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17:33 It has led to significant new investment, not the least of which are some very large US institutions. A lot of these ESG criteria are becoming precursors for investment or prerequisites, I should say. Typical mining funds, which could invest in anybody 10 years ago now have additional checks and balances. New generalist flows that we're seeing going into ESG focused funds have to have these sort of metrics checked off before they can look at the attributes of your business. So It has led to a significant additional buying. We have 2 new large institutions that have bought us off the back of this and expect that to continue over the course of the year. Obviously, we're moving right on to the GDXJ now, which puts us onto the radar of a different class of generalist investor. And if you don't have your ESG work in order as a more mature producing company. Not everybody is expected to meet the same sort of standards.
18:22 You know, you won't be first to be selected for their investment dollars. So this is all in anticipation of those next moves. Thank you. For Chad and Ridgeline, the question is, you mentioned that your Q3 2022 work program will be success-based. In a perfect world, what does success look like for each of your projects? And from there, how will you determine what's due next? Well, maybe I'll just focus on kind of the main projects that we'll be working on this year. Success of the Salina project is confirming our CRD target and hitting some significant intercepts there. If we do that, then we would certainly be doing a follow-up core program in the fall, start working towards some tighter drill spacing. If we don't have success, then we would pivot to our Robert Gulch, which is a new acquisition in Idaho, kind of a Black Pine lookalike, like the Liberty Gold deposit that they have.
19:18 For us, success, we're an early-stage explorer. It's purely just discovery. That's success for us. Hopefully one of these projects is going to deliver something this year. And then on top of it, we have the partnership with Nevada Gold Mines, which success for them is also new high-grade drill results. So we'll see what comes out of this year's drill programs. Great. Thank you. For Laurent, this is a large perspective land package at your flagship Belterra Gold project. Take us through your process on determining your 2022 exploration program and beyond. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's a really large land package, 300 square kilometers. It's huge. It's the first time it's been consolidated, that particular land package was, like I said, 12 kilometers of ground field exploration already known with high-grade mineralization.
20:12 So we have various approach there to work the whole property with more greenfield area where we did some deal survey on which we will be able to vectorize in prospection this summer. We also just last, I mean, last year in August, late in the summer, we just got an option with Osisko Mining on the second half of the brownfield area on which we didn't tap the exploration last year. So it will be another focus there. We hope we will be able to define some high-grade gold mineralization at surface, especially with good structures, which will lead to drilling targets basically for the fall. And we will also continue to vectorize out of the result that we will get from the 2 1st phase, drilling phase that we've, 1 we've completed before Christmas and one that we are doing at the moment at the old mine. So basically that will provide some result on which we will be able to vectorize and eventually generate some economical result for the coming year.
21:21 Great. Thank you so much. All right. Back to you, David. Another question here. How similar is the geology and mineralization on your West Raglan project, the neighboring Raglan Mine operated by Glencore. Well, if you took our core samples of West Raglan Nickel intersections and compared them metallurgically to what they have at Raglan, they'd be identical. People would not be able to tell the difference. It's very high-grade, 3% Nickel, 1% Copper, 3-4g PGE, plus a bit of Cobalt. This is very high-grade material. The Raglan mine itself is one of the lowest cash cost Nickel producers in the world. I think they're negative cash costs right now. We have the same type of material. We're just a little earlier stage. We're still trying to find more pods. Raglan is very much a potty type of embayment style mineralization.
22:13 So we're looking for more pods to put together to create a deposit there that's worthwhile to be mined. And this summer we're going to drill 3,000m of drilling on the best conductors we found last year. We used a method of exploration that they've used at Raglan for the past number of years as a squid sensor on an EM, moving loop EM, and it helps identify the difference between formational conductors and sulfide conductors and helped increase their discovery rate by 58%. So we use that same method. We had 450 or 440 conductors. We've identified about 70 of those as high priority and we're going to drill probably the top 15 of those. It's going to be a very exciting summer on our West Ragland project. I think the similarities between the 2 projects will become very apparent to people.
