2021 Yukon Exploration Investment Summit, Part 3

0:09 Good morning, good afternoon to everybody out there. This is the InvestUConn Exploration Investment Summit in our third presentation of this event. My name is Trevor Hall. I am the host of Mining Stock Daily. We are a daily podcast that publishes news, analysis, and reports from the world of mineral exploration and mining. We publish Monday through Friday whenever there is active trading in Canada and North America we publish the news. You can find us on all your favorite podcast networks including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean. If you have it on your phone to listen to your podcast, that's where you can find it. I am very privileged to once again be participating with the UConn to present another great panel discussion. I think this is my 2nd or 3rd year of doing this.

1:05 Today we are welcoming the CEOs of 3 companies based in the Yukon. We first have Tim Johnson from Granite Creek Copper. We have Matt Turner from Rock Haven Resources and Paul Westsells from Western Copper and Gold. We're first going to spend a little bit of time from each of these individuals to allow them to provide an introduction to their projects and their companies. And then we are going to break in with a little bit of a panel discussion with the 4 of us, and then we will end with questions from the audience. If you are listening and have follow-up questions for either or any of us, you can go to the Q&A in the chat there and post your question, submit it, And we will see those in the back end and hopefully be able to answer those in due course.

1:57 So Tim, I suppose we should start with you. You're joining us from northern BC, somewhere in the country, so I hope the internet connection is just fine. But if you could, could you please give us an introduction to Granite Creek Copper? All right, thank you for your patience with my intermittent Wi-Fi. Yeah, so Granite Creek, our CarMax project, central Yukon, we got 177 square kilometers of the highly prospective Minto Copper Belt. This was our real first year on the project on the CARMAX portion. We had the CARMAX North started in 2019.

2:35 We launched a 10,000-meter drill program this year. We've drilled to date over 6,300 meters of diamond, a couple thousand meters of RC. We'll have phase 3 of our diamond program launching in the coming weeks. Some really nice results. We're able to expand, we think, the sulfide resource there significantly in multiple zones. As your viewers may know, the Carmex deposit has been sort of categorized as an oxide play for quite a few years. We felt that really taking a strong look at the sulfide and seeing if we can bring the sulfide into a mine plant and potentially extend the potential mine life there a double or even more by doing that. We think we're well on the way to doing that with this year's drilling program and the work that we've engaged Sedgemen and Mining Plus to do to, again, take a whole look at the entire deposit, oxide and sulfide, and see what we can produce with an updated PEA.

3:39 Matt, can you give us a quick introduction to Rockhaven Resources? Yeah, for sure, Trevor, and thanks everyone for tuning in today.

3:47 So again, Matt Turner, President and CEO of Rockhaven Resources. Rockhaven is advancing our closet project. It's about a 3.5 hour drive from the capital city of Whitehorse, located right kind of in the southeast corner of the Dawson Gold Belt. We've been working on the project now since 2010.

4:08 A lot of work's been done since that time, over 500 drill holes, over 100,000 meters. We're actually, I think, at around 115,000 meters of drilling now. So yeah, a lot of work's been done. Through all that work, we've identified a pretty hardy resource. It's sitting at, well, 2 categories, indicated and inferred. In the indicated category, you're at about just over 900,000 ounces gold equivalent at 6.3 g gold equivalent average. So again, nice high grade. And then in the inferred category, we are at 725,000 oz gold equivalent at just a shade under 4 grams gold equivalent.

4:54 So kind of on a global basis it's about 1.6 million ounces gold equivalent at about 5 grams. So nice again, nice hardy high-grade resource and we have actually wrapped up the economics around the deposit last year and that shows quite well 37% post-tax IRR and post-tax NPV of CAD$378 million. And that was done at $1,450 gold, $17 silver and $0.72. So, you know, the project is really heading in the right direction and and that'll lead us into again a you know very big drill program this year we've got 3 3 rigs turning right now and we're looking at somewhere around 12,000 meters so it's it's busy out there I just came back last week lots of stuff going on so it's fun Can you tell us exactly what the drill campaign this summer is going after? What the strategy is? Yeah.

5:57 So of the 12,000 meters, 5,000 is focused on infill drilling. So that's continuing to convert the remaining inferred over into the indicated category.

6:10 There's still another approximately 15,000 more meters to do the full conversion. But again, moving the project forward to a point where we're gonna go into a pre-feasibility on it, right? And then the other 7,000 meters is looking at some of these outboard targets away from the resource. Cause again, we've either got some indications through geochemical anomalies, geophysical anomalies or through actual drill discoveries which we made last year. A good example of that is the

6:45 Rusk showing that we drilled last year. We found about 20 new vein structures. So again, a new vein complex about 3 kilometers away from the deposit. So that's where some of those exploration meters are going this year. So again, trying to advance the project, but also to advance it, keeping in mind the full scope that might be at class, right, when again we fully go into full pre-fee slash fee study. For those listening and want to follow the chart activity for Rock Haven. They do trade on the venture exchange with the symbol RK. There is an OTC ticker as well with RKHNF.

