Purepoint Uranium CEO provides Dorado uranium project summer drilling update - ICYMI

Purepoint Uranium Group Inc (TSX-V:PTU, OTCQX:PTUUF, FRA:P5X0) CEO Chris Frostad talked with Proactive about why uranium exploration drilling in Saskatchewan follows distinct winter and summer seasons, and how those seasonal differences influence exploration efficiency, logistics and costs.

Proactive: All right. Welcome back inside our Proactive newsroom. Joining me now is Chris Frostad, CEO of Purepoint Uranium Group. Chris, it's great to see you again. How are you?

Chris Frostad: I'm very good. Thanks. Good to be back.

Good to be with you as well. I thought it'd be a really interesting conversation to talk about drilling. I know we've talked in the past about why you drill, how you drill and the different ways you drill, but this is more about timing and seasons, and how important it can be for a company to either drill in the winter or drill in the summer.

People might say, "Why don't you always drill in the summer? The weather's better." Sometimes you can't. So there's a lot to talk about. Let's start with your operations in the basin. Talk to me a bit about splitting your work into summer and winter programmes, and why they're so different.

Right. We get a lot of questions about that, and a lot of our peers do as well. You'll be drilling, then you'll stop for a while, and people wonder, "Why did you stop?"—particularly if you've found something good. Inevitably, our best hole is usually our last, and then people get upset because we carry on.

The main difference, of course, is winter and summer. In the winter we can get around on the snow. With snow machines, we can drag drills over snow trails. We can get around a lot more. Certainly in Saskatchewan it's a very wet province and very flat, so there are a lot of lakes, rivers, streams, bogs and things like that to get over.

So winter is the easiest time to move around. In the summer, depending on the topography and the ground conditions, in a lot of cases you wind up having to use helicopters to get in and out. If that's the case, you've pretty much doubled the price of your drilling. So you want to be very careful.

You're looking at anywhere from about $250 to $350 a metre, for the most part. So you want to be very careful about where you're drilling, how you're drilling and when you're drilling, and make sure you've digested the information properly as well.

Is that the biggest difference—the ground conditions and how you move equipment and people around? Is that the biggest differentiator between winter and summer?

Primarily, yes. As you mentioned, I'd certainly much rather be up there in the summer when it's nice and warm, but winter is actually the most efficient and most effective time to get around.

Your drills are different too. If you're using a helicopter drill, it's lighter. It has to be taken apart and put together again every time you move it, so it takes a little more time to move around.

We've had issues with that as well. When we're trying to aim a drill, if you're using a lighter drill, sometimes it will hit something it's not supposed to and head off in the wrong direction.

The shoulder seasons are also an issue. There are very specific times for going in and out. We're not allowed to be moving things around when everything is melting because that's when you'll really rough up the ground conditions. Usually we're operating close to lakes, rivers and streams.

The same applies in the fall, when things are getting wet and just starting to freeze up. That can cause issues as well. We also get in and out of a lot of these places by airplane.

So there are reasons why we're limited to so many months in the winter and so many months in the summer to actually be out in the field doing the drilling.

Do you use ice roads at that point? Is that something you've used in your particular area?

Yeah, absolutely. We'll put in trails to get where we want to be. Again, in the winter it's a little easier because you have that build-up of snow, so you don't have to stump everything.

If you're knocking down trees or making a pathway, you're usually dealing with big boulders, stumps and things like that. If it's covered with snow and ice and you're able to pack it down, it's certainly a lot easier to get in and out.

You mentioned that when the drilling stops, everyone asks, "Why don't you just keep going?" It's also about the news flow. There's a natural period between when drilling ends and when it starts again where people ask, "Why aren't you releasing news?" There may not be news ready to go, or you're waiting for things to happen.

They do, and I think in Saskatchewan people typically blame the assay labs for the delay in results.

I can tell you that if you've hit something ridiculously stupendous, you're going to know it right out of the gate and you'll be able to report that. It may only come out in counts per second, or something that hasn't been assayed yet, but that kind of information can come out immediately if it's something you suspect may be really, really good.

The assay labs in Saskatchewan—and there's really only one that deals with radioactive material—can do a rush and get you something in a few weeks if you really need it. But typically, the turnaround is about three months.

So your expectations need to be tailored to what's coming out the other end. A lot of companies don't want to be putting out results before they actually have them in hand and properly documented.

Chris, does what you find during a summer campaign then translate into what you do during the winter campaign, and vice versa?

Absolutely, because you want to really digest all the information that's come in before you determine where you're going to drill again.

It's not just whether you saw radioactivity. We get something called PIMA, which is an analysis of the alteration, and alteration is a big indication. You want to wait until those sorts of results come in.

You may also want your final assays because there are other indicator metals you're looking for as well.

It takes time. Once you've drilled a hole, you have to plot it up, look at it, really analyse it and see what you've done and how it relates to the other holes you've drilled.

That's not something that happens the minute the drill comes out of the ground. It does take time for that interpretive work.

Again, if you're spending $200,000, $300,000 or $400,000 on a hole, you want to make sure you've really digested all the information you've got before you collar that drill.

As far as Purepoint is concerned, Dorado is in its summer programme now, right?

That's where we are now. We're following up on our winter programme.

This is the sequence of things. About a year ago we identified uranium mineralisation at Dorado, at our Nova Zone. We got up to a little over 8% U₃O₈.

We had to quit because of the summer conditions—we couldn't move any further. We went back in the winter and were able to follow up. We did run into some moving water where we were trying to put a drill, so it doesn't always freeze up the way you want.

But we did get 5,000 metres completed during the winter, and we were able to chase and trace that mineralised structure for about a kilometre.

That's what we're really trying to do now—understand the system, where it went and, hopefully, where it dropped a great big deposit of uranium.

We're up there now. We've just started in the last couple of weeks, and we'll be drilling about 3,100 to 3,200 metres through to the end of August to really follow up on a lot of this work.

All right. We look forward to hearing more about it as it rolls on. Chris, thanks so much. Really good update, as always, and good to see you.

Thanks.

Chris Frostad, CEO of Purepoint Uranium Group.

Quotes have been lightly edited for style and clarity