Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Midas Gold (TSX: MAX) CEO Stephen Quin On Excellent Drill Results At The Stibnite Gold Project

Feb. 24, 2017

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is president and CEO of Midas Gold (TSX-V: MAX)(OTC: MDRPF), Mr. Stephen Quin. Stephen, good morning.

Stephen Quin: Good morning, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: I reached out, because I saw the news release this morning. Let me read the headline, because it speaks for itself. Midas Gold's best hole ever reported at the Stibnite Gold Project, Idaho. It was a good one. Hole 17-421 intersected 217 meters of 3.2 grams per tonne gold, 6.1 grams per tonne silver, and .3% antimony starting from, I believe 1.52 meters, going to 218.2 meters. Stephen, can you share the details of the release? That's an impressive hit.

Stephen Quin: Certainly, yes, it's definitely a very good hole and was drilled in the central portion of the Yellow Pine deposits, where basically immediately below where they'd historically been mining quite high grade material. We had historic drill holes there from the 1940s and 1950s, which indicated that there was potential for good grade in the area. We could not use those drill results in our resource estimate, because of the age also.

The idea of this hole was to basically fill in similar to what we did with hole 14-414, which we reported last year, which was another good hole and get some additional data in that area and certainly a very impressive intercept over a substantial width. It really just confirms and demonstrates the scale of the mineralized system here at Stibnite. These are big deposits with substantial widths and really good grades. We're very pleased with the results.

Gerardo Del Real: I understand that there's more assays pending and then there's going to be an additional hole that's going to be completed before you wrap up before the summer program. Is that accurate?

Stephen Quin: Yeah, that's correct. We've got three more holes waiting for assays to come. One hole actually just got finished, so, essentially four holes now with assays waiting. Then, we'll take a break. The next area, we really don't want to drill. It's on a steep side hill with a lot of snow this year. It's been a heavy snowfall year. We really don't want to be working on a steep side hill with high snowfall. So, we'll wait to get into those areas until the summer.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent, excellent. Obviously, Stephen, we're excited to see the remaining results here as those assays come in. Hopefully we can have you back on when we receive those. Of course, excited for the summer program. I think that this has been largely successful in all aspects. I know that you had several key objectives that you wanted to achieve. I got to say that it's proven pretty successful thus far.

Stephen Quin: Yeah, absolutely. Essentially, we had three main areas we were drilling at Yellow Pine. One was the North End. We were looking to convert inferred to indicate it. Inferred, basically you can't use them in a feasibility, or pre-feasibility study, so they're excluded from the mine plan and treated as waste. They're a double negative.

You don't only just lose the ounces you think are there, but you also have to treat that material as waste and pay to mine it and take it away as waste, so there's negative cost associated with it, not just a zero. By converting it to inferred to indicated, you turn that around. You not only gain that cost back from treating it as waste, but you also, obviously gain ounces back, or into the mine plan that weren't there before. Particularly, that north, in that area we drilled at the North End, the results we reported last year, we saw two and a half to three times the grade that was projected in the inferred resource, so, obviously that was successful.

The second area we drilled was at the South End. That was a similar experience there and objective. One was to convert inferred to indicated. In that area, in particular, there were some areas inside the reserve pits, which weren't even resource, but we felt there was potential to push the mineralization into that area and reduce the strip ratio by getting rid of waste. We were successful in that. Again, we typically saw grades well above what was projected from the inferred drilling.

The third area was this area we're reporting in the release today, which was the central portion of the Alpine deposit, which is the highest grade in the early production because of that. We've done a lot of drilling in that area by ourselves, but there was also a lot of drilling prior to us being there.

That drilling essentially had ... the main objective was to bring additional data that could bring higher grade antimony data into the resource, which was excluded because we didn't use that older drilling in the resource estimate. We were pretty confident there was good antimony there, based on all the drilling, but it wasn't part of our resource model.

It has a bit of an impact on the gold. The gold is more, much better understood. We saw nice increases in gold grades in those areas, like 7%, 9%, 14%, whatever, those kinds of things, so a nice little uptick in the gold grade. It's really the antimony that would drive the potential additional value, because we didn't have antimony in those areas in the resource models. They're a nice additive on top of the gold aspect of it.

Gerardo Del Real: Absolutely, absolutely. Stephen, again, I want to thank you for your time. Again, I look forward to having you back on soon, when we receive the new assays. Just on a side note, how's the permitting coming along? I know that you're obviously in the middle of the permitting process and you've gotten that going. Any updates there?

Stephen Quin: Sure, we'll be putting out some more information in the not too distant future, potentially in a month, or so on some milestones as they're delivered. Essentially, I would characterize the stage we're in now as having been declared administratively complete in December, which we put a news release out on.

The next, this quarter, during Q1, we're getting all the parties in place, because we're now launching the actual formal permitting process. You need to know all the regulators. You need to have funding agreements, because essentially we pay the government for the permitting process.

We have to have an agreement under which essentially we are contracted with the government on reimbursing their costs. They have to hire a third party contractor, like an independent contractor, to do a lot of the work, because they don't have the in-house capacity.

We're getting all of those pieces together and making good progress on them. We're moving forward, but once those next milestones are there, we'll put out a news release and comment on that. Overall, I'd characterize it as we're moving along and we're on schedule. We haven't seen anything that causes any concern, but we'll deliver these next milestones and we'll be reporting that and happy to talk about it then.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent, excellent. I encourage everybody to go to midasgoldcorp.com. The project that you have there, the Stibnite Gold Project is truly world class. I think that sometimes a short interview doesn't do it justice.

Again, I encourage everyone to midasgoldcorp.com. You could see all of the progress. Just in 2017, everything from favorable drill results to the best hole to date reported today and also favorable metallurgical testing, which has also been all positive. Again, midasgoldcorp.com. Mr. Stephen Quin, thank you so much for your time.

Stephen Quin: Thank you, Gerardo.