'People Are Talking $30,000' GOLD – Higher Prices the 'New Normal'
Summary
Gold Outlook: Gold’s strength is attributed to central bank buying, geopolitical and economic uncertainty, inflation hedging, and portfolio diversification, with potential to normalize before a next leg higher.
Gold Miners: The gold mining sector’s leverage has improved, with majors relying on juniors for discoveries, but cost inflation demands higher grades to sustain margins.
Copper Market: Copper demand is driven by electrification, defense, European green power needs, and data centers, while structural underinvestment supports a bullish multi-year view.
Copper Supply Risks: Multiple disruptions and a lengthy bear market have created significant shortfalls, implying tighter supply and higher prices ahead.
Junior Miners: Capital is flowing back downstream to juniors after a protracted bear market, yet disciplined project economics and credible assay thresholds remain critical.
Quebec Mining: Strong infrastructure, supportive provincial policy, available workforce, and regional activity create a favorable operating environment with potential hub-and-spoke consolidation.
Key Company: IAMGOLD (IAG) is active in regional consolidation and holds a JV with the guest’s company, positioning it as a potential acquirer or strategic partner in the area.
Project Progress: The Roger project’s VMS reinterpretation is supported by base metal intercepts and downhole geophysics, with funded follow-up drilling and flow-through financing under consideration.
Transcript
Hello everybody and welcome in to commodity culture where our goal is to make you a better investor in the commodities sector. My name is Jesse Day and before we dive in, standard disclaimer. Nothing here is investment advice. Do your own due diligence. And today's guest is the CEO of Original Metals, a Quebec focused copper and gold company with one of the province's largest and most diversified exploration portfolios. It's Peter Cashion. Great to have you on the show. >> Good morning, Jesse. Good morning to you as well. Good evening here in Serbia. I I want to kick things off with the gold space uh in general. I want to talk about copper with you as well and then I want to dive into the details on original metals. But what a year it's been for gold so far, hitting new all-time highs of around 4,300 before a correction and now we're rising again above 4,100 as of the time of this recording. What are the catalysts driving the gold market at present in your view? And how far do you think this gold bull cycle has to go? >> Uh several factors I think are affecting gold. Uh obviously the increased uh buying by central banks, most notably China. Um I think political and uh economic uncertainty is a is a big driver on gold. Um I've always known gold to be a hedge in in inflation. I think there's some still some inflationary fears that are in the market currently. And then I think the last measure is people want to diversify their investment portfolio and they're including gold within it. You know, you ask an interesting question. Ultimately, every time I hear somebody bring make a prediction on price, uh um I get first it's a little bit of denial and then all of a sudden we achieve that level and now we're at you know going on 5,000 and people are talking about 15 or even $30,000 gold which is astronomical. Uh it it's really tough to predict. I mean ultimately given that gold is such an important indicator of the you know financial markets um it really depends on uh what happens uh you know globally in terms of the geopolitical environment that we're currently you know experiencing um I I think if we can overcome that gold is likely to either just settle or or or maybe come down a bit uh achieve a a new a new normal which probably around 40 or $4,500 per per ounce gold. Um, and then we'll see at the next leg up. Um, undervalued. I I you know, from my perspective, I've been in the expiration sector now for quite a number of years and experiencing 250 and $300 an ounce gold. So, uh, 4500 certainly is an interesting point to be at that I didn't think was ever attainable. And I always told myself that if we attain those levels, I think the economies are in big trouble. >> Yeah, that's a good point. And when it comes to the mining sector, do you think there's a long ways to go there as well? Because for a few years as gold was rising, the miners were not really providing that levered play on the gold price. However, that seemed to all change this year. We saw a massive rise in the GDX ETF, just to give one example. And at the at the current gold price, we can see that a lot of these companies, particularly the big producers, are essentially printing cash. What are your thoughts on the gold mining sector at present? >> I, you know, we've just come through a a bare a long very protracted bare market for resources in general. Um for the most part majors major mining companies have always been reliant on the junior space uh to accept risk and undertake risk through exploration and then later acquired and I think the IM gold acquisition of of a couple of companies recently um is a good indication that now I think uh money is money is coming back and going down more you know offstream again into the junior space um which is good to see. Uh but I think we're a long ways off. I think that that 10 about a 10-year bare gap has caused a significant short shortfall on on the availability of of gold resources. And we're kind of playing catch-up right now. Uh you're seeing, you know, you're seeing a lot of gold expiration happening. Um, you know, I I'm always concerned about the kinds of uh portrayals of what's considered an economic