Western Exploration (TSXV:WEX) - Starts Permitting Path on Heap Leach Gold Project in Nevada

Darcy Marud (0:00)

Hello, my name is Darcy Marud. I'm the CEO and President of Western Exploration Inc.

We are a Nevada-focused exploration and development company with two assets in Northeastern Nevada near the Idaho border. Total resource of about 1.5 million ounces and looking forward to developing our oxide Gold Project, Doby George, into a producing mine in the near future.

Crux Investor (0:23)

Darcy, welcome. You've not been on the platform before. We haven't heard the story before, so I'm looking forward to this.

But we're here at Beaver Creek. You're obviously here to tell the story, raise awareness and maybe meet one or two investors. How's it going?

Darcy Marud (0:37)

It's going great. There's a lot of people here. When we've seen that before as the industry, as the gold price is wrapped up, copper, all metal prices are up, there's a lot of people interested in finding out what's going on. Yeah.

Crux Investor (0:48)

Okay. Well, that's good. You're saying a small institute to see us and then you'll be back at it for the next couple of days, I suspect. So get up with that.

Darcy Marud (0:57)

We'll see if we can survive it. Yeah, exactly.

Crux Investor (0:59)

I think survival is the key.

I was intrigued by this story because people who look at the market cap and go, well, there's clearly an exploration story in that. That's all there is to it. You've come out from a different perspective. You're saying, we can get this project developed and then to cash flow sooner. It's like a nearer revenue story. What gives you the confidence? And I suspect it might come from your background. So maybe we should start with that. So where have you been? What have you done? How is that relevant?

Darcy Marud (1:28)

Oh, boy. Well, I was born... No.

No. So I've been in the industry for about 40 years. I started in uranium, ended up in the gold industry with Homestake, which was a preeminent North American mining company of its day.

Homestake, at some point, transferred me down to Chile, where I was fortunate enough to join a company by the name of FMC Corporation, which ultimately became Meridian Gold. So we were very successful in Chile with the discovery and development of the El Peñón mine. So really in my career, it's been working with groups that have very high qualified professionals, very high quality assets. And when you start out with that, obviously you learn a lot and have been able to apply that knowledge to my career at FMC, then at Meridian, and then when Meridian was purchased by Yamana Gold in 2017, I became the Senior Vice President of Exploration for Yamana. And before leaving Yamana, I was Executive Vice President of Project Development and Exploration at Yamana. When I left Yamana in 2017, I looked at the assets that currently sit within Western Exploration. I was living in Reno. I loved the project. I said, I'd love to be part of it. And here I am.

Crux Investor (2:37)

Okay. Fear is up the road. Yeah. And what about the, because I'm really very keen on understanding people's business models and their ability to execute it. So talk to me about the rest of the team.

Darcy Marud (2:48)

Yeah. I think that is the key to success, right? It's not an individual. It's a team. The team that we've put together have worked together for the better part of 20 some years. Our CFO, Curtis Turner and I worked together in Chile at El Peñón back in the 90s. Curtis was the controller of the mine. So Curtis has a financial background, but also controlling costs, et cetera, for construction, development and ultimately production.

Nicole Cowles, who's our Director of Investor Relations was the Director of Investor Relations for Argonaut for a number of years. Got very good toolage under Pete Doherty, who was the CEO and Curtis Turner, who was VP of Finance there.

Our VP of Exploration, Mark Hawksworth and I have worked for about 25 years together in various parts of the Americas with success at development at El Peñón, at Mercedes in Mexico, and Malartic in Quebec. So we put a team together that's worked together for a long time. Thus, you understand everybody's strengths and weaknesses. So our team has strengths like discovery, development, construction, cost analysis, financing. So we've got a very strong core that we're looking forward to building out upon as we've moved Doby George through to development.

Crux Investor (3:57)

Right, so let's get on to the two assets proper, okay?

To understand them, I need to understand what your plans for them are. So when you talk about a development, I'm looking at this as a small company. It's a small asset, quite frankly, and the NPV number, it's small, but why go small?