Kristie Batten: The timing is golden for Codrus’ Bull Run

Small-cap explorer Codrus Minerals is about to embark on its first drilling campaign at its US gold project dubbed Bull Run.

Kristie Batten. Pic: Supplied/Stockhead

One of Australia’s top mining journalists, Kristie Batten writes for Stockhead every week in her regular column placing a watchful eye on the movers and shakers of the small cap resources scene.

Small-cap explorer Codrus Minerals (ASX:CDR) is about to embark on its first drilling campaign at its US gold project.

The company spent much of last year focused on uranium in Canada and was working on obtaining a drill permit for the Bull Run gold project in Oregon in the background.

Bull Run was initially identified by Codrus exploration manager Dr Stuart Owen, a geologist who was part of the team who discovered the Paulsens gold mine in the Pilbara.

The project features historical workings, having been intermittently mined since 1929, including the Record underground mine, where 5000 ounces of gold was reportedly produced from 1933-1937.

Owen was originally hunting for cobalt projects in 2018 for his then-employer Blackstone Minerals.

“There wasn’t a lot of cobalt there but what really interested us at the time was the high-grade gold – it’s got visible gold dripping out of these veins,” he told Stockhead.

The project was initially a part of Blackstone’s portfolio but given the then-focus on nickel, it was part of the package of assets that was demerged into Codrus in mid-2021.

Given Bull Run wasn’t permitted for drilling, Codrus focused on Western Australia and the project fell down the priorities list for a few years.

“The first couple of years we spent doing soil survey work, and we did an IP survey, which is really fantastic data and showed up some beautiful IP anomalies, and once we got those results, we started on the drill permitting,” Owen said.

Bullish on Bull Run

The drilling permit for Bull Run was finally granted at the start of this month.

Codrus has approval to drill up to 30 holes, or 14,000m, across 10 sites.

Historical rock sampling returned a peak result of 1040 grams per tonne gold, while soil sampling in 2022 returned assays of up to 27g/t gold.

“There's some pretty outrageous grades there, so it's really low-hanging fruit just crying out to be drilled,” Codrus executive chairman Greg Bandy told Stockhead.

“It's only ever had three holes in total and two meaningful holes put into it, and it was only drilled down to 55m.”

That drilling, by Manville Exploration in 1983 returned 20.5m at 3.53g/t gold from 7.9m, including 6.9m at 9.31g/t gold; 22.9m at 1.19g/t gold from 25.4m; 4.1m at 1.60g/t gold from 14m; and 1.6m at 2.9g/t gold from 20.1m.

“There's certainly really large scope for us to discover something here, based on both the IP survey and what is very visible on the ground and what has been shown in a couple of drill holes,” Bandy said.

Bandy said the company would start small with around a 1200-1500m program to see what comes out of it.

“We’ll take a breath and see what we found and then look to step out from there,” he said.

“Hopefully, we've found something that warrants further drilling. The good thing is that the permit is enough to cover a follow-up drill program, if not a couple of follow-up drill programs, so we don't need to go back for further permits should we have some success here.”

With a market capitalisation of just $5 million, Codrus is highly leveraged to exploration success.

“This could be pretty transformational should we look like we can delineate a resource,” Bandy said.

Right time for drilling

Aside from the record gold price, explorers focused on the US are also enjoying expedited permits due to the Trump administration’s public support of mining.

Gold was recently named as a metal of importance in one of Donald Trump’s executive orders aimed at increasing domestic mineral production.

Bull Run is about 100km from the Cracker Creek mine, which historically produced 450,000oz of gold and has resources of 294,000oz.

Paramount Gold Nevada’s 1 million ounce Grassy Mountain deposit is within 150km.

Last week, the advanced Grassy Mountain project was selected for inclusion in the US government’s FAST-41 program, which allows for fast-tracked approvals.

“We've got two good neighbours nearby that show that you can produce in the area, and you can get permitted in the area, and they're probably logical people for us to talk to hopefully once we've got some gold to talk about and maybe a resource,” Bandy said.

Originally published as Kristie Batten: The timing is golden for Codrus’ Bull Run