7:26 Just for some reference. Okay, Paul, You're the CEO of Western Copper and Gold, continuing to advance the casino project. Lots of great news from the company in the last few months. Very exciting to see what's happening there. But Why don't you give us the quick rundown, 30,000 foot view. Sure, yeah, no. So Western Copper and Gold has been advancing the casino project for a little over a dozen years now. You know, This is a very large project located in sort of South Central Yukon, actually right next to Newmont's coffee project. You're looking at a total resource of 21 million ounces of gold, 11 billion pounds of copper.

8:15 So you know, puts this as one of the largest undeveloped copper gold projects globally.

8:24 And you know, we've been developing it. We just came out with a PEA. This has been a big year for us. I mean this has been probably the biggest year we've had in a while We came up with a PEA Which showed tremendous returns. We're looking at an IRR of 19 and 0.5 percent a net present value of 2.3 billion and that's a you know conservative 335 copper $1,600 gold you know you start to look at that at spot you're getting close to 4 billion of net present value and you're looking at IRRs in sort of your high 20s. Sounds like a great project. We're not the only people that agree. We just brought on Rio Tinto, which I'm assuming most of your listeners know, one of the 2nd or 3rd, or 1st or 2nd largest mining company in the world, depending on how you add everything up.

9:20 They came on as a strategic investor in the beginning of this year, actually around May, and part of that strategic investment, They didn't just give us money, but really what we set out was a this 18 month program where they're Reviewing the project we're doing some very specific Drilling that we've developed with them to make sure that we completely Understand the resource all the lithology all the geology, a little bit more met work, a little bit of exploration, engagement with government and First Nations and we'll be sitting down sometime next year and deciding what the next phase is with Rio. But in parallel to that, we're driving the project forward. We're well capitalized. We raised the money with Rio Tinto. We also raised $28 million at the end of last year. So the goal right now, PA is done, moving that towards a feasibility study and getting the project back into the permitting by the end of next year.

10:25 So very, very busy time, very, very exciting time for the company right now. You also have some exploration work taking place when all this is taking place, you know, on everything else that's drilling going on. Yeah, I know and and you know 2 years ago we acquired the Canadian Creek property to the west of us and you know almost doubled our overall footprint,

10:47 very unexplored territory and so again with Rio Tinto we've put together a number of exploration targets, those are being looked at this year. Also there's a big soil, I mean some small things I don't usually talk about, but a big soil sampling campaign that we've executed, a couple of interesting things that come out of that as well. So,

11:11 we're looking at a couple of targets this year both on Canadian Creek and based on the soil sampling. Some of that will definitely roll into next year in terms of some excitement there. It's already very, very large with the PEA with the two-phase development, it looked at a total mine life of 47 years and that's still about two thirds of the deposit that we've identified and now we're looking at, you know, are there some satellite deposits to this. So we really have gone from having a great deposit to having now really almost a great district. The area, I can't emphasize this enough, I mean, Newmont's Coffee Project, I mean, we share a claim boundary. They're about 20 kilometers away.

12:04 That project is in the last throes of environmental assessment, and that's gonna be mine here in the next couple years, or they'll start construction in the next couple years. So

12:15 It's part of the Yukon story, it's part of the story of what's happening right where we are, a lot of excitement. Western Copper and Gold trades on the TSX and the NYSC with the symbol WRN for those interested in following. Very good. So we have differences and similarities with all 3 of you. I guess the similarities are your multi-element resources that you're exploring for base metals and the precious metals as well. But we also have different stages of exploration from earlier stage exploration at Granite Creek to more you know PFS type of level work with Rock Haven all the way to feasibility level work and even permitting potentially with Western Copper and Gold. You know let's open up a discussion and really wanna talk about this multi-metal

13:08 assets. That's really important because this year's been really tough and we saw gold really push higher last year to new all time highs, but it has just been real challenging because we've seen basically a year of correction, where copper has really continued to follow economic moves upward and continues to get a bid because there's obviously higher demand for copper.

13:34 Matt, let's start with you. Talk about really why is it important and beneficial to have a multi-element asset, especially during an economic time when every metal is so telling what could potentially be happening in a global macro scale Well, I think it's just huge to have leverage to you know, kind of the flavor of the week, right? And When you have you know different different metal suites in your deposit it you know, just helps with again kind of taking advantage of current trends,

14:11 but also future trends too. And Case in point for us, so we again, we're exploring an epithermal deposit, an epithermal system, but that epithermal system has come from a related porphyry intrusion and porphyry system.

