Western Copper & Gold Corporate Update: What is in store for Casino in 2020?

Trevor Hall [00:00:05] And welcome back to Mining Stock Daily, day two of the Association for Mineral Exploration round-up conference here in Vancouver. And to my right, sitting with me is the CEO of Western Copper and Gold, as Mr. Paul West-Sells frequenting the show. Paul, you might be the one person who frequents the show most. I think you've got the record.

Paul West-Sells [00:00:25] Really?

Trevor Hall [00:00:25] Have you been putting notches in your wall, every time?

Paul West-Sells [00:00:28] Exactly. Every time I talk to you, Trevor, I make sure that I record that down. Indelible markings on my bedroom.

Trevor Hall [00:00:35] You know, deep, deep thoughts by Trevor and Paul. We are going to chat. Well, a couple of things. But obviously, last time we talked it was coming off all the results that you put out Casino. So we don't want to rehash what those results were, but it is a new year and obviously conference season kicking off. Give our listeners and your shareholders an idea of what 2020 might have in store for Western Copper and Gold and the Casino project.

Paul West-Sells [00:01:00] Sure. Yeah. No, I mean, it's I think I came on your show right after we released the drill results and, you know, sort of like a good wine. You know, these results are better after you let them sort of sit in your brain and you think through them. And I think where we're sitting now, two very exciting things based on those drill results. First of all, is that high-grade gold zone in the south. And since we've talked. What we've done is really dove into that. And what we've found is that all of that high-grade gold and well, the first thing we did is we went back in and said every drill result that we have that has greater than 2 grams per ton gold out of all the historical drill results.

Trevor Hall [00:01:46] What do those look like?

Paul West-Sells [00:01:47] Well, they're all basically in this zone to the south. And then we looked and said, well, what other indicator minerals are there? We came up with Bismuth is a great indicator mineral. So there's this whole business, so with this high-grade gold, that is certainly going to be a focus in terms of what we're going to do drilling in 2020. So that, that's number one. Number two is, and, you know, Casino is a big, big project. You know, a billion tons in reserve, another one point eight billion tons, an inferred resource that's porphyry one, will call that one casino. As your listeners and our shareholders know, when we did a drilling last year, we sort of clipped the top of a second porphyry directly to the north of ours. So that's porphyry, two. We know that that is mineralized. We know the mineralized mineralization is ore grade. We need to see how deep that is and how big that is. So that's porphyry, two. And then with her acquisition of Canadian Creek to the west of us, there's the Anna. It's a porphyry. Has all the markings haven't put a drill hole into that yet. Certainly that's going to be another one of the focus. So, you know, gone from one pour free to three, this is, you know, a world-class deposit that's turning into, you know, a real world-class deposit in terms of, you know, one of the few large proud Copper Gold projects, which is in a great jurisdiction, clear path through permitting and all those other sort of...

Trevor Hall [00:03:19] Well, you've been mentioning that and the target, you know, ever since the acquisition of Canadian Creek and you know, it's been brought up enough times. It's almost you feel like it's time to put a drill there, right?

Paul West-Sells [00:03:31] Yes, exactly. Well, and it was a bit frustrating because we announced the acquisition, I think, at the end of July, and we were hoping that we could close it fast enough. And it was like number one on the list is like, let's get over it, just drill one hole into that. But by the time, you know, these procedures always seem like they should take about two weeks, but it ended up taking longer than we thought. So by the time we actually closed that transaction, our drilling was over. So we'd really hope to do it in 2019. That didn't happen. So 2020 is number one on the list is to take a look at that.

Trevor Hall [00:04:09] So do you think more drills could be mobilized and start turning? Probably, what, April or May?

Paul West-Sells [00:04:16] Yeah. You know, everyone asks me, you know when is the drilling going to start? I say, you know, you know who actually makes that call for us is the pilots, because they take a look at our airstrip. But if it's covered in snow, they can't land. If it's covered in a little bit of snow and a whole bunch of mud, they can't land. So, you know, they will fly across and then we'll be in constant contact with them. And then they'll say, yeah, no, it's looking, looking pretty good. And we can go in. That's end of April, May. Look at is roughly the timeline on that.

Trevor Hall [00:04:48] Let's talk copper. Obviously, recent developments with the US Chinese trade talks, Phase 1. I laugh. I don't know exactly what Phase 1 entails, what how much significance to that phase one side you have for the metal or did the kind of show us that maybe Phase 1 didn't play as much of a big part in the copper price as you were expecting?