gold assay from a lot of juniors. Um, I, you know, ultimately it's good to have a great uh, you know, high commodity price, but everything else goes up. Your material costs are up, labor costs go up, you know, construction costs go up. So, really the, you know, your margins are no better even with a with a higher price. Um so you still from my perspective I think junior miners still have to p you know uh maintain a a higher level of what's considered to be an acceptable gold grade for you know a good project. >> And it's been a fantastic year for copper as well hitting new all-time highs of nearly $6 before correcting. We're at around $5 a pound right now. It feels like there's so many tailwinds behind the sector. What are you watching right now when it comes to the copper market that you think investors should be focused on? >> My background is I I I dealt I was about 15 years before coming into original uh into the critical mineral space. So, you know, I've been I've been tracking that and um you know the electrification of the automotive industry, the aerospace and defense industries are showing to be big consumers. a little bit less so in the United States, but I mean Europe is under significant uh pressure from uh restrictions on u hydrocarbon sources from Russia for heating and and power. So they're really they have no alternative but to seek u u green energy solutions certainly for power generation for uh for those jurisdictions. So I think that's a big huge consumer. Um just in general defense is a huge consumer of of copper you know for wiring and other applications. um uh power you know these these uh these uh AI uh stations power stations I mean they require they're requiring huge amounts of you know data data centers huge amounts of copper uh both for the the processing side of the formula but also the requirement for huge power generation capacity to run those uh centers >> and yet the copper supply is nowhere to be found to meet a lot of this projected demand. We've seen a ton of issues hit the copper mining sector recently, including flooding at Ivanho mines, accidents at Cadelo and Freeport Macaran, protests at Hud Bay, and this is all on top of course of the Cobra Panama mine, a massive source of copper, which is still offline at present. With all of this in mind, where is the needed copper going to come from? >> You know, there in lies the same question that I brought up for gold. We've it's the significant duration of the bare space and no expiration was being done. Gold is always fairly traditionally active even through positive and negative cycles but copper's fell off the cliff. There's um I mean the big big emphasis in the past 15 years on the critical mineral area. Um, fortunately, copper is considered a critical mineral uh certainly from from our uh from our view uh our activity in Quebec. But I mean that shortfall is going to be hard to replace. I mean with a grass bird offline and unlikely to be back in production to 27 2027 at the earliest. I mean that so I I think that there's going to be significant shortfalls and that's going to be reflected in a higher price. >> Totally agree with you there. Let's shift to discussing original metals and how the company fits into the picture. Could you start by giving us an overview? >> Just uh original metals is an amalgamation of a copper gold asset that was in one of the or groups companies uh rolled it into Kendaro which was illquid. They had a significant property port expiration portfolio in Quebec but they were stuck in the mud. Um the ID being here for for a reasonable uh transaction uh we were able to roll uh the Roger which is really the source of our excitement and development these days indicate of our rebrand uh rename and start life in a in a different exploration direction. >> And could you shed some light on the team behind original metals? uh maybe starting with yourself and your history with the Roger project, how that gives you an edge when when being at the helm of the company. >> Like I say, I've been in this business for a long time. Um I started my crew in the mid 80s and Roger was my primary projects um in 1985. Ran through it for about three years. Really formulated the first mineralization model at the time uh with the information that I had. um went off, worked in the critical mineral space, ran uh Quester Minerals, made the Strange Lake heavy rare element discovery nor eastern Quebec. Um moved off of that, took a property with me, got it into what is now Scandium, Canada, and then that's again rare earth and Scandium project northeastern Quebec. Um certainly Quest was a a significant success. So um in coming back I just happened to meet Steven Stewart who's the principal of the group uh for an interview. I thought that when I at the Ped conference the past March I found that the attitudes of the junior space was really changing to the positive for the first time in a long time. So I said I might give it I I basically after Imperial I left Imperial and and I got a whole brand new operating group team to bring it into production. I I was in semi-retirement for about a year and a half doing some consulting, helping friends with financings and new shells, new property, new companies. Uh I met Stephen uh just open-minded. I thought that there diverse group. They had some good operators, had some great projects and geographically very diverse. And it just so happens that he knew of the Roger rolling into the Roger project into Kavar and the nature of the transaction. So I was a Johnny on the spot. Um in looking at the data I started seeing some things that were highly unusual. It was modeled as a pfree copper gold system. But uh pfree co priy copper