Read on for a transcript of interview with Dr. Tim Marsh, President & CEO of Bell Copper (TSXV:BCU).
Peter Bell: Hello Tim. Let’s try to discuss some of questions from people on the internet. Let’s start with the difference between surface rights and mineral rights. In the recent news release, you announced that Bell has secured access to private land and intend to drill from that location next. You already had mineral rights, but have now secured surface rights, which reduces permitting times. In one of the interviews out there, you say something about a "handshake agreement" to get access to that land and I wonder about that.
Tim Marsh: Well, I think the person online has a very low estimation of the leadership in Bell Copper to ridicule us as they do. I think their concerns are unfounded and it'd probably be better if he direct his energy in some other direction.
Peter Bell: It's amazing that people find time and energy for some of the things they do online. Which piece of land are we talking about – is it different from the piece that's carved out from the mineral rights just north of hole K-17?
Tim Marsh: Yes. That block you are referring to is a piece of property the land owner bought from the railroad company about fourteen years ago. That person bought the mineral rights beneath his private surface rights.
That is now an area that Bell isn't interested in. There were times when we were in that area, like when we were drilling hole K-9 and seeing some real nice alteration and mineralization. At that time, we thought that land was going to be important to Bell, but that's no longer the case.
Peter Bell: And that's a different piece of land than what we're talking about here in the news release, right?
Tim Marsh: Yes.
Peter Bell: Okay. When you said that you secured access to this private land, you're talking about surface rights, right?
Tim Marsh: Yes. And we've secured access to private surface rights before, too. Water in this area is gold, since it’s a desert area. If you have water, then you have the start of a habitation. Some people drink the stuff, but I wouldn't. You can use it to irrigate the ground, though. We've gotten onto private surface rights in the past by offering to complete our mineral exploration holes as water wells, according to the Arizona Department of Water Resources. That means the holes have to be drilled and completed in a certain way to protect the ground water from surface infiltration. We've taken those steps a number of times to leave the landowner a hole in the ground with water in the bottom. In the desert, that's valuable.
I rarely find what I'm looking for, which is ore-grade mineralization, but we find ground water in every one of these holes just because we're drilling below the water table. We can't guarantee that it is going to be the quality or quantity that anybody needs for any specific purpose but, based on what's happened in the past, chances are fairly good that we're going to be able to find water in the hole.
Peter Bell: Amazing to think of a trail of water wells left behind you.
Tim Marsh: In fact, the federal government took one of them from us. We completed a hole on BLM ground that's now out there if the BLM decides they want to allow grazing on a particular area or entice a rancher to pay a grazing fee on a particular area. They can say, "Hey look, we've got a water well out there." The well was completed by Bell Copper and turned over to BLM.
Peter Bell: And this new access to private land that you've announced, in the target area of the copper shell.
Tim Marsh: Right.
Peter Bell: How much of the surface rights are privately held versus state?
Tim Marsh: Half is the number you're looking for, Peter. That is the percentage of state versus private surface rights in the ovoid. And another question, Peter, is how much of the private surface rights are accessible from state surface rights via drilling? That is very nearly one hundred percent.
Peter Bell: Hmm. Does that mean drilling angled holes?
Tim Marsh: That means drilling angled or deflected holes.
At Resolution, we drilled holes – one in particular – where the end of the hole was 900 meters offset horizontally from the collar position. A section of land is 1,600 meters or 1 square mile wide and I can, at least theoretically, access anywhere within that section by directional drilling.
Peter Bell: Wow. Does the hole pivot and start going straight when it reaches a certain depth?
Tim Marsh: That's right. First you drill the hole vertically and then wedge it using a mud motor to deflect the hole to the orientation, the inclination and azimuth, that you want. Then you begin coring again and the hole goes straight down from that point on, essentially.
Peter Bell: Great. And I wonder if we'll hear more details about that private land that you secured?
Tim Marsh: My sense is that the details aren’t anybody’s business but Bell’s and the owner’s of the surface rights.
Peter Bell: And there clearly is a difference between the mineral rights and the surface rights.
Tim Marsh: That's the case in most of the western world, Peter. There are two estates associated with every patch of ground: the king's estate, which is the mineral right, and the renter or farmer's estate, which is the rights of access on the surface. If and when the king desires to recover his royalty and minerals, then he makes an arrangement with the surface owner for access and then extracts the mineral value. That is western law. Bell has to follow that law. We can't deprive people of what they've purchased and have invested in.
Peter Bell: I wonder about the mechanisms for developing things where someone who has surface rights may want to resist the development.
Tim Marsh: Well, you can read some books on it. We can sit down around the campfire at Kabba and I'll explain how things work.
Peter Bell: I can't imagine the case law. I bet it's a very complicated area.
Tim Marsh: It's happened in the past and there are plenty of examples.
Peter Bell: And not a fatal flaw for Bell Copper. Good to check off the boxes. There were some other questions about the locations of the various holes at Kabba. I’ve put out a google map, but there are also other maps from the company and the Arizona government showing state land. Anything you care to share with us about all that?
