OVERVIEW
Riverside and BHP have agreed to move forward with a fourth year of generative funding for copper exploration in Sonora, Mexico. BHP Exploration Chile SpA (“BHP”) will fund US$1,600,000 in year 4 on specified properties in the Exploration Financing Agreement (“EFA”) in the copper producing belt of Mexico. The Program will focus on identifying and developing exploration opportunities leading to the discovery of new large copper deposits within an Area of Interest using Riverside’s technical knowledge base of copper systems and strong generative exploration team strategically based in Hermosillo, Sonora.
Generative budgets have increased from US$600,000 in year one, to US$1.6M in this fourth year. This funding is part of a larger overall funding package relating to the portfolio of copper assets that the BHP-Riverside Program has generated by completing extensive exploration work over five district areas. The generative program has secured and consolidated additional prospective ground in high potential copper districts in Sonora see (see Figure 1).
In May of 2022, Riverside added the Llano de Nogal copper project tenure into the into the Riverside-BHP Exploration Agreement. Riverside acquired 100% interest in the Llano de Nogal copper project from Orogen Royalties. The Llano de Nogal Project will become the fifth active Work Project within the EFA. The new project will have an exploration budget of USD $1,000,000 for the initial work phase of geology, geophysics and geochemistry. Riverside previously acquired minor tenure of the Llano de Nogal district from Millrock Resources in 2019 and has subsequently worked with BHP on the Project through the EFA to consolidate a larger portion.
Figure 1: Region of Copper Belt of Mexico and Riverside-BHP Generative Program
Riverside-BHP Exploration Funding Agreement (“EFA”) will be extended into a fourth year. Building on the past three years of BHP fully funded generative exploration work, the EFA will move into the next exploration phase focusing on five copper projects in Sonora, Mexico with a currently approved US$1,100,000 in exploration funding to work on the Llano de Nogal district and US$500,000 in ongoing High Value Work programs in the Sonora Projects for a total so far allocated budget of US$1,600,000 exploration work on the specified properties in the EFA.
The approved next phase of work focuses toward property specific funding to advance the current priority projects with derisking exploration, geophysics, geology, geochemistry, mineral titles, and other related mineral exploration aspects to progress towards drilling and drill decisions. Additional expanded budgets for drilling will be added as projects are moved forward to the Operational Phase for the Riverside-BHP EFA.
The Chuin Project is a top priority drill project arising from the staking of highly prospective copper prospectively areas using BHP's Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence-style data integration along with Riverside's extensive generative databases. Together, these efforts provided context from previous Riverside work combined with recent field exploration to move ahead on this large +100 km2 project. The EFA has also completed 1 km spaced Magneto-teluric (MT) geophysics, which has defined a series of interpreted Laramide age porphyry Cu targets which can now be evaluated now with vectored drilling.
A second priority drill project is the Palofierro Project with environmental drill permits currently being processed following the completion of field geochemistry vectoring using propyltic alteration, whole rock, mineral prospect sampling plus gravity geophysics. These tools are being used for modeling the post-mineral gravel cover over the top of regional magnetic low geophysics defining a series of target areas that have porphyry Cu possibilities and for which the drill program will continue our vectoring and district evaluations.
Finally, the remaining three priority districts - Sinoquipe, Penitas, and Montosa - are progressing along with geophysics, with plans for additional funding and continued field work on these projects in the coming weeks. The Company anticipates a second half of 2021 with MT exploration, building upon the over $400,000 in gravity and other exploration work on these three districts over the past 12 months.
In summary, the overall strategy of the EFA is to prioritize the highest potential segments and well-endowed areas within Sonora and to progress them rapidly with a pipeline of prospective copper districts heading toward drill permitting and potential discovery during this calendar year.
YEAR TWO OF PROGRAM
BHP will be providing Riverside with US$720,000 to commence the first half of the second year of the Program to continue to grow the portfolio of copper projects which is an increase of US$220,000 from the initial plan and better captures the investment to progress toward a Defined Project. These funds fully cover the continued generative grass-roots copper exploration and project acquisitions within the Laramide copper belt. BHP will make the following US$720,000 deposit at the next 6-month mark near the end of this calendar year. The BHP-Riverside Technical Steering Committee met last week and the program is on track and progressing with a series of properties now acquired and results coming along.
The program has been successful for the first year having identified and developed targets, acquired projects and progressing these through toward drill targeting. The first year saw Riverside bring forward a range of property opportunities and collectively acquiring large tenures with strong porphyry copper potential.
During the First year of the EFA Riverside and BHP completed extensive project reviews, data integration and acquired five (5) new properties in Sonora. These include areas around known systems, new areas based upon geochronology and other data integration. One of the highly important aspects has been the collaborative sharing between BHP and Riverside, with vast historical data and innovative new Machine Learning data integration. Riverside believes its field, tenure, access, and project area specific experience along with new collaborative Machine Learning prospective maps is leading to new ideas and opportunities for new discoveries in Sonora, Mexico.
During year 1 the funding was increased by 20% for specific refinement work on target areas that were generated from the Generative Budget and these additional working areas were evaluated effectively leading to several progressing while others were dropped to focus the team’s efforts on the highest potential opportunities. During this upcoming 2nd year of the EFA the Company expects to actively progress toward drill