14:29 So That was kind of one of our things this year is to explore that 7,000 meters directed towards exploration drilling to go in and look at some of these pretty large copper and soil anomalies that we think is kind of the fueling system for the epithermal deposits.

14:53 Not much unlike what Paul has at Casino. Casino was originally identified first as an epithermal system that was casino silver exploring there in the 60s and then they basically followed their nose and found the big porphyry system which I guess wasn't really too hard to follow because it was a big gossam but still it just goes to show that

15:17 similar type of system. So for us, we have got gold, silver, lead, zinc that is in our resource and that is when I was stating gold equivalents. It is about 75% gold, 15% silver, 5% lead, 5% zinc. So pretty healthy suite there, but then again there is this potential copper moly gold porphyry nearby that we're that we're testing this year. So it's I think to answer your question Trevor it's again it's you know it's great to have the different suites, right? Just for, or again, to be able to capture current trends, but also for future. Tim, let's go over to CarMax. I wanna ask you kind of a similar question, but you're predominantly a copper asset exploration player, but you do have some pretty nice precious metals kickers to it.

16:12 With what you're finding, give us a rundown of like the leverage to the copper play, especially for early exploration projects like Granite Creek? Yeah I think that the precious metal credits are important to us. I mean what we saw with the previous operator Copper North, they took a tank two-stage leach so that had really changed the economics of the deposit by being able to bring the gold and silver into view. You know like other people have mentioned having the flexibility of where the markets are going, whether it's precious metals or... The connection, Tim, is pretty spotty.

16:58 It's cutting in and out. Sorry, Tim. The connection is pretty spotty. You're in and out.

17:06 So, Paul, I've got to move it over to you because you and I have been working and talking together for a couple of years now. The ongoing discussion as well as Western, a copper player, a gold player this week. So we get that, you know, you know better than anybody the leverage to both precious metals and copper on this panel. But it's, you know, given your outlook, trajectory on both metals, something with a 47-year mine life is a pretty ample reason for a major such as Rio Tinto to give it a really interesting hard look. Yeah, No, definitely. And

17:47 it really, I'll talk about Casino's first and then we'll talk maybe a bit about the Copper and Gold. But yeah, I mean, with essentially a 50 year mine life, I mean, how many cycles are you gonna hit? You know, 567, you only have to hit $5 copper for 6 months and you, you know, mines like Casino are going to make billions of dollars over that period of time. I mean, we're looking at, you know, life of mine cash flows, you know, at that sort of higher copper and gold prices, and 15, 20 billion dollars, I mean it's just astounding sort of numbers, right? But yeah, it's, as you alluded to, I mean, if we look at the revenue distribution at Casino,

18:33 it's 40% copper, 40% gold and then 20% moly, a little bit of silver, but depending on where the commodity prices are, it could be a bit more copper, it could be a bit more gold. Over the past 10 years, it's sort of been interesting because they've been very counter-cyclical and where you've had, you know, I think back to 2000, I mean, our first economic study on casino came out in 2009 and copper was at $1.50.

19:03 But gold, this is when gold was really shooting up, right? So the project still looked good. And then you come to a couple years later and copper was quite high. And So there's been some cyclicalness. I mean, you know, when economies are booming, I mean, Dr. Copper, copper really follows, you know, the feelings around economic growth. When there's, you know, good economic growth or at least the perception of good economic growth, you're going to see copper prices go up.

19:35 Gold is a little more difficult to sort of see because it follows a number of things and really it follows the US dollar. But The thing that's really interesting to me is when we start to look future forward here a little bit right now, because what you're sort of seeing a lot of people predicting is inflation. And the one thing we haven't had over the past 10 years is inflation. And So we're predicting inflation and then post-COVID

20:02 some very, very good growth. So that for me spells good copper price because you have global growth and good precious metal prices because you have inflation and people are looking for things with real stores of value as opposed to betting on government to not turn the printing presses on too hard. So it's an exciting time. And you're starting to see, I mean, it's interesting that we've brought Rio Tinto into this asset with a fair bit of gold. And then on the other side, you're seeing the likes of Barrick, Newmont. I mean Barrick is talking about, oh well, we really want copper gold assets because we like copper.