golds particularly the adjacent lithology. It's it's an ultramic intrusion shouldn't contain zinc. And there were some significant zinc intersections that the previous operator had found. And and they I think they overlooked the potential of volcanic mass sulfides. And the more work I did, the more evidence I collected, geochemistry, reloging core, uh, uh, doing some age dating on the rocks and then more the recent release that we put out down geophysics and the existing drill holes basically confirmed the model that you know what a mass of sulfide can certainly exist on the property and that's going to be our exploration thesis going forward. >> Well, I'd like to dive deeper into the Roger project. You mentioned there the company put out a press release this morning discussing results from the recent downhole ge downhole geohysical survey designed to test your new VMS interpretation at the project. Walk us through that as well as the progress you've made at the Roger project so far, infrastructure in place, plans for the future and any other important details. >> It all started out when I started relooking at the existing core. uh they were getting significant base metal intersections and what I ended up logging as being a favorable horizon or a time horizon for the building of a mass of sulfide um you know I was getting 3.2% copper 3.6% 6% zinc. But more importantly, I think the levels of silver and gold were really high and 125 grams per ton silver and 27 g per ton gold. And and and it over reasonable widths about a meter and a half up to 5 mters. And I traced this thing along for about 1.4 km in straight. And it all once we put it in 3D space, it all aligned beautifully. And that's what you expect if you've got a you know a favorable time horizon. Um you would hope that it would be aligned and it certainly aligns over that 1.4 km. So um because quite a bit of drilling was done on the property um and all of the the collars are still in uh the holes and the the holes were sputdded. I was able to gain regain access to some of the deeper drilling with the downhole geohysical program. uh potentially looking for an offhole geophysical conductor. Um from the view that there was no surface electromagnetic signatures, meaning that if there's a VMS, it's at least 400 m vertically and the deepest drilling that they did was about 325 meters vertical. So, um we probed the holes, we got the results back, uh which we published this morning. uh we've got some significant conductivity in the areas that we also had base metal intersections at a higher level. So I think uh it it uh confirmed really confirmed our model. We're pretty excited going forward and drilling this thing and see we're to you know the next steps. >> That's great. I'm going to put a link in the description below to that press release for people who want to dive deeper on those results. Could you maybe speak a little bit to the infrastructure you have in place on the project right now? It's uh it's there's roads, forestry roads and and access roads uh north of Shabu within five kilometers of of the town site. Uh it's very level terrain. Um there's there's good access to the property. Uh obviously an available workforce. I mean a lot of the mines in the Shugamo area where copper gold uh they've they basically shut down now, but that that that staff is available. um the government it's uh the local government the provincial government is extremely supportive of any opportunity for economic development in an area that's that hasn't seen it for quite a number of years. So um we've got a lot of support. Um our sister company uh 29 copper is in Chape which is about 25 kilometers away from Shibuo. We have a full setup there. We've got a logging area. We've got a a core storage facility. Uh we're looking jointly to to expand our our footprint getting some office space and certainly you know get a server on there and then um also in parallel xx which 29 copper just made a you know advanced their pea um and they're going they're surging forward I think to reestablish and reopen some of the old uh the opaque copper gold operation there that's going forward. side and then there's a number of projects south of us um which is northern superior and and obviously IM gold is quite active south of Shbug with with their elegant property and that's about an 8 million ounce gold resource there's just a lot of activity and and you know you're seeing things picking up in an area that's been starved of any news uh in the resource space >> let's talk about the company's cash position how much cash is on the balance sheet at present how much runway does it give you and when it comes time to raise more capital what's the strategy there >> currently we have approximately $3.5 million Canadian in the bank which came with the transaction um I it's hard dollars and as you know hard dollars are always really hard to raise in in the in the equity markets um there is um flow through certainly charitable flow through which gives a very good premium to your share price uh that we're actually investigating. Um as long and we have lots of people I don't know do do you know that scheme where you can actually you get a premium because not only are you getting the advantage of flow through uh share share uh activity or acquisition you're also getting a premium because the share the flow through shareholders can actually roll that into a charitable organization and get an additional write off. So, um, you know, it's less dilutive. Um, I think I I don't want to touch my hard dollars if I don't have to. And and I mean, we have plans for diamond drilling to to follow up on the geohysics and and my preference is to seek uh