Happy New Year to all of you! So, GOLD looks promising again, having breached the US$1,300/oz benchmark. The variety of basic indicators, and imminent geopolitical risks, suggest the price could move much higher. That unto itself should help Explor’s equity price, given the company’s array of promising GOLD exploration prospects. So, what is the plan for 2018? Extensive geophysics at the East Bay properties near Duparquet, Quebec identified a number of very exciting drill targets. To date, drilling has been completed at two of those targets. It’s rumoured the second drilling, very close to some excellent historical drilling, showed about 100meters of visible mineralization, within the 600meters of depth achieved!! The core is in the lab, but if the numbers play out, this could be some very good news early in the New Year. Drilling will continue as planned this week to examine other identified targets in the meantime, to make up the remainder of the 3,000meters budgeted for.
The original plan for the Company’s Timmins Porcupine West GOLD Deposit (TPW) was to find a Joint Venture partner, or financier, and do what was necessary to further prove up the resource. Initially, that would entail doing a lot of Step Out drill holes to ‘tighten’ up the distances between existing drill holes. A budget of $1,000,000 had been suggested for this plan. In turn, that would increase allowable resource estimates for a planned, updated NI43-101 Resource Report, currently at 1,000,000 ounces. My sources are telling me we are close on the TPW funding, but on a very different track. Whenever I have heard the phrase ‘Delineation Drilling’ in the past, my heart pumped a little faster. Invariably, that always meant preparation for actual GOLD production. Over the 2,000meter Strike Length of the TPW GOLD Deposit, we have three valid Open Pit areas, with an average grading of 1.8grams GOLD/tonne. Many producers in the region are processing material grading 1gram, or less. It’s rumoured a US based group has been in close contact with the Company, and have expressed their willingness to provide the financing to actually produce GOLD from the TPW property!!! Apparently, Dupont has been burning the midnight oil developing a logical, and realistic plan to make this happen. With a 3% Net Smelter Return (NSR) on the TPW property, and a new 50,000Tonne per day facility on the horizon, I think Goldcorp would be the most obvious recipient of the TPW material looking forward. The Delineation Drilling anticipated is an extremely important first step, in a process that would, realistically, take 18-24 months to actually materialize. Plus, we’re looking at some very serious cash to get it done. As I get further rumblings on this new development, I’ll immediately post my findings. All in all, however, as things develop on these two fronts, we could look pretty attractive by early March, just in time for the PDAC Convention in Toronto, the largest assembly of mining & investment professionals anywhere in the world.