20:45 Interestingly, Barrick is talking the talk, Newmont is actually walking the walk, making major investments in a number of copper gold plays in Northern British Columbia with Gloria Creek and GT Gold. So, seeing gold companies invest in copper gold projects. So,

21:03 And the other thing in the whole gold space, if you want significant gold, you need to look to these large copper gold, you got to look to these copper gold porphyries. The largest gold mine in the world is owned by Freeport in Indonesia with Grassberg. So it's not a gold mine, it's actually a copper mine that just throws off a significant amount of gold. Well, let me just quote an old friend who stated on the podcast the other week, inflation isn't a number, it's a psychology. I don't know if the psychology has quite hit yet to the, you know, people are still enjoying their summers And based on the summer they didn't have last year, I think they're willing to spend higher prices. We'll see if that psychology of inflation

21:52 turns around. But that's a really good point, especially when it comes to commodity prices and higher prices, obviously good for the industry. I wanted to go and kind of pivot a little bit on the topic of ESG, environmental, social, and governance. Now, I've been following the industry for a number of years before ESG was really this kind of trend term.

22:19 From where I stand, I don't necessarily see a lot of these things that makes a company ESG compliant, even in mining, I feel like a lot of the companies, most of the companies I follow have been doing it already. But I've gotta ask, how has this ESG, I guess you can call it a mandate or expectation, how has it changed the way companies explore in the Yukon in the last couple years? Matt, do you want to start?

22:50 Sure, Paul, yeah. Yeah, you're right, Trevor. I think we've all been doing the kind of the main facets of ESG for a long time now, that's really been our social license to start exploring in the first place, right? And

23:10 the fact that it's really come to light and it's so focused on now, I think it's really good for especially the companies that have been that have been doing it because it's just kind of allows us to you know showcase what we're doing on all those fronts. So does it help us to explore? Yeah I'd say so like you look at especially now in this day and age, you know, even to get permits to explore, you need to have, you need to have, you know, the local First Nations, the affected First Nations that you're exploring in their traditional territory. Traditional territory, they need to sign off on your exploration plans and applications.

23:53 And like in our case, before we even submit the application to the government for review for our land use permits, they go to the First Nation and they get signed off. And in some cases they might come back with some changes that they'd like to see. So we'll make the changes and then we submit it to government. So it goes a long way in kind of fast tracking, I think, the actual permitting process or

24:19 the maybe not permitting process because that's more associated with actual mining but at least for the exploration side of things your land use permits it fast tracks that because again the government knows that it's already been signed off on. So yeah, I think it really affects exploration.

24:37 Tim, I hope you're with us. The question's on ESG. Have you seen more boxes in exploration that need to be checked off because of ESG expectations that maybe weren't there years ago? Yeah, I think there is. I think it's come to the forefront. I mean, you know, I think companies that have a long track record of good ESG maybe hadn't been recognized. It's just getting more formalized now than what it had been before. I mean, I can go back to the early 2000s when I was in a First Nations community with 80% unemployment, and at the same time the industry was crying for workers and it took forward-looking companies to put those 2 together and say, why don't we engage the communities that we're working in and around

25:28 and that's just become more prevalent today and again more formalized I think.

25:36 Paul do you have any comments on this topic? Yeah I know I mean I think you know I think particularly companies that have been working in the Yukon and Trevor I know you've been up to the Yukon. When I first came up to the Yukon, the thing that was very apparent to me was how woven into the Yukon the First Nations, the First Nation communities

26:01 were. They're woven into government, they're woven into YESA, which is the environmental assessment and you get your exploration permit, it's got to go through YESA. This actually came out of settlement with the First Nations. So, it's very woven in and So I think that for most Yukon companies at any stage of development,

26:22 that working with the community, that working with First Nations, making sure that all of that is done right, has been being done for a number of years. What's changed now is that investors are really interested in that. And so I spend, you know, 7 years ago, I would sort of say, oh, well, you know, we've got, you know, the communities on side and the First Nations and we're working closely with them and they're viewing this and there's less interest in it whereas now I think that that interest is quite high and I think you know and we're not going to name names here but you look around globally you look at projects and there's lots of great projects out there that have great geology, you know, great economics that are not going to be mines in any point in the future because they've messed up the ESG part of that.

27:15 And I wake up every day with that in the back of my mind and understand and certainly drive towards making sure that, you know, for my

27:26 specific example, the casino mine, it's something that I'm reaching out to the community, I'm reaching out to the First Nations, I'm reaching out to the local governments and making sure that I have their input, that they understand what we're doing as we move things forward. We've had a lot of discussion on this podcast about ESG and what we yet to really see as a definite, like an actual definition of what ESG means for the industry. It continues to be this kind of holistic conversation with no real definition.

28:05 As executives in your companies, do you need, would it be better, would exploration be better off with a hard definition of what the ESG expectations are? Or can you continue to be agile to kind of go with the flow and just meet the expectations of the local communities and the local populations? We'll start with Matt because he started. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good question. I know there has been talk about this, like getting in some sort of, you know, definitive framework on expectations, but I don't know, like for me, it's, it comes back to doing what is right, you know what I mean? And again, there's a lot of different parts of the ESG.