flow through financing to uh to pay for that activity. >> Great. Well, let's talk briefly about OR Group's 40% ownership of original and how you're able to leverage uh their expertise, their resources to to move your project forward. >> Like I said, the head of the group is Steven Stewart. Uh he's he's got a track record. He's he's right now we're about eight companies within the group itself. Uh we're into pfrey copper in in BC. We've got our projects in Quebec. We've got gold uh in in Ivory Coast in Awali. Um I've got what I really like is I've got a full back end. In in the past when I ran companies, I was the head cook and bottle washer. They don't mind the term. I had to do everything. And it's nice having that back end. So we've got financial support, we've got legal support, we got regulatory support. uh we've got a technical team that's that's uh that's c that can cross-pollinate with all the various companies uh in particular the uh the person I deal with most and is uh Charles Bodri he's a geologist with lots of experience he cut his teeth in matogamy in the matogamy camp and was uh responsible for a number of mass sulfite discoveries in that camp and he's he's certainly a good he's got a sounding board as any with the model that I've been developing and and he's been very very supportive all all the way through. >> I also think it's worth touching on IM Gold's buying spree in the region recently announcing a $375 million acquisition of Northern Superior, a 1 billion uh acquisition of Orbeck Gold. What are your thoughts there? Do you think original could uh be an attractive acquisition target for either IM Gold or or another larger company moving forward? uh I am gold certainly their focus is gold and and Roger just kind of fits outside of we'll have to see I mean ultimately um the Roger project if indeed we're we're modeling it to be very analogous to uh Agniko Eagle's Laurand base metal deposit which is it's it's a large deposit about 59 million tons I'll told but it's also an 8 million t gold resource so it's a gold rich massive sulfide very high value uh very very you know very diverse commodity and multicommodity. So it basically insulates you from all sorts of machinations of the commodity markets. Um we do have we currently have a 20 7525 joint venture with IM gold on our ENIC property which sits right on the northern boundary of uh IM Gold's Milligan project which itself has about 88 million ounces. Um, I mean there's a lot of gold in in that area and I think I am gold saw the virtue of consolidating a you know a camscale property opportunity uh to be able to develop that and and kind of take a a spug and spoken hub type approach because a lot of those deposits are quite small. But if you have a central mill then it becomes and you know within a about a 20 kilometer or 30 kilometer radius it becomes economic to go after those smaller deposits because it's being you know it's being uh basically diversified or or splitting the costs of building a mill in that area. >> You have some interesting thoughts there. I have to correct myself. It was an $18 million acquisition of Orbec Gold by Gold. Not not one billion. I misread that. >> Yeah. A billion dollars would have been great for them. Well, well, Peter, this has been a great conversation, but I want to end by opening the floor to you. Is there anything we haven't yet discussed or anything you think it's important to emphasize that you think potential shareholders of original metals should be focused on? >> Yeah, I think, you know, I I I've suffered I've seen companies that have suff suffered through liquidity. U they they kind of, no disrespect, but I think Kintar lost their way. uh their you know they had they had their project portfolio they had a fishing camp that they were using as a revenue source to to mitigate their obligation to go seek you know risk capital. Uh they have uh they had full-time people looking at their projects but they also contracted them out to other operators to undertake work for again for another revenue stream. And then their property portfolio was so diverse that uh people started asking well are they a gold company are they copper company are they into nickel are they into lithium they had a full diverse but at least from our perspective we've got those properties they have intrinsic value whether it's whether or not we'll work them or or certainly they might have value to other operators that might be interested and I'm I personally would like to see those properties worked >> um through option or or sales. So, uh that's uh that's one area I'm really excited about. Roger. I think I think if we make good on on uh the you know our our views that I think that there's a mass of sulfite there um it opens up an area in the Shabum camp that's been completely overlooked for that kind of deposit. And I think part of the reason is you know the it was also always model driven. A lot of the gold mines in in the shuga mccamp are considered pfrey type deposits. So it was applied at Roger and an alternative model if successful would open up you know uh I would consider to be a regional scale opportunity uh for the disco further discovery of these deposit types. >> Fantastic. Well, I'm going to put a link in the description below to the original metals website along with social media as well as that latest press release as I mentioned earlier. Peter, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been a blast. >> Take care. Nice talking to you. >> Commodity Culture is a series on commodities and natural resources. If you would like to see more, be sure to subscribe and hit the bell notification so you're always up to date with the latest episodes.