23:01 Great. Thank you so much. Adrian, my question is, can you talk about your previous work with Sean Ryan and what led you to both team up again? Thank you. Yes. I started a company called Underworld Resources back when the 1st Hobbit movies were coming out. And we, with a colleague of mine, Rob McLeod, we listed that company on the TSX-V. And we began work in New Zealand and looking at opportunities in South America, specifically Chile. Rob came across some of the early sampling work that Sean Ryan had done south of Dawson City in the Yukon in 2007.
23:48 And Rob showed that geochemical work to me. Sean Ryan had undertaken ridge and spur sampling, first of all, and then followed up with grid soil sampling. About 1 hour south of Dawson City by helicopter, an area which had previously seen essentially no systematic modern Gold exploration. So we abandoned New Zealand, we abandoned Chile and we jumped into the Yukon. So in 2007, we optioned those properties from Sean, conducted some field work, a little bit of trenching, and one of those trenches returned, I think, 3g or 4g over several metres.
24:34 That was the end of the season and we didn't come back until 2008, our first drill holes, and we drilled 5 targets in the first period, first year. And 2 of those hit at Golden Saddle. We had 20m of about 4g of tunbrek close to the surface and then a second discovery at another geochem anomaly called Ark. We had difficulty raising money because that was 07 going into 08, global financial crisis. But by the end of 08, having put 3 drills on the property, we had been able to define 1 million ounces of Gold, a little better than 2.5 grand per ton. Very few exploration programs develop that quickly and we kept pinching ourselves saying, is this a dream? Is this really happening?
25:28 And then at the PDAC in 2010, a person handed me a letter and I opened the letter and it was an offer from Kinross to acquire Underworld Outright. And I said, you have 24 hours to say yes or no. And they thought, oh gee, yes, okay. So all the shareholders made money and the principles of which I was 1 did very nicely from that. And so that was my first experience working with Sean. Several months ago, I had a call from Sean and his wife Kathy and they said, we've got this new company and we'd like you to help us. I said, well, I'm already a director of 4 Canadian listed companies. I'm a bit loath to take anything else on. I'm enjoying my semi-retirement.
26:22 And they said, no, no, no, no, we want you to be the CEO. And I said, well, I've never worked in Newfoundland and I don't know anything about the geology. And Let me have a look and see what's going on. I spent a couple of weeks doing due diligence. I got very excited about what was happening in Newfoundland. Sean had staked a lot of ground and our colleagues from Power 1 were looking at optioning several different properties from Shorn, which we did. And so I've come back, boots and all, saying, well, I've got some other things going on in my life and other commitments. I can commit about 50% of my time to this. So that's kind of what happened.
27:12 And it's interesting how your life changes from time to time, given what opportunities pop up. But Sean's a pioneer in the exploration industry. He's brought some different ideas and different methodologies to exploration. And We're doing greenfields exploration. One of our properties has a little bit of previous drilling and some quite nice Gold values at the surface, but the rest of the portfolio is greenfields. We have Thunderworld Resources in the Yukon and also the coffee project, which was defined on the back of Sean's work by Kamenak. They are a testament to the fact that greenfields exploration does work. It's risky. It's probably higher risk than brownfields, but many of the world's great deposits have been found using that from the grassroots up exploration approach. And so we're excited to be in Newfoundland and we're excited about what we might be able to deliver in this 2022, which is really our first full year of working on the ground there. Awesome. All right. Thank you so much. Oliver, a question came in for Karora.