28:57 So, it's pretty wide spectrum of things that you can look at but at the end of the day, for me, it's doing what's right. And like, say, for example, I guess, you know, you go to Klaza right now and, you know, we hire so many people from the local community and local First Nation, they even joke that it's like having the town of Carmax out there out at site. And so that's coming from them specifically, right? And that's what we've always done. And it kind of came back, I think, for me, because I grew up in a community very similar to Carmack, same size and historic mining town and all that. So I've always appreciated how important it is to have any sort of work that's around the town that needs to involve citizens from the town.

29:51 So yeah, that's been day 1 for us. And yeah, we're really, I think, proud of our record out there. And even just, you know, we had a, let's say as well, last week we had a tour. It was mainly from the Lands Department from Little Sam and Carmack's First Nation. That's the territory that we're exploring in. But again, you know, I think we had about 8 members from the Lands Department come out for a tour and, you know, they're seeing their, you know, in some cases they're seeing their their kids working out there or their nephews or grandkids right so it's I think it goes a long ways when again you're showing that there's there's you know good good jobs good high-paying jobs and good skills training as well. So again, that's just one of the many facets of the ESG, but it's just an example that I like to show.

30:42 And again, for me, it just comes down to doing the right thing. And that's kind of all I kind of need to know when it comes to when it comes to expectations of program. We are gonna get to questions here in about 10-15 minutes for people listening that do have questions for either of the individuals you can go to the Q&A tab and submit those questions. We'll try to get to them before we end this discussion. Paul, Matt mentioned something that I think needs to be addressed, and that is he did mention jobs. Labor shortages abound in the Western world now. How does this affect exploration development work in the Yukon?

31:29 Well I'm looking for a COO. It's really challenging. The mining industry is a cyclical industry and there has been fits and starts over the years, and certainly there has been years where it's been difficult to get good exploration crews. But this year, which interestingly, as COVID is getting a little bit easier in terms of people have figured out the workaround, but it has been the most challenging year to get people that I've ever experienced. Getting qualified exploration crews is very challenging, getting technical people at any sort of level is very challenging.

32:20 I think you've got an industry that is really transforming a little bit in terms of there's a lot of people that are sort of in the retiring and you know I actually it's a bit good segue from the ESG I mean there's sort of the old guard is you know sort of moving out guard you know guys like Matt and myself and Tim that you know understand you know some of the not the old guard but very good on the ESG but you know it's new to them for where it's for us. We've sort of grown up with it a little bit. So it's incredibly challenging. I mean when we, I go and talk to the Yukon government and you know, I just sort of say, what are you gonna do to like, get people here? Like I mean just, you know, warm bodies, skilled bodies, I mean just start.

33:09 It's a real challenge and obviously there's discussions about this being a challenge globally and particularly in North America but it's a challenge. I mean that said, I mean you know I mean Matt's executed his exploration program this year. We've executed our exploration program this year. I mean, you get it done, but it's just a different way of executing. I mean, you sort of have to be nimble, you have to sort of jump on opportunities, present them in terms of personnel. You need to sort of, know different stones in terms of trying to get people and qualified contractors to do the work for you. You know, it doesn't feel like we're in any sort of bear market, but there's always challenges that need to be addressed in this industry that just you kind of have to be on your toes to figure out how to address as they come.

34:09 I kind of want to take a step away from the big, you know, the ESG and the inflation debate and really get back to the Yukon and have a conversation about, you know, with Rio Tinto putting a stamp here with Casino, with Victoria Gold now online and producing, you know, expectations with Alexco's Keno Hill getting up and going. It seems like Yukon mining and mineral exploration is getting in a pretty good spot. As a territory, really, what are there's gonna be continued challenges outside of what we're seeing from COVID and reactions to COVID and, you know, that? What will be the challenges that the territory in the industry in general need to tackle here in the next couple years?

35:07 You want to start, Matt? Go for it, Paul. And by the way, if you want. I think we can agree on the main challenges for sure. Yeah. You know, I mean, I think that it's... I think the idea, you know, A place like the Yukon, I mean people move to the Yukon because it's not Vancouver, it's not Denver, it's not Salt Lake City, I mean it's a small community so we always have to be careful about going in and saying we're going to have 10 mines in the next 10 years and it's going to be triple the size. And people are like, whoa, this isn't why we came to town. So the idea of growth, the idea of sustainable growth, the idea of how that moves forward, I think, is a very important part of the Yukon.

