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Bayfield Ventures Live @ Cambridge House
By Resource Intelligence · June 16, 2011 · 11:29 am · Leave a Comment
Resource Intelligence speaks with Jim Pettit, Chairman and CEO of Bayfield Ventures
Click HERE evaluate the Burns Block project and do more due diligence on Bayfield ventures at RI Analytics
RI: Your project is ideally located in Northwestern Ontario and the Rainy River district, right beside a 6.6-million-ounce deposit. Update us about what’s going on on the Burns block and the other blocks?
JP: For all the blocks we’ve got funding for up to 100,000 meters. Burns block is our primary interest right now and we’re up to about 40,000 meters, fairly tightly spaced. [We're] basically trying to prove that the ODM17-zone of Rainy River’s main deposit extends across the Burns block.
RI: You started with a 25,000-meter drill program and then went to 40,000 or 50,000. Now it’s up to 100,000 meters. The results obviously speak for themselves?
JP: We are having good results. We came out of the chute with some tremendous results so it’s a very large open-pittable deposit that’s relatively low grade. What we’re doing is consistently hitting that type of grade in the same host rock.
RI: How does it compare to Rainy River? Obviously they have been drilling very extensively. Where do you go with that in terms of your neighbour?
JP: The game plan is that we keep drilling. A lot of the market is looking at this as a potential M and A deal. It’s turned into being a very good drill play and we’ve come up with some of the high grade that they’ve been hitting — and there are some high grade chutes that run through the host rock. They seem to be a different mineralizing event but they are really high grade. On our hole 18 we did hit some very high grade very close to our border with Rainy River. There was 10 meters of over 30 grams. Every meter was pretty spectacular but that also was within a much broader system of about 80 meters and it worked out to be about 80 meters of five or six grams. We’ve been keeping it fairly tightly spaced to increase our chances of hitting another one of these things. One of the rigs we have is doing some definition drilling and follows that particular chute. We’ve got it traced all the way up to surface now.
RI: How many rigs do you have on the go right now?
JP: We’ve got three.
RI: They’re running along three fences?
JP: We have three fence lines we’ve developed. Two of the rigs are basically doing the step-outs and one rig is doing infill definition drilling. If we see something we like, that third rig will concentrate on a certain area.
RI: How is the drill program proceeding so far?
JP: We just put out a recent update and brought everything up to date as far as any assays that we have. One of the holes was around 70 meters at .8 grams. That was within 100 meters of surface. We’re starting to get a little more joy along the north fence.
RI: Let’s talk about the infrastructure on the project?
JP: It’s tremendous. We’ve got full all-weather roads. A main highway goes right into Fort Frances which is 40 minutes away. On site we’ve got three big trailers that are the lab and the core cutting room.
RI: Overall, what would you say to investors to let them know that you’re going to come out ahead in the end of this project?
JP: Drilling is going extremely well. We’ve stuck to a program through the whole thing, and we’ve come up with results. All of our results are very consistent basically staying within the ore grade of what Rainy River has got.
RI: What you’re really doing is some infill as well as expansion drilling that is confirming so far what your theory is on the project?
JP: Yes. In this particular case, with the Burns block, the location is everything. We’re coming up with the grade and the ore and we’ve got a location that could be extremely beneficial as far as putting a mill on it. We’ve got some of the only major outcrop in the whole area.
RI: Let’s talk a bit about future exploration potential on the project. As you said, you’ve got the Burns block but also B and C blocks that you’ve done a bit of drilling on?
JP: We do have a fairly sizeable gold anomaly at C block that we now see and we’ve done a VTEM mag survey and have some coincidental results. It needs to be drilled and we’re looking to do maybe 3,000 meters there this summer.
RI: Let’s talk about financing. You’ve managed to do very well with this — with a couple of financings in the last year — with excellent terms and very few warrants out — at or above market price?
JP: We had good success at the end of the summer when we started putting out news on hole 18. It sparked the market and it ran to about $1.40. We locked in a financing at $1.40 with no warrant and that was a flow-through financing. At the PDAC in March I did a brokerage financing at the 80-cent level. And the flow through had no warrant and the non-flow through had a half warrant component attached to it. As far as dilution goes, we are still in really good shape.
RI: The terms that you’re getting on your financings, a lot of companies take a big hit because they have to — there is no other way to get cash, but people are seeing you as a very prospective company with a lot of upside.
JP: At the end of last summer when we hit the market and came out with good results, the real buzz on the street was that you’ve got to be in gold and you’ve got to look for some M&A deals. We definitely have gold and we have that M and A potential.
RI: Thanks for joining me today, Jim.
JP: You bet. Thanks.
