Surge Copper – Exploration And Development Update At The Copper-Moly-Silver-Gold Berg Project
Leif Nilsson, CEO & Director of Surge Copper (TSX.V:SURG – OTCQX:SRGXF), joins me for a comprehensive update on the ongoing exploration and development work at the flagship copper-molybdenum-silver-gold Berg Project in British Columbia.
We start off having Leif outline the key economic metrics from the PEA released last summer, for a sense of the size and scale of the Project, and how it stacks up to other large copper development assets in Canada.
- Base case after-tax NPV8% of C$2.1 billion and IRR of 20% based on long-term commodity price assumptions of US$4.00/lb copper, US$15.00/lb molybdenum, US$23/oz silver, and US$1,800/oz gold plus foreign exchange of 0.77 USDCAD
- 30-year mine life with total payable production of 5.8 billion pounds (2.6 million tonnes) of copper equivalent (CuEq), including 3.7 billion pounds (1.7 million tonnes) of copper
- Updated mineral resource estimate includes combined Measured & Indicated resource of 1.0 billion tonnes grading 0.23% copper, 0.03% molybdenum, 4.6 g/t silver, and 0.02 g/t gold, containing 5.1 billion pounds of copper, 633 million pounds of molybdenum, 150 million ounces of silver, and 744 thousand ounces of gold, plus an additional 0.5 billion tonnes of material in the Inferred category.
This leads into a discussion on how the economics would change with sensitivities to current metals prices, and we’ll also include a table that demonstrates this optionality down below this interview. We also mention that the critical minerals component of the copper and moly mineralization gives the company some optionality when looking at raising capital for the development of the project down the road.
Next we dig into to the news released to the market on April 10th, about the planned technical work programs in support of an upcoming Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS), which are expected to commence in the coming weeks and extend through the summer field season. Leif outline some of these initiatives for further derisking the Berg Project through metallurgical testing, environmental baseline studies, geochemistry and geotechnical work, and then more surface mapping and sampling to advance the high-priority Berg SW Target. We also reviewed the announced strategic investment by African Rainbow Minerals Limited (“ARM”), and the recent sidecar private placement to cash the company up for these work programs.
If you have any follow-up questions for Leif regarding Surge Copper, then please email them to me at Shad@kereport.com.
- In full disclosure, Shad is a shareholder of Surge Copper at the time of this recording.
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