36:08 And one of the conversations that we've had over the past number of years is, the Yukon has always been very, oh, we love exploration, but then opening the mines was a bit of a difficult sort of thing because it's like, okay, well, that's, you know, exploration is sort of comes in, it's almost like tourism, comes in in the summer and then disappears, whereas your actual growth with mines is a year-round sort of thing. So if you're a business person, you like it, but if you're up in the Yukon, because it's a bit of a small town, you're less keen on it. So that's one of the things that needs to be managed, and with Victoria Gold opening up their mine and Alexa opening, reopening theirs, I think that people have seen that that, you know, can be done in a good manner and in a sustainable manner.

36:55 So that's one of the things, you know, I don't want to go back to ESG and spend too much time on that, but certainly what's happening in the Yukon is that it's like any government, and the First Nations are a government, the territorial government is a government, there's this dialogue and constant moving of that relationship, and so that relationship continues to evolve. It's doing well but it constantly evolves and so the challenge is to just make sure that that continues to work. It's I think working well right now but you know there's this working well because there's a lot of initiatives to introduce new legislation. And then on the environmental front, one of the big things about the Yukon that's really interesting is that it is the forefront of global warming. I mean, you see, I mean, everyone can talk about really, you know, some serious examples and not just this year but years going past.

38:01 So how that is dealt with and how that develops is another sort of key part of things in terms of moving forward. So yeah, it's interesting and I think the government is doing a good, a pretty reasonable job of keeping on top of all these ideas or concerns. Yeah, if I can just add on to what Paul said there was the power is going to be I think one of the biggest things for Yukon going forward especially, you know, so now there's what 3 mines going including Minto and that's going to be one of I think the chief concerns as we as we move the territory forward with more mining operations.

38:53 And, you know, I think kind of all ideas are on the table right now on how to increase the power capacity in Yukon. I know the ones that I like, although it's not kind of my big focus on fixing the future power concerns of Yukon, but looking at say the Northwest transmission line, That could be a real game changer for the Yukon if we can extend that. But again, there's probably big economics that goes with that endeavor, but that'd be pretty phenomenal, especially with Site C coming online at some point in the future. So yeah, I think that's going to be one of the big things for Yukon is to address the power capacity and go from there. I know, Paul, I guess you guys have kind of looked really at LNG, right, for on-site, for your operation.

39:52 But I know there's gonna be plenty of operations that are, but who knows possibly fall in the future, right? Along the road, bring in the actual power lines right to site. So for us, that's what we'd be contemplating, is bringing the power line in from the Klondike Highway, where it cuts through Carmack. So, yeah, so a lot of that's, for me, that's one of my chief concerns. Yeah, I mean, just to sort of follow up a little bit on what Matt was saying, I mean, you know, I think that's, didn't hit the nail on the head with electricity. And obviously, power and green power is a, you know, global concern. And, you know, it's a unique challenge in the North. So there's a couple of opportunities. One is to extend the BC grid up into the Yukon and To be honest, if a mine like Casino goes forward, that justifies that extension of the grid.

40:52 Without that, it gets a little more challenging to justify a project like that. The other thing that's really interesting and I'm tracking very closely is hydrogen. I'm pretty excited about hydrogen. I think that, you know, what the infrastructure that we do have that's really well put together in the Yukon and in Northern Canada in general is the road network. There are good roads. These are 24-7,365 highways that connect to a number of communities. So they call it the rubber tire pipeline. So if you can begin to put together a hydrogen infrastructure, that provides this absolutely green, clean energy. And that's one of the things that we're tracking very closely. But of course, connecting the grid is where you want to go. And BC has what is green and energy as you can get. So I mean connecting to the British Columbia grid would be excellent as well.

41:51 You know me myself kind of a reading about the Klondike gold rush around Dawson City really you know of gold and mining back in the day that really helped set the foundation for this industry as to where we are today. The Yukon really continues to be vastly underexplored. I mean, it's such a large territory. We have just, you know, even casino, at the grand scheme of things, is small compared to the rest of the territory. Can neither, can both of you just kind of go back and talk about where are some maybe greenfield exploration prospects?

42:38 Is there opportunities to go further north? Or is there even places down south that are a little bit more seasonal that have not been explored appropriately? Do you want me to start here Paul? Yeah Matt, you're the geologist. Yeah, well let's just focus around our neck of the woods because in between Casino and Plaza, that's about 100 kilometers or so and that's what probably about half of the Dawson Gold Belt and just between those 2 deposits. So again like these these deposits are fueled by these kind of late Cretaceous porphyry intrusions and you know where they've kind of daylighted or the epithermal signature expression of the system has been discovered.

43:28 Well you know we know of a couple of them, Casino and Plaza, but there's a tremendous amount of opportunity along the trend. And the more and more we explore these things, the more and more we understand, say, the geophysical signatures of them. I know there's a number of companies that have claims between our respective properties that are having pretty good success. And a lot of those are just kind of back to what you said, Trevor, kind of Greensfield place. But again, they've got all the kind of the right hallmarks of right signatures of these kind of systems so again it's a very fertile corridor with the right age rocks and there's a lot of cover and so that's the thing there's been a lot of you know a lot of potential future discoveries that are you need to work pretty hard to find them but but yeah I feel like that's that's a tremendously perspective area just in between in between our 2 sites.

