Silver Range Resources Ltd (TSX-V:SNG, OTC:SLRRF) CEO Mike Power talked with Proactive about the company's two newly staked gold exploration projects in the United States, Quinn in Nevada and Drum in Utah.
Power explained that the Quinn project was identified through archival research and a proprietary database the company continues to mine for leads. The project, located on a shear cutting into volcanic rocks, appears to be a thermal target with potential depth.
Meanwhile, the Drum project in Utah was selected based on geophysical models that revealed deep crustal structures similar to those found in Carlin-style deposits. The company identified widespread Jasperoid mineralisation with low-grade gold of up to one gram per ton.
Both projects are early-stage, with Silver Range aiming to prepare them for drilling and seek joint venture partners. While gold prices have dipped slightly, Power remains confident in long-term demand and is positioning the company for when interest in gold exploration resurges.
Proactive: All right, welcome back inside our Proactive newsroom, and joining me now is Mike Power. He is the CEO of Silver Range Resources. Mike, it's great to see you again, how are you?
Mike Power: Very good. Thanks.
Good to have you along. Excited to talk today, the news out is exciting. You've staked some new projects, one in Nevada and one in Utah. I know you spend a lot of your time sort of roaming the earth trying to find these types of projects. So, let's talk about Quinn first. Tell me a bit about this one. This one's in Nevada, right?
Right. So, this one came out of some archival research. We had a database we purchased years ago, and we can just consistently mine it, and we keep our eye open on the ground that comes open. This one had been held for a little while, and it popped open, and we jumped on it in August. It was pretty good, and we wanted to get it ahead of the September claim renewal.
We know there was some high grade there. We had a historic sample up to 46g, and when we sampled that, we got up to 27g. It was a small little mining operation there, a cut into the hill. They were following a shear that ran into the hill and the city volcanics. It looks like a thermal target, which means it has legs — could go deep.
We don’t know much more about it right now. I just had one visit there to stake and sample it, and we’re looking forward to doing some more work, perhaps in the coming season.
Yeah, is that going to be mostly just boots on the ground type work? You're not planning on drilling, are you?
Oh, well, our M.O. is to dress the property up for drilling and find a partner. Sometimes we have a little small gas-powered drill we might take in and just do some shallow drilling, but generally we would prepare this project for drilling and look for a good partner who’s interested in moving it ahead.
All right, let's move to the beat of a new drum — that's the Drum property, as a matter of fact, which is in Utah. This is one of those — in the news release, you talk about the Carlin-like systems or Carlin-type systems, which I know get a lot of play. So maybe you can sort of explain that and what you see in this project?
Right. So this project has a lot of affinities to a Carlin target. What drew us into the area actually is we were doing a kind of 100,000ft view of the southwest U.S., and we were laying layers of seismic tomography one on another. These are models of deep fractures that go down into the upper mantle through the crust.
We found that a number of these seismic tomography models lined up in this area. So we said, well, let's have a little closer look at it. And when we did the research, that was a great target there that looks a lot like a Carlin target. It was looked at by Newmont and others.
So what’s involved here is it’s in a Cambrian limestone. There are Jasperoid — basically hematite-silica branches — that carry low-grade gold. They’re very widespread. We know there’s some high grade around there. We haven’t sampled it yet, but hopefully on our next pass. It looks very similar to the style of mineralization that drew the first geologists to the Carlin area.
These are kind of key characteristics of a Carlin deposit. You want to find these Jasperoid, ideally in some limestones, and then you’ve got a good-looking target. That’s what we have here. So we went out at the crack of dawn on September 1st, staked this thing, put it in initial position and did some sampling.
Basically every one of the Jasperoid we hit had some gold in it — up to about a gram. So nothing to knock your socks off yet, but it's very widespread. And we're going to see if there's something bigger, higher grade lurking around there. And that's the plan.
Yeah. Two gold projects here. Mike, I know there's been a bit of a fall-off on gold in the last little while, but it's still at a pretty good price. So I would imagine that gold is something that people are asking about and talking about.
Yeah. I mean, so the price goes from 4,200 or 4,300 bucks to 4,000 — listen, these are still stratospheric levels. And, you know, if this whole gold rally was just a flash in the pan, it'd have dropped back to 3,000 or 2,500, and there's no sign of that. Instead, it looks like it's just taken a break and things are going to move ahead when the rest of the world finally figures that out.
I think exploration companies are going to be pretty busy. But this could take a little while before people really believe it has long-term legs. In the meantime, we'll forge ahead. There’s actually a number of our projects — lots going on. And we hope to position ourselves for eventually the rest of the world waking up and thinking, hey, we really need to look at gold in Nevada, Utah, Arizona again.
Quotes have been lighted edited for style and clarity