'People Are Talking $30,000' GOLD – Higher Prices the 'New Normal'
Summary
Transcript
Hello everybody and welcome in to commodity culture where our goal is to make you a better investor in the commodities sector. My name is Jesse Day and before we dive in, standard disclaimer. Nothing here is investment advice. Do your own due diligence. And today's guest is the CEO of Original Metals, a Quebec focused copper and gold company with one of the province's largest and most diversified exploration portfolios. It's Peter Cashion. Great to have you on the show. >> Good morning, Jesse. Good morning to you as well. Good evening here in Serbia. I I want to kick things off with the gold space uh in general. I want to talk about copper with you as well and then I want to dive into the details on original metals. But what a year it's been for gold so far, hitting new all-time highs of around 4,300 before a correction and now we're rising again above 4,100 as of the time of this recording. What are the catalysts driving the gold market at present in your view? And how far do you think this gold bull cycle has to go? >> Uh several factors I think are affecting gold. Uh obviously the increased uh buying by central banks, most notably China. Um I think political and uh economic uncertainty is a is a big driver on gold. Um I've always known gold to be a hedge in in inflation. I think there's some still some inflationary fears that are in the market currently. And then I think the last measure is people want to diversify their investment portfolio and they're including gold within it. You know, you ask an interesting question. Ultimately, every time I hear somebody bring make a prediction on price, uh um I get first it's a little bit of denial and then all of a sudden we achieve that level and now we're at you know going on 5,000 and people are talking about 15 or even $30,000 gold which is astronomical. Uh it it's really tough to predict. I mean ultimately given that gold is such an important indicator of the you know financial markets um it really depends on uh what happens uh you know globally in terms of the geopolitical environment that we're currently you know experiencing um I I think if we can overcome that gold is likely to either just settle or or or maybe come down a bit uh achieve a a new a new normal which probably around 40 or $4,500 per per ounce gold. Um, and then we'll see at the next leg up. Um, undervalued. I I you know, from my perspective, I've been in the expiration sector now for quite a number of years and experiencing 250 and $300 an ounce gold. So, uh, 4500 certainly is an interesting point to be at that I didn't think was ever attainable. And I always told myself that if we attain those levels, I think the economies are in big trouble. >> Yeah, that's a good point. And when it comes to the mining sector, do you think there's a long ways to go there as well? Because for a few years as gold was rising, the miners were not really providing that levered play on the gold price. However, that seemed to all change this year. We saw a massive rise in the GDX ETF, just to give one example. And at the at the current gold price, we can see that a lot of these companies, particularly the big producers, are essentially printing cash. What are your thoughts on the gold mining sector at present? >> I, you know, we've just come through a a bare a long very protracted bare market for resources in general. Um for the most part majors major mining companies have always been reliant on the junior space uh to accept risk and undertake risk through exploration and then later acquired and I think the IM gold acquisition of of a couple of companies recently um is a good indication that now I think uh money is money is coming back and going down more you know offstream again into the junior space um which is good to see. Uh but I think we're a long ways off. I think that that 10 about a 10-year bare gap has caused a significant short shortfall on on the availability of of gold resources. And we're kind of playing catch-up right now. Uh you're seeing, you know, you're seeing a lot of gold expiration happening. Um, you know, I I'm always concerned about the kinds of uh portrayals of what's considered an economic gold assay from a lot of juniors. Um, I, you know, ultimately it's good to have a great uh, you know, high commodity price, but everything else goes up. Your material costs are up, labor costs go up, you know, construction costs go up. So, really the, you know, your margins are no better even with a with a higher price. Um so you still from my perspective I think junior miners still have to p you know uh maintain a a higher level of what's considered to be an acceptable gold grade for you know a good project. >> And it's been a fantastic year for copper as well hitting new all-time highs of nearly $6 before correcting. We're at around $5 a pound right now. It feels like there's so many tailwinds behind the sector. What are you watching right now when it comes to the copper market that you think investors should be focused on? >> My background is I I I dealt I was about 15 years before coming into original uh into the critical mineral space. So, you know, I've been I've been tracking that and um you know the electrification of the automotive industry, the aerospace and defense industries