Peter Bell did an interesting interview with Janet Sheriff at Golden Predator (V.GPY)
Here’s an excerpt but you should read the whole thing:
Peter Bell: Amazing. It’s one of the questions I had from a friend — are there any roadblocks to permitting at Brewery Creek? I tried to explain to him that he wasn’t asking the right question. He seemed to have missed some of the news. I wonder what’s the story of Brewery Creek, where did you get it and when did you figure out this temporary closure thing for this clear pathway forward?
Janet Lee-Sheriff: We picked it up in 2009. A gentleman by the name of Joe Harrington was involved with the reclamation of Brewery Creek and was with Alexco. He happened to be sitting on a plane next to Bill Sheriff and they got to talking about this. Bill likes the Yukon, he wanted a project and Joe said he should check out Brewery Creek. Bill was very clear that he didn’t want a project without road access. We want to see a mine go into production — not spend 20 years building a road. That’s been one of our our requirements on projects. Bill and Joe had this relationship and we auctioned Brewery Creek. A few years later, we ended up buying the whole thing, 100%. We spent three years exploring it and increased five-fold in three years. We had a great success rate in exploration, 80%. We stopped because of market conditions and the challenges that we were running into for licensing. We just waited for the right time. About a year ago, I started looking at the licenses because they have timelines and I didn’t want them to hit those timelines. I could not find proof that it was in permanent closure, as I was being told. I spent months in the data room pulling everything, reading it, building a chronology, and finding the source of the information. We had contact with Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation and I made the case to them. I showed it to them, they did their due diligence, and they agreed my opinion was correct. We presented it to the government. The government said we were correct. It’s fully licensed. Your friend is very representative of most people, “You’ve got a license, now you need some sort of approval?” No.
Janet Lee-Sheriff: I think we have to keep repeating the message that we’re fully licensed for an immediate restart. We need money, but we’ve got to get the license and then get the team before we get the money. It’s over a gram per tonne in a first-world jurisdiction — not too many new mines sitting there in North America ready to go.
Janet Lee-Sheriff: We’re pretty comfortable, but it’s hard to absorb that no we’re absolutely ready to go now. We had to apply for a fuel storage permit in order to increase the size of our tank on site and that was it. We did it and now we’re done.
Peter Bell: Amazing. It may be that people are waiting for some exploration drill results or some surface sampling or drilling in the old heap to give some sense more guidance on what next? It’s not so clear to me that they will get the routine sets of information that they might expect from a developer because you are jumping into the queue at an unconventional spot — a pretty advanced spot. To just have this appear is perfect for a gold bull market and a bullish summer!
Janet Lee-Sheriff: Yes, you’re right we are we are not the typical story facing the same timeline as others. People will get it, I have no doubt. It’s just a matter of us communicating in a really clear way.
Peter Bell: And your actions speak loudly, too. Building up the team is an important message. I wonder about guidance looking forward on news flow? Should we be waiting and watching for any exploration work at Brewery Creek in the near term, or is the immediate path forward to do with other things more around financing?
Janet Lee-Sheriff: I think you’re going to see both. There is a lot of exploration work and we will have three rigs going. We’re doing some core drilling — deep. We’ve always stopped once we hit the sulphides at Brewery Creek, but the sulphides are there and there’s a resource on them. We found some old studies from the Viceroy days where they looked at bio-oxidation on the sulphides. We really want to put in some deep holes on the sulphides and start to explore that potential. We think it’s there.
Janet Lee-Sheriff: We’ve got a large oxide program planned, too. Those results will come out over time. The first twenty holes are already done. We’ve also been doing some sampling. When you were at Brewery Creek, I don’t know if they took you by the cliffs — the big orange cliffs — but we did some soil sampling there. We just can’t believe that there’s been very little exploration in the southern part of the project. That’s already underway. Looking at the heap, what we’re doing there will come out. There will be a steady news flow from this place.
(Editor’s note: We’ve been watching Peter Bell’s whirlwind of activity on twitter, Linked-In and at CEO.CA. Had a pleasant beer or two with Peter a couple of weeks ago and he is just as smart in person as he is in social media. So, from time to time, we will be featuring Peter’s work at motherlodetv.net. Peter is entirely independent and will disclose positions as and if necessary.)