Aben Resources CEO Jim Pettit: Drills Turning at Forest Kerr

With the price of gold at his side and a drill program ongoing, Aben Resources (TSXV:ABN,OTCQB:ABNAF,FWB:E2L2) President and CEO Jim Pettit is looking forward to the rest of 2020 as he provides an update on the Forrest Kerr project.

Aben Resources CEO Jim Pettit told INN about the challenges his team encountered during initial exploration in recent weeks, including harsh weather that nearly blew his team’s camp off the mountain. The Forrest Kerr project spans 23,397 hectares and is located in the Golden Triangle, in the northwest of British Columbia, Canada, 100 kilometers inland from the Alaskan panhandle.

Aben Resources’ most recent press release stated that the initial area of focus of the current drill program will be on the West bank of the Boundary Valley. It is worthy to note that this area hosts a corridor of polymetallic mineralization which has returned gold grades ranging from 10.0 to 43.4 g/t gold, 29.2 to 46.0 g/t silver and 1.3 to 4.6 percent copper in multiple rock samples from outcrop.

In the interview below, Pettit also shared the company’s goals for the exploration program and said, “There is something going on there, a major geophysical anomaly there that we did not target last year. It is covered in scree and we are figuring around a way to get through the scree and test that anomaly too because it could be a source of the heat.”

Read on below for Jim Pettit’s full update.

Below is a transcript of our interview with Aben Resources CEO James Pettit. It has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Investing News Network: How is the initial exploration work for Forest Kerr progressing this summer?

JP: It was a slow start. We had the weather against us to get up and establish building a camp to start the season for exploration team. There were four geologists there initially. They are going out and doing some ground truthing for us and initiating the program that way rather than just jump in and start drilling. We have some very good targets lined up and we want these guys in the field first, getting some rock samples, doing some more mapping.  The weather was a real challenge because you are up at six thousand plus feet, the camp almost got blown off the mountain the first couple of  nights, but they did get a bit of good weather and managed to get settled in. In this business, you live in hopeand you take the good weather with the bad. It is going well and we now have the pads built and the drill turning.

INN: Sounds like great timing for this interview. Looking forward to the rest of the year, what are the company’s goals for 2020 and the exploration program?

JP: We are looking to fine tune this new Mineralized  Zone that has the high-grade at surface. This Zone is very similar to the High-Grade North Boundary Zone in terms of mineralization and alteration.

Last year we tested a lot of geophysical anomalies as we heading south from the North Boundary Zone and ultimately what happened was, the grades that we were hitting as we headed south, even past the South Boundary Zone, were lower grade. The rock looked the same, very similar, but the grades were lower and the intersections were much broader. We would get one to four grams over sixty to a hundred meters instead of very high grade where you get over thirty grams plus. It was a bit of an anomaly but what we have noticed is the alteration changed  as you head south. The potassic alteration, which is part of the overall alteration package, started diminishing and that generally gives you an indication that you are moving away from a heat source, which is kind of like the plumbing.

So, we are going back up to the North Boundary area, maybe even just a little south of it. We have a location sighted for drilling that is across the valley on the west side. We have never really done that. We have always been on the east side of the valley and there’s a creek at the bottom of it called the Nelson Creek Fault. Now we are going to be on the west side. There was one hole last year that went through the fault drilling from the east to the west and it encountered pretty good mineralization at the bottom of the hole, twenty meters or so–it was a surprise. As it happens, it is directly below an area that we were sampling on surface and got some tremendous grades in the rock samples from outcrop.. Like up to ten to forty-three grams samples. And very high-grade silver as well, twenty nine to forty six grams of silver, and also copper, 1.3 to 4.8 percent copper. These are all rock samples from outcrop.

Now we have something correlating with it at depth. That is a zone that we are going to target. We now know that there is high-grade associated with that particular area. The area we hit at a depth in the one drill hole is actually one hundred and ten meters below this. There is something going on there, also a major geophysical anomaly there that we did not target last year. It is covered in scree and we are figuring around a way to get through the scree and test that anomaly too because it could be a source of the heat.

INN: How does the gold market influence your exploration work and your focus?

JP: Needless to say that the gold market is pretty frothy. It is headed in an upward trajectory, which is great. The money is available for financing, just about every level of exploration now. It is good to see. I have not seen this for a while, 2006 and 2007 and then after 2008, it is beginning to recover. It is a very viable gold market and silver market that is starting again. Now, gold has touched over US$2,000 an ounce, that is an all-time high.* The generalist market out there is starting to look at it. That is one of the factors that are driving the price higher. There is a lot of people moving into the space that were not in the space at all.

INN: I was noticing too earlier that the price of copper is starting to follow and that is pretty exciting since you guys are lucky, you have copper mineralization too.

JP: It had a few false starts and it is good to see it is starting to build. It’s a good-looking trend.

INN: Certainly. What impact could the price of gold have on Aben Resources moving forward?

JP: Well, I think any sniff of success is going to have a very positive response. The gold market is one of these markets that, there a lot of people out there that do watch it, but maybe are not participating in it. It is always a good space to be when the base metals are down or whatever and that right now is leading the pack. It was from a year ago, in May, when it noticeably started moving. Whatever happens, we are now drilling and that is generally when the stock starts to move because it sits in the off-season for a long time and then its accumulation time was probably started at Christmas. We do a lot of volume but this is a very liquid stock. On a slow day, it looks like we do about half a million shares. On a good day , we are at about a million shares.

INN: What are the next steps for Forrest Kerr?

JP: More drilling. These guys will be there until the end of September.

It could end up being a big season. We are looking at a couple of thousand meters to get started and if we have the success that we like what we see in the concept, that can expand.

* This interview was conducted on August 4, 2020.