are showing to be big consumers. a little bit less so in the United States, but I mean Europe is under significant uh pressure from uh restrictions on u hydrocarbon sources from Russia for heating and and power. So they're really they have no alternative but to seek u u green energy solutions certainly for power generation for uh for those jurisdictions. So I think that's a big huge consumer. Um just in general defense is a huge consumer of of copper you know for wiring and other applications. um uh power you know these these uh these uh AI uh stations power stations I mean they require they're requiring huge amounts of you know data data centers huge amounts of copper uh both for the the processing side of the formula but also the requirement for huge power generation capacity to run those uh centers >> and yet the copper supply is nowhere to be found to meet a lot of this projected demand. We've seen a ton of issues hit the copper mining sector recently, including flooding at Ivanho mines, accidents at Cadelo and Freeport Macaran, protests at Hud Bay, and this is all on top of course of the Cobra Panama mine, a massive source of copper, which is still offline at present. With all of this in mind, where is the needed copper going to come from? >> You know, there in lies the same question that I brought up for gold. We've it's the significant duration of the bare space and no expiration was being done. Gold is always fairly traditionally active even through positive and negative cycles but copper's fell off the cliff. There's um I mean the big big emphasis in the past 15 years on the critical mineral area. Um, fortunately, copper is considered a critical mineral uh certainly from from our uh from our view uh our activity in Quebec. But I mean that shortfall is going to be hard to replace. I mean with a grass bird offline and unlikely to be back in production to 27 2027 at the earliest. I mean that so I I think that there's going to be significant shortfalls and that's going to be reflected in a higher price. >> Totally agree with you there. Let's shift to discussing original metals and how the company fits into the picture. Could you start by giving us an overview? >> Just uh original metals is an amalgamation of a copper gold asset that was in one of the or groups companies uh rolled it into Kendaro which was illquid. They had a significant property port expiration portfolio in Quebec but they were stuck in the mud. Um the ID being here for for a reasonable uh transaction uh we were able to roll uh the Roger which is really the source of our excitement and development these days indicate of our rebrand uh rename and start life in a in a different exploration direction. >> And could you shed some light on the team behind original metals? uh maybe starting with yourself and your history with the Roger project, how that gives you an edge when when being at the helm of the company. >> Like I say, I've been in this business for a long time. Um I started my crew in the mid 80s and Roger was my primary projects um in 1985. Ran through it for about three years. Really formulated the first mineralization model at the time uh with the information that I had. um went off, worked in the critical mineral space, ran uh Quester Minerals, made the Strange Lake heavy rare element discovery nor eastern Quebec. Um moved off of that, took a property with me, got it into what is now Scandium, Canada, and then that's again rare earth and Scandium project northeastern Quebec. Um certainly Quest was a a significant success. So um in coming back I just happened to meet Steven Stewart who's the principal of the group uh for an interview. I thought that when I at the Ped conference the past March I found that the attitudes of the junior space was really changing to the positive for the first time in a long time. So I said I might give it I I basically after Imperial I left Imperial and and I got a whole brand new operating group team to bring it into production. I I was in semi-retirement for about a year and a half doing some consulting, helping friends with financings and new shells, new property, new companies. Uh I met Stephen uh just open-minded. I thought that there diverse group. They had some good operators, had some great projects and geographically very diverse. And it just so happens that he knew of the Roger rolling into the Roger project into Kavar and the nature of the transaction. So I was a Johnny on the spot. Um in looking at the data I started seeing some things that were highly unusual. It was modeled as a pfree copper gold system. But uh pfree co priy copper golds particularly the adjacent lithology. It's it's an ultramic intrusion shouldn't contain zinc. And there were some significant zinc intersections that the previous operator had found. And and they I think they overlooked the potential of volcanic mass sulfides. And the more work I did, the more evidence I collected, geochemistry, reloging core, uh, uh, doing some age dating on the rocks and then more the recent release that we put out down geophysics and the existing drill holes basically confirmed the model that you know what a mass of sulfide can certainly exist on the property and that's going to be our exploration thesis going forward. >> Well, I'd like to dive deeper into the Roger project. You mentioned there the