28:25 With such a nice cash position, why not spend more on exploration drilling? And they're referencing the Nickel. Why not explore more in Nickel? OK, yeah, so I mean, first and foremost, it's sort of 20 to 24 million dollars that we've got slated for this year. That is the largest budget that that collection of properties has seen in well over 10 years. We spent 20 million last year and it parlayed into some very nice returns. So we are a company that rewards, you know, additional capital expansion or expanded budget it's based on success. So success is always the determinant of our budget. It will, depending on the results that we return with our program. So we do have the ability to increase that dependent on success. What is not the constraint for us is budget. The constraint for us is not budget, it's not drill meters, it's assay left. As Laurent said at the beginning of the call, assay turnaround times are what's holding us back as well. When it takes you 7 to 9 weeks to get your assays back and there's lots of drilling capacity, we've got anywhere between 6 and 8 drills drilling across our properties as we speak. So certainly cash should deploy based on success, but we need to see those as a turnaround times compressed a little bit. And with respect to the Nickel, we do have an allocation in our budget today for Nickel. It is aggressive given the size of the price so far, but if we continue to have success there, we have the ability to expand as well. Not in any of the last thing I'll sort of conclude with here is we have a growth plan to finance at the same time. So got
29:56 a lot of projects on the go and then capital allocation is something we treat very seriously. So success dependent, but stay tuned. We can always expand. Thank you. Great Chad. What are some things that you look for when acquiring a project and relate that back to what you saw at your most recent, your recently acquired Robert Gulch project in Idaho? Sure. Well, we we look for scale is the biggest thing we look for right at the start and evidence the system. So we find that there's a lot of dogma applied to exploration in the Western US. So, you know, refusing to look at certain rock types or ages of rocks, etc. Because they're historically perceived as poor hosts. If there's areas that are written off, that's the first place we go and look at first because we feel that's where maybe the biggest opportunities might lie.
30:49 For example, Robert Gulch, we came in there, saw historically this project had seen maybe 20 drill holes, I believe, over about a 15-year period in the 80s and early 90s. Almost every drill hole returned Gold intercepts. And at the time, it was Pennsylvania and Permian rocks, so I won't get too sciencey here, but essentially they've been written off as good ore hosts. Since then, you've now seen Gold Standard Ventures make major discoveries at Darkstar. Liberty Gold is now the 3Moz resource, the exact same age host rocks. This is the exact same rock package as Liberty Gold. Strong evidence of over 4km of mineralized surface extent to the Gold system and had been very poorly underexplored. We looked at it and it was an obvious choice to come in. And we think that it's a great complement to portfolio and a very cheap acquisition. So that's why we picked it up.
31:41 Thank you so much, Laurent. Ferry, Bjor, what excites you most about the Belter and why was that the chosen project out of all the projects in your portfolio? Yeah, good question. In fact, we were looking for a flagship project about 18 months ago and we were, we kind of defined a, some corporate criteria to generate and acquire project. And a little bit of what Chad said before as well. I mean, size, we needed to, we like to be located next to advanced project, a hybrid gold project, or mine, past producing mine. So basically that project was fitting all these criteria, which is located next to Val d'Or and Rouen, which is the heart of the mining industry in Quebec. So great location, great infrastructures, easy access year round, as well as some.
32:40 I mean, we have access to to qualified workforce as well. And these are these competitive times to to acquire good good workers is also challenging. So being in that location is a plus that allows us to have a low cost of exploration. And so we can do more with less, basically. And we do not need to find a 3 million ounces standalone project to generate some value for our shareholders. We'll attract a producer with a fraction, I mean what has been produced in that old mining camp is about a 750,000 ounces. So if we just find and repeat what has been found in the past, I mean, we will create a tremendous value for our shareholders. So that's all these aspects that attracted us here. And we're really pleased to work there, to have some success since the beginning.
33:38 And we intend to continue to do so. Thank you. We have a question here from Eric, and it's for all of you, but he's referencing the Neobay metals that stopped their drilling program that was announced yesterday, even though they had all their permits. So he's asking, shall contemplating giving First Nations a participation interest early on, 5 to 10 percent, on mineral projects. Is that the way of the future? And can each participant elaborate how this is an issue in regards to their project portfolio? I'll open the floor, maybe Laurent I'll give this to you to start. Sure, so given we're located next to Val d'Or and Rouen, we're next to, I mean the town of Belter is basically in our project, So that's the first thing we did. Basically, we took the phone and met the people, make sure that they know who we are, what we want to do, and be clear with them that we are explorers and we want to create some value for the area basically.
