It was a real treat to publish my interview with Glenn Jessome, President and CEO, of Oceanus Resources (TSXV:OCN) recently on CEO.CA. Glenn is a powerhouse and I think he is crafting a masterpiece with Oceanus.

As we move towards the final days of June 2017, you should be watching for news of a resource estimate for the Main Deposit at El Tigre from the company. This has been clearly communicated in the company's published materials and it may be a significant catalyst for an increase in the company's valuation.

Look at how far Oceanus has come in such a short time. In just 18 months, they went from "getting the keys to El Tigre" to the verge of a resource estimate based on ca. 20,000 meters of core drilling. They've also done significant work prospecting the property, conducting geophysical surveys, and analyzing historical information from the old El Tigre Mine. They have been busy making significant progress advancing the project, while their share price and market cap have been relatively flat. Paying attention yet?

Glenn had this to say about those early days at El Tigre:

I asked my team: "What's the plan?" They said that the first thing to do was re-log this as an open-pit heap-leach project, rather than a silver underground deposit. We did that and here was the vindication. The first thing we did was to fully assay the 60 holes they left for us. It took us 6 months to do that and we put out three press releases in March, May, and June of 2016. It was pretty clear we were on the right track when I got a call from Mexico on March 6th or 7th that the first hole came back at 127 meters of 2.16 g/t gold equivalent, with 1.8 g/t real gold. At that point, we knew that our hypothesis was well-proven. We assayed all the old holes and put them in the model. The results were consistently 100 meter widths in hole after hole of over 1 g/t gold equivalent.

Things started off with a unique situation -- the former owner had sampled only a small fraction of their drill core from 2010-2013 in search of high-grade veins. Oceanus focused on the disseminated mineralization, so they could assay sections of the core that the former owners had overlooked. This gave Oceanus a running start in their exploration efforts.

Thankfully, financings followed soon after:

By the time all of this happened, we had owned it for 5 months. We were going pretty fast. What that bought deal allowed us to do, Peter, was really ramp things up. We started drilling in the middle of July with one drill rig, put the second one onsite in October.

And Oceanus kept up that pace through the rest of 2016. They were focused on a clear objective: reinterpreting the Main Deposit as a bulk tonnage project rather than a high-grade underground one. They had the right team for the job, with experience building companies around this type of project in this jurisdiction:

To me, it's all about two things: a management and technical team that understands epithermal, open-pit heap-leachable deposits; and finding that deposit. People who look at our results from the first 6 months have been saying to us "wow, look what you have".

What Oceanus has is more than just Main Deposit, too. They started there for simplicity, but there are many more prospective areas around the property.

We're looking at a kilometer and a half section, but these veins continue over several kilometers… As you know, the mines for these big deposits are not developed as one single pit.

I wasn't aware that "the history of Mexico is full of that -- old Spanish mines where miners came in, took the top off, then went much deeper underground with modern technology," as Glenn told me in our interview. I was grateful to learn about the significant growth of the mining industry in Mexico, as it led me to learn about some other developments in the Mexican oil and gas space that are currently unfolding.

As much as I learned something from talking with Glenn, I was pleased to see that he has learned things from past ventures himself. For example:

We're 40KM off the main highway on a dirt road. We are not in a transportation corridor. In the past, we've had projects where that's been an issue. There's none of that here. The closest town is 35KM away. We've ticked so many boxes to start with.

Lots to say about the geology at the Main Deposit, but I will wait for a chance to discuss it with Dave Duncan after the full technical report is made public. For now, I will mention that Glenn did a great job describing the basics of the project to me:

We think there were several epithermal pulses back when the deposit was formed. As those fluids came up, the stockwork around these veins – the El Tigre Formation – was such good plumbing that it led to dissemination away from these veins. That dissemination was 50 meters on one side and 50 or 60 meters on the other. That's why we see those 100 meter widths of mineralization. It is very continuous across that width.

It is time to get ready for a resource estimate at the Main Deposit of El Tigre! I am confident that management will be able to navigate the process professionally and I suspect that they have put a few holes in just the right places to increase the size and confidence of the resource as much as possible. They have done this before and know how to be successful.

As you dig deeper into the story yourself, I challenge you to think about how historical news flow from Oceanus really tells a story. The El Tigre Property provided them with opportunities to do many different things, such as greenfield work along unexplored sections of veins, or brownfield exploration at a different old mine, or development of the tailings at the Main Deposit. I think they faced a major challenge around how best to sequence these activities and the path that they have chosen will capture the imagination of the market.

For example, Oceanus made sure to give us something while we were waiting for the resource estimate. Their news release on May 25th, 2017, included final drilling results for the resource estimate and then, two weeks later, they released highlights from the first drilling at the Protectora Vein. Those highlights intersected the type of high-grade veins that were mined on the property 100 years ago (kilograms of silver per tonne of ore). As Glenn says, "The old timers didn’t get it all!"

Another example of great story telling is around Hole ET-17-133. Apparently, this was meant to be the last hole but surprising results led to a flurry of additional holes nearby and step-out holes 700 meters to the south at Gold Hill. The company provided color in a tweetstorm on the company's official twitter account, which I help manage. I think that is a great platform to provide context to news releases and I look forward to helping the company do more of that. I will also be watching to see if those holes are included the resource!

I will briefly mention that I noticed a subtle shift in April 2017, when the company announced plans to include their own drilling in the resource estimate. Prior to this point, I believe the plan was to put out a resource estimate based solely on historical holes and then update it with their own drilling results. I liked this change in plan as it may allow the company to increase the size and confidence for the deposit in the first place and then expedite the move towards an economic study of the project.

You can see the progress that Oceanus has made over the last year in their news releases. In May 2016, they announced the third and final set of results from infill sampling of the legacy core. In May 2017, they announced highlights of all results to be used in new resource. I believe they have a few irons in the fire now and will be ready to strike while they are hot. Stay tuned to see what comes next!

Please note that I was compensated to prepare this promotional material. This document contains forward looking statements. Please visit Oceanus' website for more info.