2008 Interview with: Gitennes Exploration Inc. (GIT-TSX), President and CEO, Jerry D. Blackwell - featuring: their early-stage exploration in  "greenfield" environments right through to late-stage resource definition drilling and pre-feasibility work on select properties.

Gitennes Exploration Inc. (GIT-TSX)

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Gitennes Has Several Projects In Peru, The Most Important Of Which Is The Urumalqui Silver And Gold Discovery



Mining
Precious Metals
(GIT-TSX)

Gitennes Exploration Inc.

Suite 2390, 1055 West Hastings Street
Vancouver BC CanadaV6E 2E9
Phone: 604-682-7970



Jerry D. Blackwell
President and CEO

Interview conducted by:
Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor
CEOCFOinterviews.com
Published - July 11, 2008

BIO:
Jerry D. Blackwell, Director and President of the Corporation, is a professional geologist with 37 years experience in the mining industry. For the past fourteen years Mr. Blackwell's principal occupation has been serving as President of the Corporation. Prior to his appointment with the Corporation in May 1993, Mr. Blackwell was self-employed as a consulting geologist, and prior to that was a project geologist with Cominco Ltd. Mr. Blackwell also serves as a director of Stratabound Minerals Corp. and Pencari Mining Corp, mineral exploration companies listed on the TSX Venture Exchange.

Company Profile:

Gitennes has been traded publicly in Canada since 1993. The Company listed on The Toronto Stock Exchange January 22, 1998.
 

Gitennes will undertake technically sound, early-stage exploration in  "greenfield" environments right through to late-stage resource definition drilling and pre-feasibility work on select properties. The Company intends to maintain this course of finding and exploring promising mineral deposits. In the future, when results indicate that a property may become a potential producer that yields a high rate-of-return at a relatively low level of capital investment, the Company may then pursue the "development option".
 

A Canadian corporation, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, ownership of the Company is broad-based, through shares listed on The Toronto Stock Exchange. In addition to a head office in Vancouver, there is a corporate office in Lima, Peru; where the Company operates as Gitennes Exploraciones Perú S.A.

CEOCFO: Mr.. Blackwell, what is the focus for Gitennes?

Mr. Blackwell: “Gitennes is focused on exploring for gold, silver, zinc and copper in Peru.”

CEOCFO: What do you like about Peru?

Mr. Blackwell: “Peru is a bit of a geologist’ sandbox. There are lots of mines, big mines, important mines and there are lots of signs of mineralization everywhere you go. This is because of the Andes and the way they have formed - you get a cross-section from sea level up to elevations of 5,000 meters. That is almost 17,000 feet above sea level. You get to see rocks in three dimensions and you get to see the different levels of erosion that at depth expose gold veins and big copper porphyry deposits,. Up at the highest reaches we find very high-grade gold and silver systems such as Yanacocha. This gives one a chance to take real pleasure in geology as you get to see a lot and learn a lot. Because of the limited road access the place hasn’t been explored extensively. Economically it’s still a developing country, though it is very safe, has a politically stable government and progressive political regime. Therefore, it is a good place to both go look at rocks as geologists and a good place to invest.”

CEOCFO: Tell us about the main projects that you are looking at now.

Mr. Blackwell: “Right now we have several projects that are important. The most important of which is one we just released some news on April 17th, is called Urumalqui. I am not sure what that means, but I think it’s a word for a little hill. We’ve owned this property since 2003, but we started working on it again now that metal prices have really taken off. We’ve done some reviews of it, employing some mining engineers. There are a number of veins on the property that contain silver and gold mineralization. We drilled a number of holes into one of them, the “Main” or “Urumalqui Vein”, back in 2003 - 2004, and roughly outlined the mineralized zone with the various grades.

This past year (in 2007) we engaged an engineer to take a look at it. He went up to the project, went through our database, came back about a month later and said look-here you guys, get to work - there are not too many of these things still lying around that aren’t being mined in the Andes and this is a good one, so get going. He outlined a program that we thought sounded reasonable, and so we worked with him on the details. By this past January we had sorted-out what he had recommended for drilling, lined-up a contractor and drilled a series of deeper holes plus step-out holes. The results are looking very good. At this point we don’t have a mineral resource or reserve, but that’s one of the next steps. We see that we have a very large system, upwards of 1,500 meters long. We have done some drilling on the southeast end of it and every hole is mineralized. We have traced it down to the depth of it 240 meters below surface, and it hasn’t quit yet. It looks like it is going to go deeper yet. It is a robust system with great dimensions at a good width of over 3 meters (ten feet). The grades suggested this could become economic, and possibly a mine.

