5 Top Weekly TSXV Stocks: Search Minerals Rises on Canadian Government Funding

Weekly gain: 66.67 percent; current share price: C$0.40; market cap: C$25.67 million

Blue Star Gold is a gold explorer with multiple projects in Nunavut, Canada, namely the Ulu and Roma gold projects and the Hood River property, which is also prospective for the yellow metal. The company updated Ulu's mineral resource estimate earlier this year.

Although Blue Star didn't release any news last week, its share price has been climbing since its March 2 exploration update for its Nunavut projects, which includes the company's plans for 2023.

"Blue Star has made excellent progress improving and expanding the Ulu Gold Project resource, and we are excited to have numerous target areas that provide potential for considerable growth to our overall mineral resources," CEO Grant Ewing said in a release.

Weekly gain: 50 percent; current share price: C$0.09; market cap: C$35.23 million

Search Minerals is a magnet rare earth element (REE) company with two REE districts in Canada's Newfoundland and Labrador province. The St. Lewis district hosts Search's flagship Deep Fox and Foxtrot deposits. The plan is for the assets to become an open-pit REE mine with a 26 year mine life and a concentrator. The company is also working to develop a mixed REE carbonate hydrometallurgical production plant and an REE separation facility.

Search Mineral's share price jumped last Tuesday (March 7), when it announced it would receive C$5 million in funding from the Canadian government's Critical Minerals Research Development and Demonstration program. The money is intended to "fund the construction and operation of a demonstration plant for rare earth extraction and recovery."

Weekly gain: 50 percent; current share price: C$0.255; market cap: C$17.99 million

Delta Resources is another Canada-focused explorer. Its projects are the Delta-1 gold-nickel-copper project in Ontario and the Delta-2 gold-copper project in Quebec. Delta kicked off the first phase of its two phase 2023 drilling program at Delta-1 in mid-January.

While Delta didn't release news last week, its share price has maintained upward momentum over the last month, only picking up pace with the March 1 announcement that its recent drilling, which was testing the extension of high-grade gold discoveries in February, was continuing to intersect visible gold over multiple drill holes.

Weekly gain: 37.5 percent; current share price: C$0.44; market cap: C$47.45 million

New Stratus Energy is an oil and gas explorer with projects in Ecuador and Colombia. New Stratus has a 35 percent working interest in the the service contracts for Block 16 and 67 in Ecuador, which are producing at 15,407 barrels of oil per day. Within the next three to five years, the company's goal is production of 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. However, New Stratus has been tied up in legal issues with Ecuador's government over contract extensions for Blocks 16 and 67.

New Stratus' most recent news, a corporate update, came on February 28 and has driven its share price substantially through last week. In it, the company shared it is continuing to pursue its legal and contractual rights with regards to Blocks 16 and 67, but said it and its subsidiaries have been evaluating opportunities in Mexico, Peru and Venezuela, some of which are "similar in both size and scale to Blocks 16 & 67." The company anticipates that some will result in letters of intent before March's end.

Weekly gain: 33.33 percent; current share price: C$0.08; market cap: C$21.63 million

Jourdan Resources is focused on acquiring, exploring and developing hard-rock spodumene lithium projects in Quebec. Its current projects are the Vallée lithium, Baillarge lithium-molybdenum and Preissac-La Corne lithium projects. Vallée is a joint venture between Jourdan and North American Lithium, a majority owned subsidiary of Sayona Mining (ASX:SYA,OTCQB:SYAXF).

Last Tuesday, Jourdan said that along with North American Lithium it will be undertaking an "aggressive exploration and development program with the objective of expanding and defining sufficient mineral resources to supply increased tonnages to the NAL concentrator." The concentrator has been operating since February 27, with first spodumene concentrate expected some time in March. The program will include 50,000 meters of drilling over Vallée and North American Lithium's adjacent properties.