What updates have occurred at World Copper over the past year?

The market has been turbulent and challenging for many companies, but we have continued advancing. Last year, we carried out a drill program at our Mancha Amarilla area, south of our main Escalones resource, intending to extend the resource for expansion. For our purposes, it was a successful program. We drilled along the western flank of the Mancha Amarilla and proved that the mineralization continued and that the oxide potential was as thick as the primary resource. We observed that the higher-grade copper was towards the east, which sets us up for future development. It is the equivalent of discovering a new copper porphyry. It just happens to be beside the existing copper porphyry.

At our Zona project in Arizona, we sold a royalty stream of .5% to Electric Royalties for CAD$2 million, bringing in some cash and a vote of confidence that we are on the right track and can quickly get Zonia into production. We also updated the mineral resource estimate there, intending to at first expand what it has, without doing more drilling. We have taken that deposit to over a billion dollars of copper in the ground. We are in active discussions with other groups to bring in development capital. What differentiates Escalones from other projects in the area?

Large deposits characterize Chile's copper. Copper porphyry has two components: an oxide cap and a sulfide layer below. The oxide cap is limited to how much sulfide material was oxidized over thousands or millions of years. That leads to these porphyries having extensive sulfide layers, especially in Chile, and extends these projects to have 30 – 60-year mine lives with high processing capacity.

We noticed that at our Escalones project, the oxide layer was very thick. Instead of being 75 to 150 m thick, it was 300 m thick in some places. The higher-grade copper blocks for this particular porphyry were in this oxide layer. Oxides are much easier to process than sulfide deposits, require easier metallurgically, and require less infrastructure and a lower CAPEX. They are easier to permit, they use less water, they don't create a concentrate, and you don't need a tailings storage facility. For major mining companies to invest a large amount of money, many would rather go for a larger deposit even if it has significant risks and less attractive economic ratios. With Escalones, we have been focusing on making it a stellar oxide deposit. It is the largest copper oxide deposit in Chile right now in terms of copper in the ground. How could Chilean permitting and regulation better facilitate development?

Chile is a mining country, so there is a lot of support for exploration. The country has many camp services, engineers, a well-educated workforce, and a strict rule of law, among other benefits.

Right now, Chile is set up for massive projects, with permitting processes to ensure minimal environmental impact. In my experience, as it has impacted World Copper, a one size fits all approach does not work well. There needs to be an understanding that a junior company has to be much more adaptable and agile during the exploration phase. We can't commit to things on a five-year development timeline – at Escalones, for example, we plan six months out. There needs to be an understanding in the permitting process that we are not building a mine or having a massive permanent impact. Now, if we want to do a small drill program, we permit it as if it's a big drill program. That means we might as well throw in everything we could conceivably want to do for the next five years to get it over with in one effort. But that's not how our industry is set up to operate, nor how it is done in Canada or the US. In Chile, companies got away with too much before, and the government needed to clamp down, but now the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. What is World Copper's strategy for the rest of the year?

Our first goal is to secure and present investment opportunities to the market. By that, I mean strategic investors and major players who can JV with us or support the development of our projects.