Categories: Base Metals / Precious Metals
Topics: General Base Metals / General Precious Metals

Canasil Resources (TSX-V: CLZ) CEO Bahman Yamini on First-Pass Drill Results at the Nora Silver-Gold Project & Upcoming Drilling at La Esperanza Project

gGerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the President and CEO of Canasil Resources (TSX-V: CLZ)(OTC: CNSUF), Mr. Bahman Yamini. Bahman, how are you this morning?

Bahman Yamini: Very well. Thank you, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Thank you for taking the time on such short notice. Let's get right to it. You reported the initial assay results from the Nora Project. It's a drill program, a first-pass program to get a better understanding of the geological traits, the system, the vein. The good news is that you intersected the vein. You got some gold values. You have some silver there. The bad news is, and the reason why I think the stock is selling off this morning, is everybody, of course, was hoping for higher grades and broader widths. Again, it's a first-pass program and it's just two holes. Can we talk about the news from this morning?

Bahman Yamini: Absolutely. It's the first two holes. It's a new project, the first drill program on the project. It's an extremely high-potential project. We believe it has a great future ahead for it. Obviously, in the first two holes our objective was to intersect the vein at a depth of around 75, 80 meters below surface, because we could see the surface samples. We wanted to make sure that the vein is continuing below. In that sense we're seeing the first two holes were very successful. They both have intercepted the vein.

In addition to that, we do have actually fantastic grades, be it in a very narrow intercept in hole number 1. We have a great width of up to 4.5 to 8 meters in hole number 2 with low grade. So we have great grades. We have great width. The ideal would've been to have the two combined, have the depth of one of and width of two. But that's an ideal world. What it tells us is that the system does return excellent grades at depth, as we see in hole number 1. We have 1.8 grams gold. We have 440 grams silver, but especially we have 2.5% copper and we have 2% lead and zinc in there too.

Now that combination of the base metals, eventually, if you have that in a system – and we're at an early stage, I don't want to talk about a mine or whatever, but just for reference that combination of grades is fabulous because the copper, lead and zinc will eventually pay for all the mining and processing costs. You will get the silver and gold off of the system at zero cost or negative cost. This is extremely attractive.

Now the trick is we have to find the wider widths with the higher grades, the combination of the two that we're seeing, and this is very normal in an epithermal system. These systems, they're natural systems, they're cracks in the rock where the fluids have come up. They will pinch and swell and they have low-grade, high-grade, narrow, wide widths to them. We can literally be 5 or 10 meters away from a stellar intercept and hit the narrow section or a low-grade section. That doesn't put us off and certainly shouldn't put investors off in terms of the potential of the project.

Gerardo Del Real: I noticed that holes 3 and 4 are being drilled and targeted directly below – and correct me if I'm mistaken – they're being drilled below 1 and 2, just at depth. You mentioned the pinching and the swelling of these types of systems. Are you hoping to intersect broader zones of the elevated values?

Bahman Yamini: Yes. That's obviously the idea and the target. That's why we drilled these fences of holes. That's why you don't do just one or two holes. So the plan was to do these four holes, which is the two shallower ones, just to make sure that we are hitting the vein and it's there, and then two deeper ones below them. They'll be another 75 meters below the intercepts in holes number 1 and number 2. So number 3, which is below 2, has been completed. Number 4, which is below number 1, is in progress now. So we have a fence there. We have planned also some holes further north where we have some very high gold grades, a couple of sections drilling below there. So the plan was to do six or seven holes at the Candy vein. Then we still have now with the new funding that we have, we're fully funded to also put a few holes into the Nora vein.

That's two veins that we'll test of the Nora project. After we're finished at Nora, then we'll be moving to the big project, which is La Esperanza, where we have already done 10,000 meters of drilling where, through all this earlier work, we've already identified the high-grade ore shoots. So we'll be drilling along strike and below the high-grade ore shoots in the two directions at Las Esperanza. This is all going to happen between now and December. We have 5,000 meters planned and fully funded. These drill programs will continue all the way through to December and drill results coming in on a regular basis until January, February I would think.

Gerardo Del Real: Bahman, we know that the resource speculator tends to be extremely impatient and short-sighted oftentimes. We also know that sometimes the best way to make money in this space is by accumulating stocks on weakness, as long as there's catalysts, right? I want everybody to be absolutely clear, Nora is a newer project. La Esperanza – I encourage everybody to go to the website – has yielded some phenomenal results in the past. Again, I don't want to be promotional, I want to be measured in my description of the project. But I encourage everyone to go to the website and look at the history of the drill intercepts there, because there's a lot to really like about that project. As you mentioned, that's a much better understood project because of the amount of work that's been done on it. Correct?

Bahman Yamini: Absolutely right. We have 10,000 meters of drilling. We've identified the main ore shoots. It's a very strong vein there. We do have the wide widths. We do have the very high grades. Over a kilo silver. We also have lead and zinc, again at levels that would pay eventually for mining costs there. So it's a very attractive project. 

Most importantly, La Esperanza is located  35 kilometers west of Pan American Silver's flagship La Colorada mine where, just to reinforce that point, they're mining 8 million ounces of silver per year at a cash cost of below $3 per ounce. These are stellar systems. That's the type of system that we're trying to emulate, that we're trying to find. 

I think we have the potential for that, both at La Esparanza of course, which is more advanced and more certainty in terms of the work that will be done, but also importantly at Nora, which is a new project. You have to bring these new projects along as well and drill them. At Nora, again, with these drill results that we've had, we've had to look at the stratigraphy. We've had a look at the pathfinder minerals. They showed that we're very high up in the system. There's a lot of work to be done there, and a lot of potential going at depth and along strike. It's by no means out in any way. We're continuing drilling and we're continuing to work on that project and then look forward very much to going on to La Esparanza, where we'll be dealing the known or eshoots there to expand the system.

Gerardo Del Real: Bahman, thank you so much for the update. I'm looking forward to assays from holes 3 and 4. Then of course, I'm looking forward to the pivot to La Esperanza onsite and further work on Nora, which I still believe is an exciting project where two holes in – you don't find a mine or a deposit with two holes, usually. That's not the way exploration typically works.

Bahman Yamini: Absolutely. You have to have a program. This is why we were very pleased again with the funding that we just did at the end of July to be fully funded for the entire 5,000-meter program that will give us over 20 holes in a combination of Nora and La Esperanza. This is the way these vein systems have to be explored. They can't be explored on one or two holes, they have to be explored systematically in a systematic program.

Gerardo Del Real: Bahman, thanks again.

Bahman Yamini: My pleasure, Gerardo. Thank you very much for your interest and thanks for your time. Have a great day.

Gerardo Del Real: You as well.