Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Patriot Resources (ASX:PAT), CEO and Managing Director Dominic Duggan
Lel Smits: Patriot Resources is developing its wholly owned Tassa high-grade silver gold project in southern Peru, which hosts a maiden inferred resource of 31.4 million ounces silver equivalent that remains open in all directions. The company has signed a five-year exploration agreement with the Tassa community, completed its first surface sampling north of the resource, and is working towards a drill permit. Ahead of presenting at the Rockstars Mining Investor event, I’m joined by Patriot Resources CEO and Managing Director Dominic Duggan to discuss Tassa and the path to drilling.
Dom, welcome to the Stock Network.
Dominic Duggan: Thanks so much for having us, it’s good to chat.
Lel Smits: Good to have you on.
Now, Patriot plans to divest its copper and lithium projects to focus on Peru. Can you outline for us, Dom, what makes Tassa the right project, do you think, to build the company around?
Dominic Duggan: I think there’s, for us, it’s the fundamentals of the project. It’s got a great, great long history and it presents an incredible opportunity with some sort of limited drilling to really grow the resource base, which is what we’re looking at doing.
It’s an advanced stage project. It’s got a maiden resource that we published on the Tassa silver project earlier in the year, and we’re certainly looking to extend that through our phase 1 drilling program later in the year. It’s a fantastic high-grade silver-gold system in southern Peru.
It’s got about 8,500m of diamond drilling that was originally done on the project, so we inherited this great data set that helps us validate what’s in the ground. We know that there’s some tremendous high-grade silver results in there that form the basis of that resource, and certainly we’ll be looking to grow that. That’s formed our decision, as well as the fact that silver has historically been quite undervalued as an industrial metal, as well as its precious properties.
We think that certainly with some drilling to grow that resource base, it’s close to infrastructure to really take it forward as a standalone project.
Lel Smits: Excellent. In terms of securing community support and also preparing to drill at Tassa, you’ve got the Tassa community agreement signed, also mapping moving south.
Dom, what’s really next in terms of the steps to the first drill program, and also what’s it going to target?
Dominic Duggan: For us, the community agreement was so important to have the support of the Tassa community, and to sign a five-year community agreement with them really underpins the long-term view that we have on the project. Earlier in the year, we had a number of meetings with the Tassa community. We really listened, and we spent time in the community itself, understanding their aspirations, what their goals were, how they’d like to see the project develop, and to secure a five-year agreement, that really de-risks all the future phases of drilling that we can do on the project.
That really sets us up for the long-term that we have the goals to be there as an operator in the region, to work with the Tassa community, to provide jobs and support with them. What we’re targeting as a phase one program is around the central and the northern zones that are in the existing mineral resource, and it’s really to look at connecting those zones through further drilling. The original drilling that was done on the project was quite clustered, and so by some limited infield drilling between those zones, we’re targeting those really rich, high-grade areas that run up to about 150g a tonne Silver with Gold and associated Copper, Lead and Zinc.
For us, in terms of next steps to get a drill on ground, we’ve got the community agreement, we’ve got the environmental approval to drill, so it’s now sitting with the Peruvian government to work through the final permitting process. It’s largely an administrative process, so that all gets submitted and then we get the drill permits back.
Lel Smits: Thank you very much, Don, for the update from Patriot Resources.
Look forward to hearing more when you are at the Rockstars Mining Investor event in Sydney soon.
Dominic Duggan: Thanks so much.
Ends