Nexus Gold President and CEO Alex Klenman: Aggressive Drilling in 2021

Nexus Gold (TSXV:NXS,OTCQB:NXXGF,FWB:N6E) President and CEO Alex Klenman recently spoke with the Investing News Network about the company’s drilling programs at its Dakouli 2 concession, located in West Africa, in addition to Nexus Gold’s results from its McKenzie Gold project.

With a focus on gold exploration, Nexus Gold has gold projects around the world — three assets in Burkina Faso, West Africa, as well as gold projects in the Canadian provinces British Columbia, Ontario and Newfoundland.

The company’s Dakouli 2 concession in Burkina Faso is located on the Goren greenstone belt, in close proximity to Norgold’s Bissa mine, and is bisected by the gold bearing Sabce shear zone. Spanning more than 9,800 hectares, the property is located approximately 100 kilometers due north of Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou.

For over a year, Nexus Gold has been conducting ground reconnaissance and sampling, during which time the company has obtained 40 grab samples from below surface in artisanal shafts. The company is already halfway through a maiden drill program at Dakouli 2, and Klenman said he believes it has the potential to be something special for the company.

Nexus Gold is also excited about its flagship Canadian asset, the McKenzie gold project in Red Lake, Ontario, thanks to positive drill results revealed in September.

The McKenzie project is a 1,348 hectare exploration project where early exploration work has turned up multiple high-grade samples up to 331 grams per tonne (g/t) gold.

According to the results, the final seven holes drilled in the program were testing targets identified by Nexus Gold in its 2019 surface prospecting programs. The company said that the results were particularly exciting because the exploration program identified a second style of gold mineralization on the McKenzie property. The near 1 g/t gold intercepts were similar to the type of mineralization being explored by Premier Gold at the Hasaga project, located to the south-east of Nexus Gold’s project ground.

With a robust pipeline, Nexus Gold anticipates it will report results from Dakouli 2 and continue drilling in the McKenzie Gold project well into 2021, which means investors will have a number of catalysts to watch for from the company in the coming months.

Continue reading below for the full transcript of our interview with Nexus Gold president and CEO Alex Klenman. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Investing News Network: Please provide an update as to your current and ongoing programs at Dakouli 2.

Nexus Gold CEO Alex Klenman: Our Dakouli 2 gold concession is a large, almost 10,000 hectare, 98 square kilometer land package located on one of the more prolific greenstone belts in West Africa. It’s never been drilled before, so naturally we’re eager to see what we come up with.

It’s worth noting the artisanal mining presence is quite substantial at Dakouli. This type of activity points to mineralization and it appears to be widespread. The locals have established an almost 500 meter east-west by 200 meter north-south strike. Some of their shafts are down as deep as 60 to 70 meters, which is quite deep for what is essentially mining by “hand.”

Over the course of the last year, we’ve conducted several sampling programs in and around these zones and have come up with some excellent results. To date, we’ve recovered 40 grab samples from these artisanal shafts, from depths down to 50 metres. Half have assayed over 1 g/t gold and 11 of them over 10 g/t, including as high as 98 g/t. Those are robust numbers for West Africa.

The program finished in late December, and we expect the firt results to start to come in later in January. There’s also more to Dakouli than just the artisanal zone in the northeast corner of the property we’re currently testing. Dakouli has size and multiple mineralized zones, and it’s never been drill tested. We feel we’re on to something, and that Dakouli has tremendous potential to become a real find for Nexus.

INN: You recently announced some promising results from your McKenzie gold project in the Red Lake District. What are the next steps in your planned program?

AK: The first diamond drill program at our McKenzie gold project yielded some interesting results. We concentrated our efforts in the first few holes in and around areas of historical drilling, in the southernmost area of the claim block, and we were able to replicate those historical characteristics — i.e., narrow intercepts of higher grade gold in several holes.

One of the holes gave us an almost 3 meter run of 13 g/t gold, which was compelling. In order to establish economics, we needed to extend some of the lengths from 0.5 to 1.5 meter runs to something lengthier.

We put down two holes a little north of the main trend we were testing and — out of the blue — we hit some lengthy, lower grade intercepts. This discovery of a different type of mineralization was a pleasant surprise.

Hole 8 returned over 117 meters of 0.62 g/t gold, including a 55 meter run of 1 g/t gold. Within that, we saw 6 meters of 2.47 g/t, 2 meters of 4.28 g/t and 9 meters of 1.14 g/t. Hole 7 was also similarly mineralized, returning 117 meters of 0.36 g/t gold, including 9.4 meters of 1.26 g/t and 4 meters of 1.13 g/t, among other intercepts.

These lower-grade, lengthier results shows we indeed have a second type of mineralization present. These disseminated, near 1 g/t gold intercepts more closely resemble the type of mineralization at the Hasaga Project, located to the south-east of our project ground. The deposits at Hasaga are estimated to host over 1 million ounces at just under a 1 g/t gold average. The two types of mineralization suggest there’s a strong potential for economic mineralization down there in the St. Paul’s Bay region of our project ground.

In addition to the southern area of interest, we have the island portion of the claim block, McKenzie Island, on which several bonanza grade grab samples have been recovered. We have more than one target area to drill at McKenzie and we plan on getting back there for another round of diamond drilling in early 2021.

INN: What other catalyst news items should investors expect to see coming into 2021?

AK: Drilling — and lots of it. We’re going to continue to be aggressive at our flagship projects. The environment is right, and for where we are in our lifecycle as a junior explorer, it is the right strategy to pursue. We plan to be drilling consistently at the two projects, on two different continents no less, through most of 2021.

INN: Can you help our audience understand your thoughts on how gold might react as we near the end of 2020 in terms of the US election, COVID-19 and other global impacts?

AK: It’s important to understand the catalysts — the influencers — that pushed gold to record highs in 2020 are still very much in play. Obviously, the pandemic is still with us, and it’s actually worse now than it was back in the spring. Although vaccines are on the horizon, thankfully, it will be some time before we’re in a position to say the virus is in the rear view mirror.

I think most importantly, the economic impact of the virus will be felt throughout 2021 and beyond. In the short term there’s almost a trillion in stimulus packages teed up. Money printing on this scale has a very favorable impact on gold. Debt is at insane levels right now. And global geo-political instability is also lurking out there, it’s just hard to get seen with all the crazy fallout from the US election and the virus dominating the news.. There’s just a hornet’s nest of macro stories out there at the moment. Given all of this, it’s hard to see the metal underperforming, and much easier to see it perhaps outperforming 2020. There’s a very good chance we could set a new record high for gold in the coming months.