44:34 Speaking of cover I will never forget stepping on Klaza and that soft bedding that you have at surface. I have never experienced walking on something that soft and natural. Yeah we're just above tree line so it's kind of the tundra mossy and there's only about a meter of overburden that covers the entire hillside that hosts the deposit but again it took a lot of hard work to find, first find the surface expressions through excavator trench and then drilling them off and again we're at I think 545 collared today, something like that. So a lot of work goes into these things. Yeah. We did get a couple questions in that we should get to. Just a quick reminder once again if you do have questions for anyone please go to the Q&A portion of the screen and just submit those questions there and we'll try to get to them.

45:30 We do have about 10, 13 minutes left here to get to. So Paul, a couple of questions for you that did come in. Can you please report the percentage of each metal in your project and is the percentage by weight or volume? Why, I'm not gonna give you a percentage by weight or by volume, I'm going to give you a percentage by contained value, because obviously the percentage of copper by weight is significantly higher than the percentage of gold. 11 billion pounds of copper is 11 billion pounds of copper, 21 million ounces of gold is, I don't think I can do the math that quickly, but is, anyhow, it's not in the billions of pounds, it's just not put it that way.

46:22 It might be 100 pounds or something like that. Yeah, but the revenue distribution is what's interesting. So this is, you know, Is it a copper mine, is it a gold mine? So when we look at the revenue, as I might have mentioned earlier, it usually runs around 40% copper, 40% gold, and moly runs around 18% and silver runs at 2%. When the copper price is high, it will be 42% copper and 38% gold and when the gold price is high, it will flip the other way around, but it holds very, very close to those. And so, it's an interest... So you'll see whenever I talk about this line, I will either talk about copper and gold in the same sentence, or I'll talk about copper equivalent or gold equivalent.

47:15 You know, that's one of the key things with this project and sometimes people look at and go, oh, the copper grade is too low or the gold grade is too low. Well, if you take those together because they're very equal, then you realize, oh, okay, you know, this thing is sitting at and, you know, over the first 4 years, 0.7 copper equivalent. You know, the first phase is around 0.5 copper equivalent, and that 50-year mine life brings it down under 0.4. But, you know, it's really, you've got to look at all those things together. There was a question. I did the math for you, Paul. It's about 160,000 pounds of gold. There you go. I hope I didn't math right.

48:02 Does that make sense? Anyway, 10 million ounces. I don't know where it's coming from, but somebody in the background seems like they're warming up a cup of coffee. If you wouldn't mind just hitting that mute button. Thanks, everybody. There was a question that came in and I don't know exactly who it was addressed to. It might have been addressed to Matt, but the question was, it was stated that a significant portion of the 2021 drill intercepts are associated with higher grades than what is in the resource. What has changed? You're on mute, Matt. Can you repeat that again, Trevor? Yeah, it was stated that a significant portion of the 2021 drill intercepts are associated with higher grades than what is in the resource.

48:53 What has changed? That might be for Granite Creek. I'm just thinking because we haven't put out any results from 2021. Okay, so I don't think, I don't think Tim, I think Tim, we lost Tim. Yeah, I haven't put out any. But if I can answer that in a way, it somewhat applies to Plasm, probably what you'll see in the future and what we're hitting. I think it's because you've got kind of a global resource average grade. But so that includes some of the lower grade areas of the deposit. And so part of the area that we're exploring this year is the higher grade. So you'll probably see intercepts in the 20, 30, 40 gram range, but the average grade of the resource is about 5, right? So it all kind of depends on how much, you know, what they're considering for the resource.

49:44 And yeah, So that I guess kind of could apply for Plaza for sure. Yeah. Matt, another question for you. So we've seen Rio Tinto show an interest in projects such as Casino. What would it have to take to get a major attracted to Plaza? Good question. Cause we are kind of in that, still that kind of mid tier minor sweet spot, right? For a production profile of about 1 million ounces equivalent over the 12-year mine life. That's what came out of last year's PEA. So, yeah, it's a good question. If you're looking at the mid-tier, we're already there. If you're looking at the major miner, I think it's them looking at probably partly the results from this year and what we hit on our exploration drill line if we can kind of, you know, arm wave plus, you know, a solid plus 2 million ounces across the property, then you start getting into that next tier group. So I think that's the best answer to that question.

