It’s hard to ignore the fact that electric vehicles are becoming a dominant force in not only the vehicle market but the green energy sector as well. Electric vehicles — or EVs for short — are environmentally friendly and use rechargeable batteries that are powered by nickel, lithium and copper.
Companies like Surge Battery Metals Inc. (TSXV:NILI, OTC Pink: NILIF, Forum) are well-positioned to be a major driving force in the sector thanks to its high-value deposits of clean energy battery metals in key mining jurisdictions such as British Columbia and Nevada.
Stockhouse Editorial recently caught up with Surge Battery Metals’ CEO Greg Reimer to discuss what the company’s been up to and what investors should be watching for going forward.
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SH:So, Greg, can you give us an overview of your company?
GR: Surge Battery metals is an early-stage mining and exploration company. We focus on the exploration of clean energy battery metals, including nickel, lithium, and copper. And as you know, these items are widely used in batteries for electric vehicles.
SH:What exploration targets is Surge pursuing and where are they located?
GR: Surge is exploring lithium nickel and copper targets in world-class mining-friendly jurisdictions of British Columbia, Canada, and Nevada in the USA. British Columbia, Canada is an extremely attractive jurisdiction for metal mining. We’ve got skilled labor and equipment throughout British Columbia and in 2020 Nevada was ranked the number one mining jurisdiction in the world for investment attractiveness by the Fraser Institute. The Fraser Institute's a think tank here in British Columbia. In the same survey, BC Canada was ranked number 17 out of 77 jurisdictions, and in addition, Nevada is currently America's only lithium-producing state. So we think that we're off operating in some pretty friendly jurisdictions with very good resources.
SH: Can you tell us about your background and a little bit about your board members and advisory board?
GR: I'm a former executive vice president of BC Hydro’s transmission and distribution business group. And I held that position from June of 2010 to about July 2017. BC Hydro is Canada's third-largest electric utility with over $5 billion in annual revenues and has about 32 hydroelectric facilities. I've got a lot of background in the clean energy business, as well as clean energy policy.
On our board of directors, we've got a variety of people, but one fellow in particular who recently joined our board is Bill McDonald. Bill's a securities and corporate finance lawyer and he has been and continues to be a director and officer of a number of publicly-traded companies listed on Canadian stock exchanges, including ours.
On our advisory board, again we've got a number of quality people there, but one individual I'd like to highlight is Chip Richardson. Chip is a strategic advisor with us and an executive with Wedbush Securities. We've also got a number of professional geological advisors on every one of our projects that give us great professional advice.
SH:Can you tell us a little bit about the green energy movement and how search fits into this space?
GR: It's pretty clear that there's a growing demand for green energy metals, whether it be from government policy changes or from commitments by auto manufacturers to develop more electric vehicles, but these decisions all stem from the demand that individuals such as you and I are making for electric vehicles. To complement that in the US, they've committed to building an electric vehicle charging station throughout the US at a cost of $5 billion. And you can see in North America, Europe and China, the electric car market has soared in terms of sales EV sales have doubled globally between 2020 and 2021 and Bloomberg estimates that by 2040, they'll dominate and that's not difficult to see. Lithium, nickel and copper are all important components of EV batteries and Surge has multi exploration targets for each of these metals. And so we feel that we're positioned well to contribute to this growing demand.
SH: So on that note, what would you say makes Surge a good investment right now?
GR: The reason why I think that Surge is a good investment is that it's clear there's a demand for the metals that we have targeted for the transition that's going on from fossil fuels for environmental reasons. So we have focused on nickel, lithium and copper because of the components in batteries used to power these electric vehicles. And we focused our targets in mining-friendly jurisdictions such as British Columbia and Nevada. We've got a number of targets on three different kinds of metal bases, which kind of limits the risk, so to speak, in terms of our exploration futures.
SH: So can you tell us what the company's main priority projects are?
GR: Our focus for the near term is going to be our lithium exploration targets in Nevada state. We have three main targets there with a number of holdings, and we're going to focus on our Northern Nevada properties as we find that we've got some good results coming out of those exploration targets, and we want to focus more of our investment on that particular project.
SH: So can you tell us a little bit about each one of these projects?
GR: In Nevada, our company holds a fairly large swath of land in really, America's only producing lithium jurisdiction with two projects. One in the San Emidio Desert, and one in the Northern Nevada area, the one that we're going to focus on a little bit more. But speaking a bit about the San Emidio Desert project, the project in that area shows a presence of lithium in both active and geothermal fluids and surface salts. So this matches the characteristics of lithium brine and clay deposits in Clayton Valley, Nevada, and in South America. We think that we're well-positioned there and hopeful with this project.
Our Northern Nevada project as I mentioned, is a key project for us going forwards. It's a lithium clay deposit of the type contained in Lithium America's Thacker Pass deposits. And this is one of America's largest known lithium deposits. As well, we think that we're similar to Nevada's Clayton Valley deposit, which is home of America's only current lithium production. Based on the results that we're getting out of our Northern Nevada area, we think that we're fairly comparable to some proven deposits in production in Nevada.
SH: What sets Surge apart from other junior metal exploration companies?
GR: Well, it's kind of a continued theme of what I'm talking about. Surge has six metal exploration targets in two different countries, both world-class mining-friendly jurisdictions. And this kind of greatly reduces the risk for folks that are investing in Surge. Mining and exploration, as you know, can be challenging and cost-intensive with unpredictable results. And so we think that we've kind of mitigated investment risk with the holdings that we have in various metals and in mining-friendly jurisdictions.
SH: So is there anything else about Surge that you would like our investor audience to know about?
GR: What we're trying to make clear to our investors and the broader investment community is that green energy really is the future. And with the increase of electric vehicles on the road, combined with a steadily increasing price for green metals, including lithium, nickel and copper, the ones that support Surge are positioned to be at the forefront of this clean energy movement. As well, Surge’s diverse portfolio extends past the EV market and taps really into the demand for the broader green metals market while at the same time mitigating investor risk. There is an exponential potential demand for battery metals coming, and we see this global shift to green energy and expect to see Surge grow along with the movement.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by Stockhouse Publishing.