Morning Briefing: Official Assays from the Storm Copper Project are In
Welcome to Mining Stock Daily. I’m Trevor Hall and joining me is Paul Harris.
Today is Tuesday September 26th.
Once again gold and silver took a beating during Comex trading hours after trending a little higher overnight during eastern hemisphere trading. Gold traded as high as $1947 per ounce, but right after the Comex floor opened, the boom was lowered and the gold price chart did a "fishing line" formation, dropping straight off the cliff to as low at $1934, where it settled in the afternoon. The Mining Stock Journal said that the October gold futures options expire tomorrow and the amount of open interest in call down to $1925 suggests that the banks will try to push gold below $1925 before the Comex closes, enabling the banks to keep the premiums collected from shorting the calls to speculators. Silver followed the same exact price path as gold, trading as high as $23.91 per ounce before getting shoved down to as low as $23.30, before settling at $23.38.
The mining stocks followed the metals lower, with the GDX losing 1.25%. That said, the newsletter is encouraged, as gold is still holding firmly above $1900 and silver above $23. Moreover, the market responded quite positively to Bonterra Resources, which jumped 15.7% after it announced a JV agreement with Osisko Mining. Aztec Mining jumped 9.6% after completing a capital raise which included big participation in the deal by the CEO and Alamos Gold.
We will get to the news from the miners and explorers in a moment, but first a word about today’s sponsor.
This episode of Mining Stock Daily is brought to you by… Arizona Sonoran Copper.
Arizona Sonoran Copper Company (ASCU:TSX) is focused on developing its brownfield copper project on private land in Arizona, a tier 1 location. The Cactus Mine Project is located less than an hour's drive from the Phoenix International airport via highway i-10, and with grid power and the Union Pacific Rail line situated at the base of the Cactus Project main road. With permitted water access, a streamlined permitting framework and infrastructure already in place, ASCU's Cactus Mine Project is a lower risk copper development project in the infrastructure-rich heartland of Arizona.
And here’s what you need to know this morning….
Integra Resources announced an updated resource estimate for the DeLamar and Florida Mountain deposits in southwestern Idaho that incorporates the results from the stockpile drill program completed in April, which added a Measured and Indicated resource of 504,000oz of gold equivalent grading at 0.37 grams per tonne containing 296koz gold and 16.1Moz silver. The company said this material could significantly increase the heap leach mine life. DeLamar now hosts 4.8Moz at 0.60 g/t AuEq, including 2.9Moz Au and 142.7Moz Ag. The oxide and mixed heap leach portion of this contains 2.6Moz AuEq at 0.50 g/t AuEq. The updated DeLamar M&I resource increased the total heap leachable oxide-and-mixed ounces by ~25%, with ~90% of the resource within the M&I category. The Company anticipates filing the Mine Plan of Operations (“MPO”) for DeLamar in Q4 2023. Integra Resources (TSXV: ITR; NYSE American: ITRG) News Release
Collective Mining announced assay results for three holes drilled in the Apollo target at its Guayabales project in Caldas, Colombia. Highlights included 503.25m at 2g/t Gold Equivalent from Surface in hole 65 crossing outcropping sheeted CBM vein mineralization before transitioning into brecciated porphyry. The company said this hole increased the volume in the recently wireframed internal block model of the outcropping sheeted CBM vein system above the brecciated porphyry. On a gram x metres basis, it is the sixth hole drilled at Apollo with more than 1,000 g/t gold equivalent. Hole 65 also increased the overall area of outcropping mineralization at Apollo to 320m strike by 220m width. Nine other holes are awaiting assays, including hole 72, which cut more than 500m of intense visible mineralization. Collective Mining (TSX: CNL, OTCQX: CNLMF) News Release
K92 Mining entered into a US$100 million senior secured loan agreement with Trafigura at the corporate-level for working capital purposes. K92 expects first drawdown to occur in the December quarter. The loan has a 4-year term with a one-year interest only repayment grace period and no hedging conditions. The company did not disclose the interest rate. The loan will be secured with a charge over K92s assets and shares. The company and Trafigura also amended and restated their 2019 offtake agreement for the purchase by Trafigura of 100% of the copper-gold concentrates produced at the Kainantu gold mine in Papua New Guinea. It will extend and continue for an additional 7 consecutive calendar years from January 2026, or until a minimum of 600,000t of concentrate have been delivered. K92 Mining (TSX: KNT; OTCQX: KNTNF) news release
Li-FT Power reported assays from 5 drill holes on the Fi Southwest and BIG East pegmatites within the Yellowknife lithium project in Northwest Territories. Highlights included 33m of .71% Li2O, 8m of 1.26%, 14m of 1.24% and 16m at .94%. Drilling is focused on the Road Access Group of pegmatites which are east of Yellowknife along a government-maintained paved highway, as well as the Echo target in the Further Afield Group. (CSE: LIFT) (OTCQX: LIFFF) News Release
Australian listed American West Metals reported the official assays from those first three drill holes on the Storm Copper Project in Nunavut this morning. American West is the operator of the project being optioned from Aston Bay Holdings. If you remember, both American West and Aston Bay reported pre-assay visual core as a new discovery at the project with 45.5m of visual sulfides in hole 1 and 37m in hole 2. Aston Bay’s stock ran up more than 700% in the days following. But official results from these holes today officially show much smaller intervals than anticipated with 7.2m of 2.2% Cu in hole 1 and 24m of 0.2% Cu in hole 2. American West stock on the ASX was down 40% on the news. We will see how Aston Bay trades today when the market bell rings.
Seems the core has “Nun of it.”
Moral of the story is, and I repeat, do not always trust the news of visuals from core. Also, pay attention to insider selling during those run-ups. It can be quite telling, and hindsight is always just that, hindsight.
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