Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Aben Resources (TSX-V: ABN) CEO Jim Pettit on Discovery of High-Grade South Boundary Zone at Forrest Kerr Project & Financing Led by Eric Sprott

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is President and CEO of Aben Resources (TSX-V: ABN)(OTC: ABNNF), Mr. Jim Pettit. Jim, how are you this morning?

Jim Pettit: I'm great. Very, very busy the last few days.

Gerardo Del Real: I know you've been in and out of meetings today. You're in between meetings right now, so thank you for taking the time to speak with me for a few minutes today, Jim.

Jim Pettit: Yeah, you're welcome.

Gerardo Del Real: So listen, big news this morning that I don't think the market has quite digested the way I thought it would, and I wanted to get you on to get your take. You've discovered a new zone that's about 1.5 kilometers south of the North Boundary Zone, which, of course, reported that exciting hole here a few weeks back. You're calling this the South Boundary Zone. This is a big deal because I've always said that you had the grade – you demonstrated that last year – and what I needed to see was continuity and I wanted to see scale.

Oftentimes, you get these plays where you have a big high-grade hit and there's little continuity, it's nuggety, and there definitely isn't scale. This changes the game for Aben. Can you talk about this new discovery? And then we can get into the details of the drill program, what you have going on, and what's next.

Jim Pettit: Sure. While we've been waiting for assays, our geos in the field decided we would move the rig down south. There's a big anomaly there, it's shows up in the geochem analysis plus the geophysical survey from 20 years ago. While we were waiting to get a better education on where to drill in the North Boundary Zone, instead of drilling blindly, we took the rig down there and did some holes.

And now what's happened is we've come up with some fantastic looking mineralization there, which is all I can really say. Albeit, it's full of chalcopyrite. We know from last year, our holes were associated to chalcopyrite. If you have high levels of chalcopyrite, massive chalcopyrite, there's a correlation with the precious metals. You'll have high-grade precious metals.

So that's what we're looking at. This is the side of the valley, basically, that we're in that's never been drilled because we are in the hole directed at the Kerr Fault, and lo and behold, this is what we've hit. And it's pretty exciting. And it's 1.5 kilometers away, so it really opens up the whole area for further exploration. With any luck, with the amount of drilling we've done and when we get everything back, we'll have a really good understanding of possible structural controls and orientation of the mineralizing events.

So the more information we have the better, and at the same time, we've managed to extend this thing 1.5 kilometers down to the south. And in between the mineralizing new discovery and what we're drilling we've got that old Miranda hole, which we just don't look at it as a one-off. It's very high-grade. It was about 10 meters of over 30 grams. There’s something there, it looks an awful lot like what we're drilling away on in the North Boundary Zone. So we've got at least that 230 meters to fill in, and now we've got something even farther down the valley to the south.

It opens it way up. We're very excited about it, and it's consistent with the geochemical anomalies that we have in that whole valley. They're very intense. Some of it's coincidental with some old geophysical information that we have. We brought a crew in now to expand on the geochem, because it really lights up when we lower the intensity of the geochem in our digital work. Then it really shows up. You can start seeing some linear features, which is all very helpful. And it adds to the size, just plain and simple adds to the size of what we're looking at.

Gerardo Del Real: Now these mineralized veins at the South Boundary Zone, these are hosted within a package of Hazelton Group volcanic rocks. Can you explain to everyone why that's important?

Jim Pettit: The Hazelton and Stuhini package are very important. The recent report out by the British Colombia Geological Survey has basically stated that most of the mines within the area have been developed within 2 kilometers of this contact. It's called the Hazelton-Stuhini contact. And they're predominantly in the Hazelton package, so that's become very important. But it's also associated with some sort of structural feature like a big fault.

And we're on the Kerr Fault, which is probably the most dominant fault in the whole Golden Triangle, and they're pretty much 2 kilometers apart and all the discoveries have been within 2 kilometers of that Hazelton contact. I think this is the reason why we got such amazing geochemical. The existing geochemical surveys are in hand. They've been around for 20 years, we're just going to make them bigger because that's what's lighting up the area. It's very obvious, it's very intense, and we're just going to generate more targets. And then the North Boundary Zone, it's going to have more holes so that we can have as many pierce points as we can, and 3D the whole thing, and get a handle on the controls.

Gerardo Del Real: The initial drill program called for, I believe, approximately 5,000 meters. You've drilled nearly 5,000, 4,850 meters now. You just closed a $4.28 million private placement that was led by Eric Sprott. That's always a big deal, when you get somebody as educated and experienced in this business. I imagine the due diligence process has got to be pretty thorough.

How excited were you to bring Eric on and will the drill program be expanded in light of the financing?

Jim Pettit: It's fabulous to have Eric involved. And to be honest with you, I guess he'd been following it, because it didn't take a lot of persuasion on my part. He makes his mind up pretty early in these deals. He's not afraid to take the risk at these levels. That's just the nature of the way he does things. He'll take a position and he holds it. So that's really good.

Going forward, I've told the drilling contractors they're not going anywhere and our crews are definitely not going anywhere. As a matter of fact, we're beefing up our crews. We want to do more field work, more geochem sampling. You lay out grids as you head south and do the geochem. That whole area, just to the south of us, it looks like it could be really promising to us.

Gerardo Del Real: So we definitely should anticipate more drilling and, of course, everybody's waiting on assays. When do you expect those, Jim?

Jim Pettit: Well the assays could be anytime. We've been getting them in in bits and pieces, not complete holes. I think a whole new batch came in last night. It doesn't come to the corporate office, it goes to the field, and those guys piece it all together. When they have it all ready and it makes sense, then they give me the phone call, and we get the news ready. But I don't think it's going to be much more than the next week or so.

Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic. Well, hopefully you come back on once we get those assays in and you report those, Jim.

Jim Pettit: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

Gerardo Del Real: Good stuff. Thanks again for taking time in between meetings. I really appreciate it.

Jim Pettit: No problem. Thanks.