What’s In The Water At “Red Lake”? And Could Benton Resources (BEX, TSX-V) Be A Beneficiary?

Question:  Does Benton Resources (BEX, TSX-V) deserve a bump up in price given the Great Bear (GBR, TSX-V) and “Red Lake” factors?

Answer:  YES!  At least a small bump, because GoldON (GLD, TSX-V) got a big bump!

And just so we’re talking the same language, my definition of “bump u” means at least 50% to 100%.

Red Lake, Ontario is one of those few regions resource speculators are excited about right now.  Thanks to Great Bear (GBR, TSX-V).  Up 800%, from 50 cents to $4, it’s one of the market’s best performing stocks.  Technically, it has a good chance to hit the $5 level before fundamentals will dictate whether it can push higher.

Hits like 68.7 g/t Gold over 7 m is what initially got people excited.

Money has been flowing into Great Bear’s coffers ever since!

Right now they’ve got $15 million to fund 90,000 m.  It’ll be one of the largest drill programs of 2019, and one of the most anticipated.

Great Bear’s high-grade discovery, and excitement surrounding it, provided a big bump for GoldON.  So I’m arguing it should for Benton, too.

Aside from shuffling a few projects around, GoldON has basically been turned off since 2014.  I’m guessing CEO Mike Romanik flipped the switch soon after Great Bear’s high-grade Dixie discovery (August 2018).  By February GoldON announced Mr. Perry English would join the company as a strategic advisor. That announcement signaled Romanik was going to make a move into Red Lake because English was raised in Red Lake, Ontario (Romanik also communicated his Red Lake plans to me directly over the phone.  I passed on the PP, regrettably).  English has received th Ontario Prospectors Association’s Prospector of the Year Award. Some consider him a “one-man project generator”.

So officially, starting February 20, 2019, Romanik’s GoldON became a play on “Red Lake”.

They’d piggy-back the Great Bear factor as much as possible, too.

Mr. Market immediately took notice, as GLD initially bumped higher by 50% (from approx. 15 to 23 cents) on way better than average volume following English’s involvement.  Within a few weeks Romanik managed to close a $450,000 PP at a price of $0.15 per unit (each unit had a full warrant good for 2 years at $0.20).  Simultaneously with the closing, GoldON acquired the Bruce Lake Project, located 11 km southeast of Great Bear.  Within a month of that, Romanik struck an option agreement deal with Great Bear for their West Madsen Project (a property contiguous with Pure Gold’s (PGM, TSX-V) Madsen Project, also in Red Lake).

Romanik went back to the market and raised $565,000 in June by selling stock at 45 cents (and flow-through for 50 cents).

Funds are being used to hire Rimini Exploration & Consulting, another “Red Lake specialist”, to act as project manager and carry out a Phase I program at West Madsen.  Next door, Pure Gold will be drilling 12,000 m.

Moral of the story being that Romanik has made some nice moves.  He flipped the switch from off to GoldON following Great Bear’s discovery.  Now GLD is rocking and rolling!  Considerable value has been created for shareholders (Perry English’s “special expertise” and connections to Red Lake also played a leading role in that value creation).  With just 14 million shares outstanding, Romanik and GoldOn have the deck stacked in their favor.  Let’s see how they play their hand, but it’s a good bet that GLD is headed higher.

When you won’t to get the job done right, hopefully the first time around, hire a specialist.

Great Bear, Pure Gold, GoldON and Benton have all retained Red Lake specialists to help guide their exploration programs.

James (Jim) Rogers is Benton’s guru.  Jim has spent much of his career working in Red Lake for Goldcorp, and Premier Gold (PG, TSX) more recently.

Starting as a mine geologist in 1980, Jim has almost 30 years of experience working in the Red Lake Gold mining camp in various positions, including Chief Geologist, Exploration Manager and President of a junior exploration company.  In the early days, Jim and his team discovered the high-grade zone at the Red Lake mine.

“Jim is a team player whose main strength lies in a good understanding of the economics, mining methods and the structural interpretations of ore bodies, excellent 3D and “Big Picture” strategic vision, particularly as they relate to Gold system exploration and development.  Jim’s tremendous amount of technical knowledge in the Red Lake district will truly be an asset to the company moving forward,” said Benton CEO Stephen Stares.

Benton’s Phase I drill program (9 holes total) was encouraging in the sense it provided geological information for further targeting, but it failed to intersect a zone of any economic interest (2.3 g/t Au over 4.7 m was their best hit).

This Phase I work was followed up by a high detail airborne magnetic survey, the results of which have already been completed and interpreted.  Of particular interest is a distinct fold that extends over 600 m west from the known mineralization at the Panama Zone.  This fold zone has not been previously mapped and is one of many structural features identified by the geophysical survey which Benton will inspect in the field.

Yesterday (June 13) Benton announced they will collect soil samples, prospect and map this area along with other high priority targets this summer.  Further evaluation of the detailed airborne is currently underway and other targets will be followed up on when received.

The Panama Project is host to some of the highest unsourced Gold grains (107 grains) in glacial till discovered by the Geological Survey of Canada, 1999 (Open File 3038).

Benton’s share structure isn’t as good as GoldON‘s, but they’re better funded.  At the end of Q1 the Company had $3.7 million cash plus $1.9 million worth of equity holdings.  Combined, that number is more than their $4.6 million market cap.

In Conclusion:  Stephen Stares (of an award winning prospecting family) and Jim Rogers (a Red Lake specialist) have a drill play underway in Red Lake. Recent high-grade discoveries from Great Bear and Pure Gold have rejuvenated this exciting old mining camp.  Fast movers like Romanik and GoldON have already benefited in a big way from the knock-on effect, being associated with Red Lake and Great Bear.

My simple premise for speculating on BEX is that it has yet to experience any knock-on effect, while arguably being deserved of a bump up.  Benton has plenty of cash on hand to drill Panama when the time is right (which should be relatively soon, strategically speaking they’d want to be actively drilling while everyone else is this summer).  Stares and Rogers already have a high-priority target picked out, they’ll likely drill some holes within the fold nose pictured above.