company put out a press release this morning discussing results from the recent downhole ge downhole geohysical survey designed to test your new VMS interpretation at the project. Walk us through that as well as the progress you've made at the Roger project so far, infrastructure in place, plans for the future and any other important details. >> It all started out when I started relooking at the existing core. uh they were getting significant base metal intersections and what I ended up logging as being a favorable horizon or a time horizon for the building of a mass of sulfide um you know I was getting 3.2% copper 3.6% 6% zinc. But more importantly, I think the levels of silver and gold were really high and 125 grams per ton silver and 27 g per ton gold. And and and it over reasonable widths about a meter and a half up to 5 mters. And I traced this thing along for about 1.4 km in straight. And it all once we put it in 3D space, it all aligned beautifully. And that's what you expect if you've got a you know a favorable time horizon. Um you would hope that it would be aligned and it certainly aligns over that 1.4 km. So um because quite a bit of drilling was done on the property um and all of the the collars are still in uh the holes and the the holes were sputdded. I was able to gain regain access to some of the deeper drilling with the downhole geohysical program. uh potentially looking for an offhole geophysical conductor. Um from the view that there was no surface electromagnetic signatures, meaning that if there's a VMS, it's at least 400 m vertically and the deepest drilling that they did was about 325 meters vertical. So, um we probed the holes, we got the results back, uh which we published this morning. uh we've got some significant conductivity in the areas that we also had base metal intersections at a higher level. So I think uh it it uh confirmed really confirmed our model. We're pretty excited going forward and drilling this thing and see we're to you know the next steps. >> That's great. I'm going to put a link in the description below to that press release for people who want to dive deeper on those results. Could you maybe speak a little bit to the infrastructure you have in place on the project right now? It's uh it's there's roads, forestry roads and and access roads uh north of Shabu within five kilometers of of the town site. Uh it's very level terrain. Um there's there's good access to the property. Uh obviously an available workforce. I mean a lot of the mines in the Shugamo area where copper gold uh they've they basically shut down now, but that that that staff is available. um the government it's uh the local government the provincial government is extremely supportive of any opportunity for economic development in an area that's that hasn't seen it for quite a number of years. So um we've got a lot of support. Um our sister company uh 29 copper is in Chape which is about 25 kilometers away from Shibuo. We have a full setup there. We've got a logging area. We've got a a core storage facility. Uh we're looking jointly to to expand our our footprint getting some office space and certainly you know get a server on there and then um also in parallel xx which 29 copper just made a you know advanced their pea um and they're going they're surging forward I think to reestablish and reopen some of the old uh the opaque copper gold operation there that's going forward. side and then there's a number of projects south of us um which is northern superior and and obviously IM gold is quite active south of Shbug with with their elegant property and that's about an 8 million ounce gold resource there's just a lot of activity and and you know you're seeing things picking up in an area that's been starved of any news uh in the resource space >> let's talk about the company's cash position how much cash is on the balance sheet at present how much runway does it give you and when it comes time to raise more capital what's the strategy there >> currently we have approximately $3.5 million Canadian in the bank which came with the transaction um I it's hard dollars and as you know hard dollars are always really hard to raise in in the in the equity markets um there is um flow through certainly charitable flow through which gives a very good premium to your share price uh that we're actually investigating. Um as long and we have lots of people I don't know do do you know that scheme where you can actually you get a premium because not only are you getting the advantage of flow through uh share share uh activity or acquisition you're also getting a premium because the share the flow through shareholders can actually roll that into a charitable organization and get an additional write off. So, um, you know, it's less dilutive. Um, I think I I don't want to touch my hard dollars if I don't have to. And and I mean, we have plans for diamond drilling to to follow up on the geohysics and and my preference is to seek uh flow through financing to uh to pay for that activity. >> Great. Well, let's talk briefly about OR Group's 40% ownership of original and how you're able to leverage uh their expertise, their resources to to move your project forward. >> Like I said, the head of the group is Steven Stewart. Uh he's he's got a track record. He's he's right now we're about eight companies