50:43 Paul, there's a question for you. And actually, this is 1 I'm really interesting because I did not see it coming, but you mentioned hydrogen and can you tell us about? Hydrogen and this individual one that have you heard of HPQ silicon I Have not heard of HPQ silicon Yeah Well, I mean so I mean right now You know I mean We're using I as I said the infrastructure that you have in the Yukon is a great highway. So I always say I will bring, You know, I need to bring my energy in on a truck and I'll bring any energy You want me to bring in on the truck? And so right now the greenest I mean there's 2 options really until in terms of Generating electricity. It's using liquefied natural gas, which obviously is told emits carbon, but is fairly green or it's going nuclear which it's a nice idea but it's not really feasible in the Yukon.

51:41 Hydrogen I think is something everyone can get their head around so that's why we're watching it very very closely and so one of the things that we you know have talked about and are making sure we have in the design for casino is you know right now I mean if the mine started tomorrow we would start off on liquefied natural gas but the power plant that we have actually you know we're making sure that the design of that is such that we can transfer over to hydrogen very, very simply. So it's a gas-fired turbine, to a certain extent, it doesn't matter what that gas is, we can go from using natural gas to hydrogen. But, yeah, I mean, the challenge, I mean, you know, burning hydrogen or using fuel cells to generate electricity is well established.

52:27 Generating hydrogen is well established. It's that transport piece that I'm really following and you know a lot of people are looking at this and and really it's just you know how much compression can you get on that hydrogen and then pack it onto a clock and so it's a relatively straightforward engineering question It's just sort of advancing the engineering on that. So it's not necessarily gee whiz technology, although this this silicon hydrogen has got me intrigued. I'll certainly look it up. Okay yeah HPQ silicon is referenced once again. Paul let's go back to you. In fact, this is a topic that you and I have had a discussion about in the last couple months on the podcast, and that is on the MET side with the treatment charges and the refining charge assumptions via the smelters. So this has been a pretty interesting dynamic in the last few months because those charges just got incredibly low, lowest we've seen in many years.

53:30 What are your assumptions with these, well, TCRC, what are those assumptions for you? And what type of impurities might, you know, does the casino project maybe have in its concentrate that would kind of bring that close, you know, have an extra charge on to your concentrate to get smelted. Right, right. Yeah, so I mean, so where our copper concentrate, I mean, first of all, it's the copper grade of the copper concentrates. From all the testing that we've done, we produce a pretty good copper grade copper concentrate, so around 28%. And usually copper concentrates run, I mean I guess they run as low as 20 and maybe up as 40, so 28 sits fairly nicely.

54:21 We talked earlier about the percentage of the revenue from gold, lots of gold just right in that concentrate, so there's an ounce of gold in that per ton of that concentrate. So again, you look at that revenue split, a lot of the revenue in that concentrate is from gold. And so then you look at penalty elements and you know there's penalties for a whole bunch of things, but the big ones you look for are arsenic and antimony. And luckily we don't have issues with either of those and I'm not a geologist, but my understanding is that the way the deposits work in sort of Northern British Columbia and up where we are in this area, they don't tend to sort of run these high arsenic. You hear about these high arsenic deposits, particularly in Chile and South America, not all parts, but certainly some of the newer mines have had some very, very high arsenic and that, you know, at a certain level you pay penalties and then a certain level above that they just say, no thank you, we can't take it.

55:31 And particularly the Japanese smelters and the Japanese smelters are interesting because the Japanese smelters can pay you a little bit more for the gold because they have a more advanced gold treatment circuit so it's it's one of the you know groups that we've we've talked to in the past and have had a good look at our concentrate and said they're very interested. Back to treatment charges just real quickly, in our PA we used 80 and 8, So $80 a ton and 8 cents per pound of copper, which is very conservative. I was actually arguing, but the engineering group says, oh no, no, we're a more conservative group. You've seen them, I mean, there's been some stories of them coming in at like $10 and a penny, you know, which is, you know, that would be, you know, mostly aggressive, but yeah, you are seeing people fight for copper concentrates because they pay you for, and I'd have to pull it up, but like 98% of the copper and 96% of the gold, so that extra little bit of gold and copper, they'll actually recover and they'll put those profits in their pockets.

56:42 So that's why they can get away with actually paying you, which seems like ridiculous numbers, because when those commodity prices are high, they can actually break even. I always learn something new. I love this industry. There's always something I don't know, and it changes every day. We gotta wrap it up, So I do need to thank both of you. Paul Wessels from Western Copper and Gold, Matt Turner from Rock Haven Resources, and also Tim Johnson, who unfortunately had some connection issues from Granite Creek Copper. Creek Copper. I really appreciate your time gentlemen and thanks for all your insights and everything you're doing with your teams. We hope you and everybody else on the ground, on your projects and throughout the Yukon stay safe and stay healthy.

57:33 Well, thank you very much. ♪