Aurania Resources Ltd. (TSXV: ARU, OTCQB: AUIAF, Frankfurt: 20Q): Exploring Entire Mineralized Systems Containing Gold, Copper, Silver, Lead, and Zinc in Ecuador; Interview with Dr. Richard Spencer, President
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By Dr. Allen Alper, PhD Economic Geology and Petrology, Columbia University, NYC, USA
on 5/10/2019
Aurania Resources Ltd. (TSXV: ARU, OTCQB: AUIAF, Frankfurt: 20Q) is a junior exploration company with a focus on precious metals and copper. Its flagship asset, The Lost Cities – Cutucu Project, is a large contiguous land package, located in the Jurassic Metallogenic Belt, in southeastern Ecuador. At PDAC2019, we learned from Dr. Richard Spencer, President and Director of Aurania, that they are starting to see entire mineralized systems in their exploration results, containing copper, silver, lead, zinc, and gold. The Company currently identified 11 gold-silver drill targets, 1 lead-zinc drill target, and four copper drill targets. Plans for 2019 include scout-drilling some of these targets to determine which of them should be joint-ventured to majors.
Aurania Resources
Dr. Allen Alper: This is Dr. Allen Alper, Editor-in-Chief of Metals News, here at PDAC 2019, interviewing Dr. Richard Spencer, who is President and Director of Aurania Resources.
Dr. Spencer, could you tell our readers/investors, a bit about your property, your goals, and your plans for 2019?
Dr. Richard Spencer: Thanks very much for interviewing me, Dr. Alper. We have a very large land package and it's a continuous land package. It's about a half a million acres in extent. Obviously we're a gold focused company, but I’m also particularly excited that we're starting to see these entire mineralized systems in our exploration results.
We haven't drilled any of them yet, but we're seeing these hot copper centers, centers that were hot where the copper is concentrated. As those fluids cooled moving away from the magma core, we're seeing some of the silver, lead, zinc, in a particular kind of rock, and then as those fluids cool further, as they leave that copper core, one starts to see gold and silver in the epithermal style target.
Dr. Richard Spencer: That's quite an important aspect of our exploration, and our strategy moving forward, because most companies, of our size, don't have a contiguous land position that gives them the potential of all those kinds of deposits in one land package.
Normally a land package is divided up. Because ours is a coherent package, we can see that transition from the copper through to the silver, lead, zinc and through to the gold at the far end.
Dr. Allen Alper: Well that sounds excellent! Very exciting! Also you're one of the primary explorers in Ecuador, is that correct?
Dr. Richard Spencer: Yes we are Dr. Alper. Keith and I have a long history of exploration there and we have a sizeable land package along with a couple of other companies. We're just systematically working through the exploration there and coming up with some very interesting results.
Dr. Allen Alper: What are your primary plans and goals for 2019?
Dr. Richard Spencer: We're generating targets all the time. At the moment we have 16 targets, 11 of them are gold-silver targets, one is lead-zinc and silver and the remaining four are copper.
We would ideally like to scout drill somewhere between six and eight of those targets in 2019. The concept of scout drilling is to drill a handful of holes into each target and then move on to the next one, so that we can find the targets that are best suited to our Company and which ones might be too big for us.
Some of the copper targets, for example, might be better dealt with by a major. There are a lot of majors working in Ecuador that are very copper hungry. They like the fundamentals of copper. So I think we're going to end up with a lot of strategic alliances and joint ventures.
Dr. Allen Alper: Well that sounds great! I know you and Keith have amazing backgrounds and track records of success. Could you say a bit about your background, Keith's background, and your Team’s?
Dr. Richard Spencer: Keith and his exploration team, working for a prior company, found the Fruta del Norte gold deposit, which is going into production by Lundin Gold right now. They expect to be pouring gold there. They've developed down into the whole body and everyone's very excited about it.
They'll be pouring gold towards the end of the year. Keith has his finger in a number of other plays around the world as well.
I worked in Ecuador in the early 90s I actually arrived a bit before Keith. Coincidentally, I ended up with a big land package just North of where Keith found Fruta del Norte and we were actually looking for gold at the time.
It was a grass roots play and we started to find these huge amounts of copper. We defined about 24 million pounds of copper and put it through 43-101 resources. Between the two of us, we cover the gold side through Keith and the copper side through me.
I then switched companies and carried on working in Ecuador for IAM Gold, which is listed in Toronto. We found the Quimsacocha property gold deposit, which is now called the Loma Larga gold, copper, silver deposit.