within the group itself. Uh we're into pfrey copper in in BC. We've got our projects in Quebec. We've got gold uh in in Ivory Coast in Awali. Um I've got what I really like is I've got a full back end. In in the past when I ran companies, I was the head cook and bottle washer. They don't mind the term. I had to do everything. And it's nice having that back end. So we've got financial support, we've got legal support, we got regulatory support. uh we've got a technical team that's that's uh that's c that can cross-pollinate with all the various companies uh in particular the uh the person I deal with most and is uh Charles Bodri he's a geologist with lots of experience he cut his teeth in matogamy in the matogamy camp and was uh responsible for a number of mass sulfite discoveries in that camp and he's he's certainly a good he's got a sounding board as any with the model that I've been developing and and he's been very very supportive all all the way through. >> I also think it's worth touching on IM Gold's buying spree in the region recently announcing a $375 million acquisition of Northern Superior, a 1 billion uh acquisition of Orbeck Gold. What are your thoughts there? Do you think original could uh be an attractive acquisition target for either IM Gold or or another larger company moving forward? uh I am gold certainly their focus is gold and and Roger just kind of fits outside of we'll have to see I mean ultimately um the Roger project if indeed we're we're modeling it to be very analogous to uh Agniko Eagle's Laurand base metal deposit which is it's it's a large deposit about 59 million tons I'll told but it's also an 8 million t gold resource so it's a gold rich massive sulfide very high value uh very very you know very diverse commodity and multicommodity. So it basically insulates you from all sorts of machinations of the commodity markets. Um we do have we currently have a 20 7525 joint venture with IM gold on our ENIC property which sits right on the northern boundary of uh IM Gold's Milligan project which itself has about 88 million ounces. Um, I mean there's a lot of gold in in that area and I think I am gold saw the virtue of consolidating a you know a camscale property opportunity uh to be able to develop that and and kind of take a a spug and spoken hub type approach because a lot of those deposits are quite small. But if you have a central mill then it becomes and you know within a about a 20 kilometer or 30 kilometer radius it becomes economic to go after those smaller deposits because it's being you know it's being uh basically diversified or or splitting the costs of building a mill in that area. >> You have some interesting thoughts there. I have to correct myself. It was an $18 million acquisition of Orbec Gold by Gold. Not not one billion. I misread that. >> Yeah. A billion dollars would have been great for them. Well, well, Peter, this has been a great conversation, but I want to end by opening the floor to you. Is there anything we haven't yet discussed or anything you think it's important to emphasize that you think potential shareholders of original metals should be focused on? >> Yeah, I think, you know, I I I've suffered I've seen companies that have suff suffered through liquidity. U they they kind of, no disrespect, but I think Kintar lost their way. uh their you know they had they had their project portfolio they had a fishing camp that they were using as a revenue source to to mitigate their obligation to go seek you know risk capital. Uh they have uh they had full-time people looking at their projects but they also contracted them out to other operators to undertake work for again for another revenue stream. And then their property portfolio was so diverse that uh people started asking well are they a gold company are they copper company are they into nickel are they into lithium they had a full diverse but at least from our perspective we've got those properties they have intrinsic value whether it's whether or not we'll work them or or certainly they might have value to other operators that might be interested and I'm I personally would like to see those properties worked >> um through option or or sales. So, uh that's uh that's one area I'm really excited about. Roger. I think I think if we make good on on uh the you know our our views that I think that there's a mass of sulfite there um it opens up an area in the Shabum camp that's been completely overlooked for that kind of deposit. And I think part of the reason is you know the it was also always model driven. A lot of the gold mines in in the shuga mccamp are considered pfrey type deposits. So it was applied at Roger and an alternative model if successful would open up you know uh I would consider to be a regional scale opportunity uh for the disco further discovery of these deposit types. >> Fantastic. Well, I'm going to put a link in the description below to the original metals website along with social media as well as that latest press release as I mentioned earlier. Peter, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been a blast. >> Take care. Nice talking to you. >> Commodity Culture is a series on commodities and natural resources. If you would like to see more, be sure to subscribe and hit the bell notification so you're always up to date with the latest episodes.