34:52 And we took as well the same strategy with First Nation. And so everyone knows us, they know our phone number, we have good relationship with them. And I really think it's critical these days to be really proactive on that front. We will also open discussion for synergies with them as we are on the field, we could work together, they could help us, we could help them as well. So these are those things. So, and I mean, about the investment, I mean, it's evolved as the project evolves as well. And as the project will move forward, we'll see how we can advance with this aspect.
35:43 Does anyone else have anything to add? Sure, I can make a couple of comments here. Let me reflect on 2 different jurisdictions and 2 different times in history. My childhood was spent in the centre of Australia near Alice Springs, which is right in the middle of that country. But in more recent times, there's been some interesting Gold deposits found northwest of Alice Springs in the desert. And of course, that's a traditional Indigenous, traditional Aboriginal land. And so the communities, these remote Aboriginal communities that continue to live in that part of Australia have benefited significantly from the royalty stream that they have received from these Goldmine developments.
36:40 And I think that's important. I think it's fair and I think it's very reasonable that if you're exploiting a resource on somebody else's land, that they should benefit from your success. So that's one example. The other example is that I worked in Ontario on a number of different occasions. And I guess in the last decade or so, there's a trend developing in that part of Canada, some other parts of Canada from First Nations groups where they have said, well, you know, we think you should pay us a percentage of what you're spending on the ground. And that doesn't sit comfortably with me because, you know, In the early stages of exploration, you're using other people's money. It's high risk.
37:37 The more of your treasury you can commit to the exploration process, the better chance you have of making a discovery, a mine developing, and then the many benefits that would flow to communities and people in that area from a mine development. I think what Lauren was saying is really important. It's as soon as you embark on an exploration program, you should take note of where you're working, who you're impacting with that work and have dialogue with them. I mean, you know, you don't jump across the fence into your neighbour's backyard and start digging a hole next to where the kids trampoline is. So that sentiment should be applied to exploration activity. And I think we're improving in the way we behave in the exploration business, in our dialogue with landowners and other people that we have an impact on.
38:35 But I think that true benefit comes from exploration success, which employs a lot of people, and particularly from mining development. And we've seen in many different parts of the world where there are significant benefits accruing to the residents in that area from the natural resources industry. Any, Chad, Damon? Yeah, sure. I'll add to that. You know, we were active in Nunavik, which is the northern part of Quebec, and we've had representatives from all the local communities and the Catawbak regional government, which is the government that sort of runs that part of Quebec to our site and to our camp. We employ as many people as we can from those areas and I think 10 to 15% of our exploration expenditures have been with Nunavik-owned enterprises in the past number of years. And we continue to try to do that whenever possible.
39:37 And of course we talk to them before every program and after every program and during the programs. And so we're quite active with our local communities. I think you have to be, I don't think it makes sense not to be. We do the same thing in the Abitibi with the Picogan. So I think being active with your local communities, whoever they may be, is the only way to operate in any jurisdiction. And if you don't do that, you just are going with laggers on. Yeah, I think we're a bit unique being in Nevada and Idaho. So the US certainly lags probably behind all the rest of our peers here on the panel, as far as First Nations consultation. And you're starting to see more involvement and more issues with whether it's pipelines or mining sites being slowed down, especially in the Northern States.
