Categories: Mining Stocks
Topics: Copper Stocks

Intrepid Metals (TSX-V: INTR)(OTC: IMTCF) CEO Ken Engquist on 216.50m of 0.71% Copper Starting 29m from Surface at Corral Copper in Arizona

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of the very happy, I suspect, Intrepid Metals (TSX-V: INTR)(OTC: IMTCF), Mr. Ken Engquist. Ken, great news today, 216.5 meters of 0.71% copper 0.28% grams per tonne gold and 5.1 grams per tonne silver shallow. And we talked about this last time, from 29 meters, the market's showing you some love. You're up some 14%. Copper hit new all time highs this week. It's a good time to be a copper explorer in America.

Ken Engquist: The timing's great. We've been putting out some great results since we started the drills going again this summer, and it's just really nice to see the market responding now. I think a lot of heads have been turned this week towards the whole copper sector with President Trump announcing his intentions for a 50% tariff on copper and copper imports and everything. So it's really great to see that the market's starting to come alive again.

Gerardo Del Real: No, listen, you are a mine builder. This is right up your alley. Can you explain to the people that maybe don't have a concept of how important it is for the mineralization to start from 29 meters? You also had another hole hit 98.2 meters of 0.35% copper, 0.43 grams per tonne gold and 4.75 grams per tonne silver or 0.7% equivalent. And I got to commend you all for separating it out because so many companies just give you the copper equivalent, which as you know can often be misleading. But the second hole that I just referenced, that one was from 54.8 meters. So can you explain when you're looking at modeling a deposit and eventually modeling a potential pit in a mine, why it's so important to have those long runs of mineralization start from such a shallow baseline?

Ken Engquist: Absolutely. We've talked about this in the past discussions we've had and everything, but what that means is that there's a high potential for a very low strip ratio, and that means we're going to have to remove... in the development of a mine like this, where you have mineralization that close to surface, there's a good chance you're going to have very little overburden that you're going to have to remove, which is a big upfront capital cost. And because of the sheer volume of tonnes that sometimes have to be removed before you get into the ore bodies can be a huge detriment to the financials and the overall IRR and economic metrics that you might see out of a model like this.

Gerardo Del Real: You talk in the release about, and the quote is "Beyond the impressive intervals of continuous locally high grade mineralization, we're now seeing clear signs of a transition toward copper-gold porphyry-style systems." Why is that important?

Ken Engquist: Well, because where we go back to the analog of the Copper Queen Mine in Bisbee, Arizona, the historical Copper Queen Mine started out in very similar size to what we have in our Ringo zone, and it was a high grade, it was 53 million tonnes at 6%. They started mining that, when they got done with that, and that was the same type of sedimentary hosted mineralization, we have the exact same host rocks called the Abrigo Limestone as what they had at Copper Queen. They mined that CRD, that carbonate replacement deposit, and then they got into their porphyry source that fed that deposit and they mined it for another 60 years.

So what we're seeing, not only from the drilling at Ringo and the other zones, we're getting into that hotter rock, that porphyry-style mineralization as we go down, but we're also seeing the outcrops at the surface to the west of Ringo and northwest of Ringo we're seeing some really interesting stuff in that area. And so we are doing a pivot now. We feel like we've really proven up this area in these zones with the CRD potential.

We've shown that. We're going to continue to work on that, but in parallel, we're going to start elevating a story around the porphyries because that's really where we're getting a lot of interest as we continue to have site visits and visitors on site, and we continue to do our mapping programs and our rock sampling and geophysics.

The porphyry potential is getting much more clear to us, and the rocks and the outcrops from the mapping program are clearly, really dense quartz veining, signs of turquoise, which is a common mineral that you'll see associated close to porphyry resources. And so we're going to start putting a focus on that. We're pivoting the program, we're identifying more step-outs and more exploration types of holes to further define some porphyry targets as well as continue on the CRD and expansion as well.

So we're pretty excited. We got a pretty well-thought-out program here that we're going to be moving forward with for the remaining holes, and we're expecting some really good results.

Gerardo Del Real: No, listen, your timing is excellent. Again, it's a testament to the market reaction that the work that's been done has been pragmatic and methodical, and it's good to finally see the response. Anything to add to that, Ken?

Ken Engquist: I'd say stay tuned because... So what we're putting out this morning was our 4th and 5th holes, which were the first five holes were into the Ringo Zone, and then we moved up to Holiday and Earp. And so there's 4th and 5th holes are what came out today, and we are currently drilling the 12th hole. So we've got quite a few more results on the horizon here as they start coming out of the lab. We've got a bunch more news flow coming, so I would say just keep an eye out and everything for these news releases because they're going to still keep coming throughout the rest of the summer.

Gerardo Del Real: Looking forward to having you back on. Good work. We'll chat soon. Thanks, Ken.

Ken Engquist: All right. Thanks a lot, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: All right. Cheers.

Ken Engquist: Cheers.