority of our funding resources directly into the ground in an effort to fast track exploration and resource calculations on our key properties. In addition, we have tried to limit the amount of funding we do at various levels and align ourselves with real and engaged investors that share our vision for the company. This vision is to create real and immediate shareholder value by way of proving up tangible in-ground open-ended assets.
You recently announced a C$800,000 capital raise for your Eldorado project. What are your plans in the immediate future?
We plan to focus our current efforts to make the historic open-ended gold resource at Eldorado NI43-101 compliant. The funding will be used to twin key historic holes and expand on them to enable an initial NI43-101 report. We expect this work to put us “on the radar”.
What’s on the horizon for your White Rock property in 2022?
We will complete an initial resource estimate on the property based on combining our past season’s drilling with historic drilling. Again, like Eldorado, we want to put the project and Provenance on everyone’s radar, and for this to happen, we need to demonstrate size potential. Our next drilling programme has been approved by the BLM for expanding the potential resource southward into the strongest surface mineralization, and to the west and north. This programme is planned to start after the confirmation drilling at Eldorado. The reason for prioritizing Eldorado first, is because historic drilling has already demonstrated mineralized material with stronger than average gold values, and we believe could more quickly increase value.
Gold as a commodity has had an exciting few years, and this has been great for explorers the world over. Do you feel investor appetite will be sustained over the coming years?
For many reasons, I think gold prices will actually increase in the next few years. An important corollary is that gold is increasingly being mined at a faster rate than new ore is being discovered. Supply and demand will help the gold price and we believe the need of gold producers for new reserves in the future could potentially put us on their radar down the road.
What are your drilling plans for 2022?
At Eldorado, we plan to confirm and expand the historical resource. We additionally will follow up on and expand high-grade volcanic breccia resources that were intersected but not understood by historic exploration.
At White Rock, we plan to expand the mineralized material southward into the area of strongest surface mineralization and westward into strong historic mineralization, and to follow up on a likely “feeder structure” that was discovered late in last year’s drilling. Subsequently, we plan to expand the mineralized material northward into White Rock Mountain, and possibly extend through the mountain and beyond.
At Mineral Hill, we plan to improve the road that crosses the historic silver system to allow us to drill the heart of the open-pit bulk tonnage target that could have the potential to become a silver resource.
Silver Bow remains a strong gold and silver project with nine recognized gold/silver targets. We believe the flow domes likely host an exposed bulk-tonnage near-surface gold target and an underlying deep high-grade target in the boiling zones of vein swarms that cross the domes. However, with our exceptional Eldorado and White Rock projects likely to occupy most of our time, we don’t plan near-term drilling at Silver Bow. Because it is such a strong target, we will entertain joint-venture options that could become a good discovery for our JV partner, while additionally further helping us.