40:27 So I think things are gonna be changing in the US. As of right now, there's no effect to our exploration activities or anything like that for Ridgeline. But we always try to, if there is parties involved, we always try to consult with them first before moving forward with programs. Oliver, do you have anything to add? Yeah, for sure. So we're in a very established mining camp in the Calgorlie Belt. We've got 1900 square kilometers covering that area. However, 97% of our land is on Naju lands who are the traditional landowners there, the indigenous people that own that property. And so there is a long history there of mining in the district. So we have agreements in place with them. Every time we go to disturb a new area, we do a heritage survey. We have a quarterly implementation committee set up or regardless of what we're doing, We're consulting them on a quarterly basis and obviously on an ad hoc basis for any new projects.
41:21 In 2021, $123M went into the local community area, a large portion of which went to the traditional landowners. So a well-established relationship and something that we take very, very seriously. We are mining Gold on their property. And not the least of which, if you take this to another level, I mean, there's 3 components to ESG. So this is important all the way up through corporate right from the drill bits all the way through up to investors. So it's important you take it very seriously. And we do. Absolutely. That's great. All right. I'm aware of time. I do want to ask you all one more question. If If an investor could walk away knowing one thing about your story, what would it be? I'm going to throw it to Chad first.
42:08 Me first, I was going to copy everybody else. So if you were looking at Ridgeline, I think we're the one thing you should take away is we're the kind of company that has multiple kicks at the can. We have probably, I'd say, 3 potentially company-making projects in our portfolio. Only one of them has to work to make this a big win for our shareholders. So we have big partnerships with some of the biggest gold companies in the world. And I think we have a lot to offer. Great. Laurent? Yes, I'd say given the what we just consolidated at Belter, the vast untapped project never been consolidated under 1 entity. Its location next to Val d'Or and Rwanda.
42:54 And the fact that it's that that project is basically basically sitting on a proven mining past mining camp. Belleterre represent an advantageous risk reward potential. And at the end, that will generate great value and great opportunity for our shareholders. Thank you, David, or for mining. Yeah, sure. So, you know, with a company that's $25 million market caps, we're quite small, but this year we're going to spend about $9 million, including our partners money on 3 key projects and all of them drilling. And, you know, we've got over 1300 square kilometers of land. I think the potential of hitting success on these projects is huge.
43:39 So there's a lot of irons in the fire for anyone. And lastly, I'd say we're a gold exploration company with what I'd call a huge Nickel optionality. So that's the way to look at this. Great. Thank you. Oliver, what's the one thing you want investors to know about Quora today? In 10 seconds or less? What we have is a large land package as well, you know, 1,900 square kilometers. Actually, interestingly enough, that's now the largest land package on the Calgary Belt, even larger than Goldfields. But if you want to take a quick snapshot of Cora, what you have is a free cashflow generating company with a fully financed growth plan to double production to 200,000 ounces a year by 2024. Self funded exploration on an underexplored property for the last 10 years due to onerous royalty structures.
44:27 Gold and now ironically given the heritage of this company and an interesting nickel kicker as well. So lots to work with there. That's almost 10 seconds. Adrian, what is the one thing you want investors to know about your story? May I have more than 10 seconds? Yes. Thank you. The one thing I would like to emphasise about Gold Island is the team. I believe we are a team that has a track record of making discovery, creating value for shareholders. And let me just mention the key people in that team. Clearly, Sean Ryan, who staked these properties.
45:16 The people at Power 1 Capital, who have a long track record of taking small companies and creating value. Our exploration team led by Paul Robinson, Grantruth Exploration, who is the entity associated with Sean that does really excellent first pass sampling. And the old fellow sitting here in front of you who has been doing this for 40 years, who has had more than perhaps my fair share of success, but that's led to an addiction. And I'm very proud and happy to confess to that addiction. And the addiction is that the next company and the next project that I'm involved in may well bring home the biggest leg of bacon that the Fleming family has seen to date.
46:11 All right. Well, thank you. I want to thank our speakers today so much for your time and insight. I also wanna thank everyone who joined us today. This actually does mark the close of our 6th Spring Conference. So I just wanna give a huge thank you to all the issuers who participated over the 4 days and a thank you to everyone who attended and who's been watching, participating, and asking all these great questions.