Tim Marsh: Well, I can share a photo that I took showing the drill setup at hole K-19 and a couple street signs. You can get a sense for what we’re dealing with in terms of access at Kabba. This hole, K-19, had our best results to date. As I said in our interview regarding the news on March 16th, we found the thickest supergene leached cap that we've ever seen at Kabba in that hole. Spectacular earthy red hematite mineralization – all the evidence to suggest we're on a zinc-rich fringe of a big copper shell. You can see where we collared that hole in this picture here.
Peter Bell: Great, thanks. And there was another question about the downhole IP in K-6. Is there potential for the porphyry to be south of K-8 rather than up to the north?
Tim Marsh: We've run downhole IP twice. We used it in K-6 and again in K-9. The radials from K-9 were two kilometers long. We ran seven radials that were distributed at approximately equal angles from the collar. We covered the area out towards K-8 and even southeast of K-8. We also have good surface IP in that area. Altogether, we know there's not a lot of significant chargeability south of K-8.
In the early days when we were working together with Kennecott, we discussed the idea of running downhole IP out of K-11 and K-12. Once we obtained the surface data, it was pretty clear that we didn’t need to do that. The reason you typically do downhole IP is to get the current injected deep in the ground and we found that running a surface survey sent adequate current injected into the deep surface to charge up the sulfides in the subsurface.
Peter Bell: And looking at the IP maps, I see there was somebody asking about the lows east of K-8.
Tim Marsh: Those are a bit suspicious to me. There are two of them and I suspect that they relate to a single electrode situated halfway in between them that probably wasn't well connected to the subsurface. The challenge with IP is to connect the electrode at the surface through some very dry material at surface in the desert here to get the current down into the water-saturated conditions, which we know was about 800 feet below surface. It's likely that there was probably a single electrode in the array that Kennecott ran. It just didn't do a good job of getting a current down there, which is why it shows up as a symmetric pair of lows.
Peter Bell: Really? So that low to the north would be related to the one to the south?
Tim Marsh: Yes, I think so. I think a single electrode could produce that pattern. A single electrode is roughly halfway in between those two and if it wasn’t communicating electrically with the others through the deep subsurface then it could generate that pattern. I don't think there's anything related to a target that's signified by those lows.
Peter Bell: Okay. I wondered about that low right in the middle of the shell there. Thanks, Tim.
Tim Marsh: Yes, I don't think that's material.
Peter Bell: Funny how we do all this work and then you have to know when not to trust it as well. And the highs all around K-13, K-14, K-18, K-19 off to the east are pretty strong IP highs.
Tim Marsh: Yes. That's what I believe is the pyrite shell. It's kilometers wide and wraps around an area where there is no drilling – right where we need to get to.
Peter Bell: And a bit shallower too, right? If it is shallower then it could give a heightened response.
Tim Marsh: Yes, Peter. We hit shallow bedrock in K-13 and K-19, and those two holes point toward a region of shallow bedrock. We expect that the target area will have shallower cover than most of what we've drilled in the past.
Peter Bell: Interesting to hear you say all that, Tim, as there was another question from someone online about whether we should question our IP surveys. I have another question from that person about the anomaly extending to the east of K-12 beyond the survey limits. I think the question was if K-12 could have been drilled any closer to the IP anomaly without drawing in the anomaly? Or why did K-13 and K-14 not drill into the anomaly?
Tim Marsh: Well, K-13 drilled into it and we explain it as pyrite. We believe that’s what causes the chargeability there – a lot of disseminated pyrite in the sericitically-altered porphyry. Those are all the kinds of things that we like to see, although it didn’t have the potassic alteration and quartz stockwork veins associated with the copper shell. It was pretty solid data that led us to look elsewhere.
Peter Bell: And that is because all that evidence fits with you being on the periphery of the system there?
Tim Marsh: Right. The core at K-13 looks like part of a pyrite shell. A lot of rusty red rocks on top and abundant disseminated pyrite as we went down the hole. We saw a little bit of disseminated chalcopyrite in K-13, but not much.
Peter Bell: Lead and zinc in amongst the pyrite there?
Tim Marsh: Yes, indeed. We looked at the geochem signature using factor analysis and it is the lead and zinc that pops out at K-13. In fact, the lead and the zinc have really dominated the signal for most of the holes Bell has drilled so far. However, we have seen the copper, moly, uranium, gold jump out as the most important factors in holes K-11, K-12, and in the very bottom of K-16.
Peter Bell: Well, I know you’re keen to get out there drilling again to follow up on all that. Thanks for the conversation, Tim.
Tim Marsh: You’re welcome, Peter. Thanks to everyone for the questions online.
Disclaimers
This document contains statements that are forward looking statements and are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning the specific factors disclosed under the heading “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in the Company’s periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators. Such information contained herein represents management’s best judgment as of the date hereof based on information currently available. The Company does not assume the obligation to update any forward-looking statement.
The technical content of this release has been reviewed and approved by Timothy Marsh, PhD, PEng., the Company’s CEO, President, and Qualified Person. No mineral resource has yet been identified on the Kabba Project. There is no certainty that the present exploration effort will result in the identification of a mineral resource or that any mineral resource that might be discovered will prove to be economically recoverable.
Peter Bell has been compensated to prepare and distribute this promotional material.
