Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Aben Resources (TSX-V: ABN) CEO Jim Pettit on Step-out Drilling that Hit More Shallow High-Grade Gold at the Forrest Kerr Project

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the 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. Thanks a lot, Gerardo. Thank you very much.

Gerardo Del Real: Absolutely. Thank you for coming on. Listen, you had a news release this morning. The market, being impatient and being a tough market, didn't receive it well. The stock is down about 18%, though it has recovered on over 6 million shares in volume. Let me read the headline.

Let's talk about the release, because there's a lot of good stuff in the release that I don't think is being noticed by the market. The headline reads, "Aben Intersects Additional, Shallow High-Grade Gold Mineralization at the North Boundary Zone of the Forrest Kerr Project in BC’s Golden Triangle."

So, me being “Captain Obvious” here, the market wanted longer widths of mineralization, and they wanted higher grades. You know, you set yourself up, I think, with that first drill hole, which was absolutely spectacular. Hard to duplicate that. But let's talk about the good things in the release, Jim.

Jim Pettit: Well, absolutely. It's the fact that there's mineralization there, and it's good mineralization. When we go into something like this, and we're not absolutely a hundred percent on the structure and the controls, we look for the mineralization. I always look for anything over 1 gram. That just tells you you're in an area that's just full of it, and we've got lots of that. The first hole, yes, we knew where we were drilling and where we had left off the year before. What we did this year, we stepped out 25, 30 meters to the northeast, and to the southwest, and to behind, directly north of where we drilled last year, and came up with, right away, from drilling from straight north coming in from behind and below, that was that first hole. We could see the gold, so we rushed it. We told everybody that we were rushing this in, and then we got behind the backlog with everything else, and just came out with these latest results.

I've gotten more phone calls about how positive it is than I have about the negativity. What we've seen in the market today is just people banking on us hitting more of the high grade. That just doesn't happen all the time. Generally what it is is you're in one specific tight area, and you can step out of it at 10 meters, 5 meters, and you could possibly hit nothing. But that's the nature of the beast in this game. I mean, Eskay Creek was discovered on the 109th hole, but what got them started was a really good set of holes at the very beginning. That's the nature of the game.

What I like is the recovery right now. It shows you that, okay, the people that are in this and understand it, the realities of it, are stepping back in. I think they also know that we're cashed up now. We don't really need to raise money in the off season.

Gerardo Del Real: Let's talk about that, Jim. What does the cash position look like? Obviously you just welcomed Eric Sprott as a new major shareholder. What does the treasury look like right now? Because I know last year the market knew you were going to have to raise money, and it front ran you, and it drove the share price down quite a bit.

Jim Pettit: Oh yeah. Yeah, it absolutely did. Now we've got over $7 million in the treasury now. About $7.2 to be exact. We had raised $5 million just in the last month and a half based on those early results. And we had a lot of warrants taken down, so we sort of self-financed to the tune of about a million and a half dollars, because we had a lot of cheaper warrants, anywhere from $0.07 to $0.12. So those all got taken down when the stock was riding really high. That's always good for the treasury. Between the financing and the warrants, and what I had left over from last year, yeah, we're sitting at about $7.2 right now.

Gerardo Del Real: Now you're also awaiting additional assay results from, I believe, it's 27 holes. Is that accurate?

Jim Pettit: Yep. Yeah, we've got 27 as of today. It could end up being more. We're still drilling, and it just depends on how many more holes we think we can get away with before the weather turns and we run out of space, because we've only got so many pads permitted. The pad, the drill sits on the pads, it's in a very environmentally sensitive area. So the drill has to be on the pads, and you apply for permits for pads. We're kind of at the getting too close to the limit of our pads, but we're doing all right.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Now, another important factor. You really need to identify the fault structures, right? Because these are the structures that are going to have the potential to host that high-grade mineralization. I believe you completed an airborne MAG survey. When are you expected to get the results there?

Jim Pettit: That's coming. Should have it by the end of the month, actually. September. So, another week probably. That was flown over a month ago, just over a month ago. That's a good thing. We had partial coverage from an older geophysical survey, but now we got this brand new one that's 50-meter spacings, and it's gone east-west instead of north-south, which will give us better exposure of any potential faults.

The area is full of faulting. We know we're looking at about four different ages of mineralization in placement. So, there's no shortage of faulting. We're trying to find the main ones. The ones that would act as the driver, coming off of the main Kerr fault, because that Kerr fault runs right up the length of our property, which is 50 kilometers long. You got a lot of these sub faults and splays that come off, and we're looking for the big ones.

Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic. Well, Jim, I appreciate you taking the time once again. Thank you very much for coming on. Your cashed up. You have assays in the lab that you're expecting. You're still drilling. Is there anything else that you'd like to add?

Jim Pettit: Well, as far as most of the market goes right now, we're in a not a great market for resources, but we're in a good market for these types of deals. The market, also you can see today the trading, they see it gets to a level and it's a buy. That this morning struck me very clearly. It was $0.20. We'll see where we go from here, but we've got more coming, so I think it's probably going to stabilize at a little bit higher price here, and then away we go again.

Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic. Well hopefully we'll have you back on when we start getting those assays trickling back in again.

Jim Pettit: You bet. Thanks.

Gerardo Del Real: Thank you, Jim.