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Aben Resources eyes growing demand for graphite as it also goes for gold 

Published: 07:00 25 May 2022 EDT

Aben Resources -
The Pringle North property is situated within the prolific Uchi Subprovince, one of the most metal endowed greenstone belts in the world by square kilometre

Jim Pettit has been through many market cycles, so the mining veteran isn’t particularly concerned as Aben Resources (TSX-V:ABN, OTCQB:ABNAF), the exploration company he heads, kicks off its 2022 exploration season amid heightened market volatility.

Vancouver, British Columbia-based Aben is focusing on two projects this year - the 2,387-hectare (ha) Slocan graphite project, 34 kilometres (km) northwest of Castlegar in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia, and the Pringle North gold project, which consists of five contiguous mining claims covering approximately 1,881 ha 60 km north of Red Lake in Ontario.

Both require capital, though not a lot, and Pettit said Aben is able to look past the current market volatility, with a fundraising likely to take place later this summer.   

“I have age on my side, so I’ve seen it before. This is as severe as it's going to get, I think, as far as the general market correction,” Pettit said in an interview with Proactive. “After 2008, we saw this mountain being climbed for the last several years, and now it has fallen off the cliff. And it is just a matter of time to see how long the downward trend will be. Aben happens to be at a price where it’s not that affected by it because it was sitting at 5c anyway, and I'm redirecting the focus of the company to the new gold project and the new graphic project.”

Gold lacklustre despite turmoil

Pettit pointed out that gold hasn’t reacted as many would have expected to the market turmoil, with the flight to safety targeting the US dollar instead. Graphite prices have also been depressed, unlike other commodities that are used to manufacture lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles (EV). Graphite, he noted, is the single largest component of such batteries. 

“The EV market is hugely successful and right now they probably can’t make cars fast enough because they just don’t have the supply chain down pat,” Pettit said. “There’s a lot of people out there starting to talk about graphite and how it is going to have a run.” 

Slocan graphite project 

The mining veteran said Aben got a “very good deal” when it acquired the Slocan graphite project from Eagle Plains Resources Ltd in November 2021. It is easy to access and benefits from a high-voltage transmission line within 1.2 km of the property boundaries, has an extensive network of forestry roads on and around the property, and is in close proximity to an existing graphite processing plant and facilities located 1.5 km west of the property, owned by Eagle Graphite Corporation.

While it needs more testing and drilling, he said graphite mineralization was initially discovered in logging road exposures in the late 1990s. Ground and airborne geophysical surveys were completed in the project area in 2000 and 2010 respectively, with both surveys indicating strong conductive anomalies that correlate well with surface mineralization and are interpreted to extend along strike and down-dip of known occurrences.  

A limited number of documented samples have been taken across the Tedesco horizon and analysed for carbon graphite ranging from trace values to grades of up to 3.36% and 4.43%.

“It’s got that potential large flake, high-quality graphite,” Pettit said. “There’s a great big anomaly that runs 2 kilometres long, and the original sampling was sort of around the edges of this anomaly and that's where they were coming up with some of these large flakes. I’m just waiting for the right time to raise the money to do it so, we'll go in and probably by the beginning of fall have a drill program ready to go.”

He reckons it will cost about $100,000 for the initial fieldwork to identify the drilling targets at the Slocan Graphite Project.

“It’s not going to be expensive because you can drive right up to it,” he said. “At our gold project in Red Lake, we’re budgeting $200,000 to go in and do the fieldwork there too because you don’t just go in and drill in Red Lake. Your targets are quite deep-seated, so you start with till sampling, rock sampling and mapping in a big way. All the permitting is being put in place. We just don't know where we're going to go drill yet. That’s what the work this summer is for.”

Pringle North gold project

Like Slocan, Pettit said the company likely got a good deal with Pringle North. He had been eyeing the prolific Red Lake Gold Camp for some time, having worked in the area since the 1990s, when he received a call from Perry English, a well-known prospector in the area. English also sold claims to Great Bear Resources Ltd in 2015, which currently form part of their Dixie Lake gold discovery holdings.   

“He called me up and said I got some ground here you might be interested in,” Pettit recounted. “I got lots of people to look at it as I know a lot of people in Red Lake, and so we jumped on it. It’s not onerous, it’s typical of Perry. It’s a great deal.” 

The Pringle North property is situated within the prolific Uchi Subprovince, one of the most metal endowed greenstone belts in the world by square kilometre, according to Aben. Like the Balmer-Confederation unconformity of the Red Lake Gold Camp and the LP Fault of the Great Bear Resources Dixie Project, the South Arm structure is a recognized third deep-seated tapping seismic structure.

Pettit noted that the area is included in Ontario’s Ministry of Northern Development, Mines, Natural Resources and Forestry (MNDM) Recommendations for Exploration 2020-2021 for its deep-seated structural similarities that are associated with the Red Lake Gold Camp and the Great Bear Resources Dixie Project. Age determination dates the volcanic-sedimentary belt at 2.94Ga and assigns it to the Balmer Assemblage. This is significant as the Balmer hosts the majority of the major gold mines in the Red Lake camp.

“We've got a large block of that right in the middle. It’s completely staked out,” Pettit said. “The government is very, very active in getting explorers in there to map this thing. It’s got a lot of work from the past from the likes of Agnico Eagle sampling it and it’s all available to us.”

Pettit said a government geophysics survey was conducted at the end of last summer while contractors were in the area and Aben will probably now spend a month sampling and mapping based on information available to the company.

“Similar to the graphite project, it’s inexpensive to get in for the first year and you figure what you’re going to do that year,” Pettit said. “You’re either going to find another project or you’re going to push it forward and drill.”

Strategic minerals 

While the market volatility isn’t helping, driven by the large stocks that were overpriced for some time as quantitative easing overtook market fundamentals, Pettit is pragmatic, saying the damage has already been done now that the US Federal Reserve has applied the brakes.

“In our industry, we're at the bottom of the heap; we’re the highest risk on the venture exchange,” Pettit said. “But we still do what we do and so I will probably have to raise some money at some point this summer.”

However, the Government of Canada’s Budget 2022 includes a new federal Critical Minerals Strategy, with a total of $3.8 billion in proposed funding to support its launch and implementation, and a new critical mineral exploration tax credit, which will help. 

The proposed investments focus on the development of specified priority critical mineral deposits. They are also aimed at contributing to the development of Canada’s zero-emissions vehicle value chain, including batteries, permanent magnets and other components.

That could go some way to helping Aben develop the Slocan graphite project as North America tries to take a share of the market that is currently dominated by China. 

Pettit said there’s growing demand for natural graphite, rather than synthetic graphite which “is not exactly green to produce”. 

Also, there’s only one graphite mill in western North America, and it is a kilometre away from Slocan. 

“We drive right past it to get into our property. It’s got the power; it’s got everything you need,” Pettit said. “There’s always been graphite in the Kootenays and north. There’s always been evidence of it. We just need to get in there and start working.”

Contact the author at stephen.gunnion@proactiveinvestors.com

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