Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Alianza Minerals (TSX-V: ANZ) CEO Jason Weber on Details of Imminent Drill Program at the Horsethief Gold Property in Nevada

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the President and CEO of Alianza Minerals (TSX-V: ANZ)(OTC: TARSF), Mr. Jason Weber. Jason, how are you?

Jason Weber: I'm doing well, Gerardo. Thanks very much. And you?

Gerardo Del Real: I am well, thank you for asking. I'm excited for two reasons. The first is we finally have a market that is rewarding exploration success. The second is you are finally in position as a company, Alianza, to start exploring in a very meaningful way. You had some news earlier today. Can you provide some color and details please?

Jason Weber: Yeah. We announced this morning that we've got crews on the ground readying our Horsethief project in southeast Nevada for a drill program to start later here in May. So that was pretty exciting to get that started, considering with all the uncertainty around the health crisis that the world is experiencing right now, just getting crews on site and active was a bit of a challenge. So, we're just really happy to be going.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Now I understand that the drill rig should arrive on or about May 25th, according to the release. Is that correct?

Jason Weber: Yeah. The crews are on the ground now flagging in the drill pads. We've got 10 drill pads permitted. We're looking at about 2,600 to 3,000 meters of drilling. That's going to be somewhere around 10 drill holes, if we can get all that in. The guys are out there right now, flagging those in. We'll have the pad builders come in and make the pads for the drill rig. Then the drill rig will come on to site and get going.

Gerardo Del Real: For those that aren't familiar with the Horsethief property, can we talk about how favorable that stratigraphy is, why you're excited about it, and the types of targets and mineralization that you're targeting?

Jason Weber: Yeah, we're really excited about it. 2019 was a bit of a breakthrough year for us in that we had targeted sediment-hosted gold mineralization, which is the standard or the Carlin-style gold systems that Nevada has become known for. Most recently, or a somewhat recent discovery was Long Canyon, which was discovered back in the last up cycle in this market. That now is in a mine in operation by the Barrick-Newmont JV. That's somewhere in excess of 2 million, probably close to a 3 million ounce deposit.

In our work last year, we were able to identify the stratigraphy, the age of the rocks that we're dealing with at Horsethief, and pin the same timeframe to those rocks as Long Canyon. That was really important because there was a major drop in sea level at that time that allowed the creation of the fluid pathways that the gold system ends up exploiting when the gold is deposited.

To see that same scenario at Horsethief as you see at Long Canyon was very encouraging. Of course, that doesn't automatically mean there's an economic gold deposit here at Horsethief, but the fact that above that really prospective horizon, we see lots of smoke, lower grade gold mineralization in the right types of rocks, right types of alteration, that's really encouraging. So, the next obvious step is to go test that horizon with drill holes. Fortunately, our partner Hochschild is as keen as we are on it and is as funding the project for the season.

Gerardo Del Real: You mentioned Long Canyon. For people that aren't familiar, that was an asset that was monetized for over a billion dollars. With a “B.”

Jason Weber: Yeah.

Gerardo Del Real: Let's talk about the targets a bit more. I looked at the map of the proposed drill hole locations, and the one thing that struck me is that this is actually true exploration. You're not drilling holes 25 meters apart just to say that you're drilling and exploring in a market that has $1,750 gold and silver that's surging here lately. It looks like a real exploration program.

Jason Weber: Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, we'd love to hit a high-grade gold intersection. But what we need to see in the drilling is some indications of there being a significant gold system here that's going to deliver gold over some width. If we get a few grams over a bunch of meters, that's going to be a real shot in the arm for us and give us that impetus to move forward.

We want to test as many areas of the property as we can. There's some nuances in the target types, so we want to test all of those as well. Really the way it's laid out is we access the project from the north, so the early holes will be in the northern part of the property, and we'll just move the rig to the south, and then to the east as we move along the existing access roads. There was some drilling done in the '80s. So a lot of that infrastructure is still left, but that drilling was quite shallow. It didn't get down to that target horizon that we want to test. So we're exploiting that old access.

Gerardo Del Real: The testing, is it four targets and all?

Jason Weber: Probably five, if we can.

Gerardo Del Real: Five.

Jason Weber: Yeah. There's one target  that we call Thoroughbred, which is really just south and east of the Horsethief North target that they almost blend together. Thoroughbred sometimes gets lost in the mix, but that's a really interesting target too. So I'd like to keep that one on the slate.

Gerardo Del Real: Who are you using for assays? Have you been in touch with the labs? Are they ready? Are they functioning?

Jason Weber: Yeah. The labs have been pretty responsive. I know here in British Columbia the labs were deemed an essential service, so they were functioning. We'll be using a lab near Reno. It's up and running. No problems there. 

What's interesting though is with the market and things starting to open up, there is a bit of a surge of exploration. We'll see how busy the labs get and whether they have to add shifts and that sort of thing to keep up with the sample analytical demands, which is another reason I really wanted to get us going as early as we could. Basically as soon as things start to open up, maybe we can beat some of that rush.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Jason, again I mentioned off the top, the market is absolutely starving for discoveries. Companies that are making them have been rewarded handsomely here recently. I'm excited for the drill program. Is there anything else that you'd like to add?

Jason Weber: No. We'll hopefully have a good flow of news from the project from here till into July. I guess we'll expect probably our first round of results sometime early July is my best guess. So drilling through the end of May to June and then starting results in July.

Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic. Jason, thank you for your time. Appreciate it.

Jason Weber: Thank you.