Can you provide an update on your operations in Argentina and Mexico?
We have large prospective land packages along the Central Mexico Silver Mineral Belt and on the extensions of the Maricunga and El Indio belts in San Juan, Argentina. Three projects in Argentina are seeing drilling this season, while we continue target generation work at the rest of our properties in Argentina and Mexico.
Sable is planning to drill around 25,000 m in three different projects during the South American field season. Field work reinitiated in September 2021 with trenching and mapping work at the Los Pumas Project, a new project found by Sable’s exploration team within the regional properties, located 21 km south of Don Julio. Last May, Sable completed a first drilling campaign at its flagship El Fierro project, which included 25 drill holes and 3,278 m. El Fierro project is located in one of the best known old high-grade vein mining districts in San Juan and has not been ex-plored in modern times. High-grade intercepts reported in our first drill phase are a good first step in an area where mapping has defined a footprint of 8.6 by 6.5 km with approximately 14.5 km of veins.
Sable has started drilling activities at two of its other projects in the pro-mining province of San Juan – the Don Julio and La Poncha projects, which both have multiple Au-Cu porphyry targets defined. Final drill locations were completed in the months of November and December 2021, and drilling commenced in early 2022.
How far can your balance sheet currently take your operations?
At the end of the last quarter, Sable had C$28 million in cash and investments. We are fully financing the work at both El Fierro and La Poncha and our joint venture partner South32, one of the largest base metal companies in the world, is financing the Don Julio and Los Pumas projects. After we have completed exploration and drilling over the next 12 months, we should still have over C$14 million to continue more advanced exploration work.
How does your relationship with local communities compare from Mexico to Argentina?
In both countries we interact with local communities, municipalities, environmental authorities and land owners, which could be private parties or community associations in the case of Mex-ico. We comply with all legal requirements and maintain good communication with the envi-ronmental and mining authorities. We conduct community baseline studies to gain a good un-derstanding of the local communities, create communication channels, and identify areas of mutual collaboration. So far, we have not had any problems in Mexico or in San Juan as both of these areas have a long history of mining and good acceptance of mineral exploration work.
Since you are listed on the TSX-V and the OTCQB, how do both compare?
As a Canadian based company, we have higher volume in Canada. The OTCQB gives us access to the US retail market providing for additional liquidity for shareholders. In 2022 we will spend more time marketing in the US to increase our exposure to US investors but note that most institutional shareholders, like one of our major shareholders Franklin Templeton, use Canadian brokers.
What types of projects are you looking for to acquire?
We look at projects with a geological potential to lead to a discovery that will capture the at-tention of large and mid-tier companies. The size, grade and jurisdiction of new discoveries are the real generators of value for shareholders. We like to put our efforts in projects with a po-tential of over 2 million ounces of gold or 120 million ounces of silver since the same effort is required to explore large or small deposits, so the geological potential makes or breaks a pro-ject. In terms of jurisdictions, Latin America is an area where we would gladly acquire more projects, particularly in San Juan as well as in northern Mexico, considering our experience there. Peru is also a country of interest. We are well funded with multiple high-quality targets and we hope that one of our various drilling campaigns will lead to a discovery of a deposit that fits with our minimum size and quality criteria.