What we have done there is we paid attention to things that were of concern to the engineer, which included a technical concern with the angle of the drill hole when it intersects the zone. I order to do this we had to slow the drill down as we got to the target. This costs time and money, but turns-out to be pretty important. Urumalqui is one of our important projects and going forward we will see more information coming out. We will soon be doing a preliminary resource that may understate the potential but will give us some idea of what the possibilities are, and if you have got your calculator handy then one can think about the net present value and what it may cost to bring it into production.”

CEOCFO: What else are you working on these days?

Mr. Blackwell: “We are also working on another project called Totoroko that is also in Peru. It is a copper and silver project. We chose to drill there in December. The results were mixed but we did get one very good hole at a little over 30 meters of .7 copper. We did some more work this year, focusing on some of the structures that we had ignored in previous programs. Results suggest that we should drill in a few additional places that we hadn’t considered before. It’s a good project with very strong grades over a very large area, and will get interesting should we start to put together a string of good holes. It is very well located in a copper mining region in the southern part of Peru. It’s a project that will get a lot of attention should we achieve this.”

CEOCFO: How are you funded for these projects?

Mr. Blackwell: “At this point we are moderately well funded; we have $1 million in our treasury, which these days doesn’t go nearly as far as I would like it to. We usually do financings by way of private placement; we haven’t done public offerings yet since 1997. Gitennes has been around since back in1993. As the president, I am the guy to blame ever since then. We started back then, with 15 million shares issued, now we have moved just a little less to 42 million shares. We are very cautious with our money, as we would like to see our money go into the ground and get results. We also like to acquire projects that will have endearing value. If I see a project that just isn’t going very well, I would like to think that there can always be another person to take on from us and that has the case on a number of occasions. We’ve always funded our work though a mix of private placements and through selling projects.”

CEOCFO: Gitennes is “a company with innovative ideas on project development”; what do you do that’s different?

Mr. Blackwell: “Number one we are into our own project generation, we don’t do many Options. Therefore, we are not waiting for a speculator or another company to come in with a project and tell us that it is the “Greatest”. We get out and we prospect. We do everything in-house. When I cannot go in-house, I go up to prospectors and offer to grubstake them. That is old fashioned, and is nothing new, but it is something that has pretty much fallen by the wayside. I think it is important to get out on the land, keep your ear-to-the-ground and be known to be supporting fundamental prospecting activities. We use a number of other exploration techniques, such as MMI or Mobile Metal Ion surveys, in places like TotoRoko, which is becoming increasing popular everywhere. We have been using that technique now for 11 years. We do a number of other things. We are very big on geophysics. We like to see targets with both strong geophysical anomalies and strong geological attributes, because we like to drill targets where a number of positive features are checked-off. Our Project Geologists are not just showing-oriented, as they need to see that there’s scope for a Corporate or Big Company-sized target within an area of good infrastructure that has a reasonable prospect of being economic.”

CEOCFO: What is your take on where we are on the pricing of the commodities in gold, silver?

Mr. Blackwell: “Pardon me, as my thoughts here might be more of a reflection on the last article I have read! Anyway, I think we are not in a mature part of it (the commodity cycle) at all. I think that in terms of base metals they are not going to back off. We might see some minor retrenchments from time to time but I think the prices we have now are the the prices we are going to have for a long time. In terms of gold and silver, which have a little bit of a different fundamental aspect to them, people are probably buying in again, because it is a good time. The jewelry market in India is an important fact, for if gold gets too expensive they do not buy, if it gets too cheap they are buying like crazy. Gold right now is at a very healthy price, I think it will go a lot higher during the course of this year, at the same time I think in a couple more corrections. Do I think: can you make money at $18 silver? Darned right you could. Should we make it at $12 silver? You are darned right we should. Right now, I do not see us going to the prices we had back in 2002, let alone 2000. I think we should be going forward. Now a-days the only thing that we need to be cautious about is our costs. That is the big problem facing us in the exploration and mining business. The cost of mining and the cost of exploration have shot-up dramatically in the past few years, and one has got to be very prudent with money.”

CEOCFO: Sum it up for potential investors - why should they pick Gitennes out of the crowd?

Mr. Blackwell: “Well I think Gitennes is the one to look at. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is, we are Toronto-listed, so we are on the big board in Canada here and our disclosure is often held up as an example to others, and so I would like to think we are reasonably transparent to investors. We are not overly promotional, what you read is what you get. You can pick up the phone and call me and we will talk. You are not talking to IR, most of the time you are talking to me. I would like to think that we are straight shooters and people should take a hard look at getting behind a company with a good record in discovery. We have bargain with a market capitalization of less then $12 million and there is nothing but upside for the company.”

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“Gitennes is focused on exploring for gold, silver, zinc and copper… in Peru.” - Jerry D. Blackwell