So Keith and I have a lot of complimentary talents. A lot of shareholders are benefitting because of Keith and our team, I can't speak highly enough of them. We have only one expatriate, a French guy, who's our VPX, Jean Paul Pallier.
Everyone else is Ecuadorian, and more than being Ecuadorian, most of them are from that specific region as well. People are beginning to see that this is what a high class exploration is about. This is how we take care of the environment. This is how we take care of the communities that we're working with. Because of our geologists, our whole team is effectively from that area, it gives us a phenomenal opportunity to engage with the communities there.
As we all know, you can have the best ore deposit in the world, but if the community is not on your side, you're not going to mine it.
Dr. Allen Alper: So true, and it's good to see that you're working with the community. You have a staff there on site that is part of the community and being trained in Ecuador, so that's excellent.
Dr. Richard Spencer: Yeah, it's pretty exciting! Some of these guys are a bit inexperienced. We're good with that, we can work with that.
What we will do is bring in consultants that were critically involved in the discoveries of both Keith's deposit Fruta del Norte, and the copper deposits that we discovered as well as Loma Larga.
The consultants that were key to us as the exploration groups, the field groups in those days, making the connection between the field groups and our board and management in Toronto. Those same key consultants are very keen to work with us again.
So we will be bringing those consultants onto site where our geologists will be able to be trained up on the deposits or on the mineralization that they've actually found in the field, getting world-class input and education. It's a matter of bringing those consultants to our geologists and rocks, rather than our geologists being sent somewhere else. I think it's a very effective way of doing things.
Dr. Allen Alper: That sounds like an excellent approach. Could you tell us a bit about your share and capital structure and your balance sheet?
Dr. Richard Spencer: We have about 32 million shares out at the moment, 36 million fully diluted. We're just in the middle of doing a rights offering that should bring in about six million dollars.
Keith Barron has backstopped that rights offering up to a max offering of four million dollars. In other words, if our existing shareholders don't take up all their rights, then Keith will come in and mop up some of those rights and put more money into the company.
So I think one of the unique things about this company is there's about a 57% insider ownership. The majority of that is Keith, but I'm so excited about this rights offering that we're doing.
The geologists, the people in the field, are actually putting their money into the Company. They're exercising their rights and I think that this actually speaks more about the team's faith in the company than in fact Keith's contribution does. We have the people that are actually walking on the rocks and making these discoveries. They're the guys who are investing. In small amounts, but they're absolutely engaged, and that's exciting to me.
Dr. Allen Alper: Oh that sounds outstanding. That's excellent. Could you tell our readers/investors the primary reasons they should consider investing in Aurania?
Dr. Richard Spencer: I think the share structure, the ownership, all of us are shareholders, so we're on exactly the same wavelength as the other shareholders.
We have a phenomenal land position that was originally staked on the basis of historic information - Keith's believing that there are two Spanish Colonial gold mines in our area.
We haven't found both yet. We think we know where they are. We haven't explored that area yet, but the key is we're along trend of where Keith and I were working before. Along trend of a belt that has phenomenal gold and copper resources, and our area has never been explored before.
Also key, the land package has an absolutely compelling story behind it and I believe our potential to find a really amazing deposit there, is extraordinarily high.
Obviously there's still a lot of risk, but our relationship with the people in that area is extremely good and we believe we are in the right place to explore.
Is there acceptance by the people? Yes, and we're working very hard on that as well. The fact that management and the guys right down in the field, walking on these rocks, are aligned with the shareholders.
Dr. Allen Alper: Well those sound like excellent reasons for our readers/investors to consider investing in your company.
It's nice to see that the Management and the Team have faith in the Company and skin in the game. That's great!
Dr. Richard Spencer: Thanks very much Dr. Alper.
Dr. Allen Alper: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Dr. Richard Spencer: I think we're going to have a strong news flow this year. I think it's going to be exciting. We'll keep up with our videos.
We've just put out a video saying what our target is on Crunchy Hill that we've just started drilling.
We hope to be able to build confidence with the shareholders that we're being honest about our successes and our failures. Obviously, I hope that we're going to be more right than we are wrong, but we are dealing with the natural world and it always has curve balls. That's part of exploration. That's what makes it fun and a challenge. So thanks for interviewing us for Metals News.
Dr. Allen Alper: That sounds excellent! It sounds like fun! Exciting! Thank you. That's great. We’ll publish your press releases as they come out, so our readers/investors can follow your progress.
http://www.aurania.com
Dr. Richard Spencer
President
Aurania Resources Ltd.
(416) 367-3200
richard.spencer@aurania.com
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