Paul West-Sells [00:05:13] Well, I actually I mean, it had a really nice bump on them, and it was actually more on the anticipation. I think they signed the deal on Tuesday and the big move was actually on the Friday before the Monday. And, you know, I've been saying for a while that what I think is going to happen and that we've started to see this happen is that, you know, with the Phase 1 China deal signed, the whole Canada, I'm sorry, the whole U.S. China trade war becomes a page three news item. I mean, sure, they're working on Phase 2 and blah, blah, blah. But it's no longer a page one news item. So what? Now that it's a page three news item, from the copper perspective, people are beginning to turn back and look at the supply side and they're no longer fixated on demand. They're like, oh, China and the US, they got that sort of worked out. So there's going to be, you know, reasonable demand out of particularly China, which uses half of the global copper. And you're seeing that. I mean, I, you know, we send out a little sort of, you know, media e-mail to our shareholders to talk about, you know, here's where we're going to be. And here's some interviews that I've done and and here's some copper articles, and we sent one up in preparation for the roundup here. And I mean, I literally had about 30 different copper articles that I could pick from, and they're all saying the same thing. This is the year for copper. There's a real supply constraints. And now they're talking about the supply constraints rather than, well, we don't know what's going to happen with China. We don't know what's going to happen with the demand. So it's shifted the conversation. And I think that that's important in terms of the copper price and where it can go.

Trevor Hall [00:06:56] And the bump in gold over the last couple of weeks, too, how beneficial has that been to Western? As far as your share price. Excuse me.

Paul West-Sells [00:07:05] Yeah. You know, we, you know, we trade with copper and gold. We trade a little bit more with copper than gold. But I mean, we certainly saw the share price moving when the price of gold went up. And right now, the project is sitting around 46 percent of the projected revenue from copper and 43 percent for gold. So gold is a very, very important part. Part of what moves our share price and what as the economics of the overall project. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, I always go back and we say, look, you know, this is a top 10 global undeveloped gold project just on the gold. This isn't a gold equivalent, just the gold puts it into the top 10.

Trevor Hall [00:07:49] How've the shows been for this week?

Paul West-Sells [00:07:52] You know this is the very first time that we've ever been at Roundup. Believe it or not, because we know last time we actually drilled was 2009. So we didn't really you know, we weren't really an exploration story. So this year, you know, we brought down our core. We were in the core shack. And we were shocked about the traffic that we had, the constant traffic that we had through. And it was interesting. I mean, there was obviously lots of geologists interested in what was happening and what we'd gotten, you know, other companies taking a look at that, at where we were at, you know, various sort of investors taking a look. But then there's a third group that sort of surprised us. I mean, because we've been working Casino for as long as we have. We've had probably a half dozen Ph.D. students and masters students and all that sort of study this system and study that, and, you know, we say, well, yeah, we're going to have a camp open, come up and spend a week there. Bunch of these guys that came back and said, oh, yeah, oh, this is great, you know? You know, I was up there two years ago and finally got this all written up and so forth, gathering a lot of sort of really technical sort of data out of all these guys, which will help us here moving forward.

Trevor Hall [00:09:12] You know, that got us out here in the hallway, which is a nice real position. But yesterday I walked into the exhibit hall early afternoon and I was actually I was taking back it. There's a lot of people there, more so than I remember the last few years.

Paul West-Sells [00:09:27] Yeah, it is. I mean, it is nonstop. I mean, I was here yesterday and, you know, our key geologist was there. And I mean, she was you know, I mean, she would have too, they would be too deep. And it was it was a lot of sort of, you know, very, very technical sort of discussions. And but, you know, I mean, this isn't just Joe Blow, geologist out of interest coming by. I mean, they want to know about Casino. They want to know all these new expansions. I mean, what we have with Canadian Creek, I mean, there's just you know, with particularly that acquisition of Canadian Creek, it's gone. And, you know, these two new things we found on our existing property just there's all sorts of interesting geology happening, been a lot that's gotten a lot of interest from other people as well.

Trevor Hall [00:10:13] Paul, we should wrap it up there. I'm sure we'll talk again here. You know, maybe once or twice before Pete and definitely he died. So but those notches on your boards more.

Paul West-Sells [00:10:22] OK, sounds good.

Trevor Hall [00:10:23] That's Paul West-Sells. He's the CEO of Western Copper and Gold. There's trades on the NYSE and also the TSX with this symbol WRN.