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Viva Gold Corp is a gold exploration and development company advancing the Tonopah Gold Project in Nevada. In this interview, CEO James Hesketh walked me through why they upsized a financing and what they plan to do next, focused on drilling to upgrade the resource, early engineering and metallurgy work, and the permitting path with the Bureau of Land Management.

TL;DR

James said they raised C$4.2M instead of C$3M because he’d rather take more cash now than risk running short mid-program, and he thinks it funds about a year of work. The plan is mostly reverse-circulation infill drilling to convert some inferred ounces into measured and indicated so they can be used in a pre-feasibility/feasibility-style workflow under NI 43-101, while they also start locking in quotes and contracts for engineering and environmental work and test whether a coarser crush on heap-leach material can cut capex and operating costs without giving up too much recovery.

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1. What have you done for shareholders lately?
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   CEO Hekseth said the financing closed on December 29 with 62 participants and that key holders supported it, including Dundee Corporation maintaining its 20% position and RAB Capital maintaining about 13%+ ownership. On the ground, he said they’ve lined up a drill for next month, are advancing baseline environmental work already underway for years, and are collecting quotes across the pieces needed to move toward studies, a plan of operations, and formal permitting.
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2. How much money do they have and what are they spending it on?
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   They recently raised C$4.2M, which James said should cover roughly the next year, with a stated target of 75 to 80% of spending going directly into the project. He said the big buckets this year are drilling, engineering (resource-to-reserve, mine plan, plant/metallurgy), and environmental work, and he pegged baseline/permitting-prep work at about one-third of the year’s budget, with water-related infrastructure still at the getting-quotes-back stage.
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3. Upcoming catalysts
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   Drilling starts at the main deposit first (because engineering needs it), with Midway Hills drilling later around May, and James said assays are typically about a month after that portion of drilling. More metallurgy work (bottle roll and column tests) to check the recovery vs cost trade-off on a 36 mm (vs 12mm in the PEA) crush idea for heap-leach material. Awarding scopes once engineering and environmental quotes come back as well. Other stuff he touched upon was his desire to short-cycle drill approvals under their existing process (including an archaeology review before pad building), finishing a good chunk of remaining baseline studies over the next 6 months, then packaging baseline work plus the mine plan of operations to start the NEPA/EIS process, which he framed as roughly a year after the submission is accepted as complete. James also said they’ll put out a steady run of news releases as pieces get finished, and he expects there’ll be enough updates to revisit in about 3 months.
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4. Risks
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   The CEO basically pointed at people and contractors as the near-term headache. Finding drills, getting the right consultants at the right time, and keeping schedules moving, plus the normal risk of delays on assays and external reports. He also said they still don’t know yet whether the “mill first, heap leach later” staging idea changes permitting requirements, and water work is still in the quote-and-study phase. On geology, he said there aren’t any new risks that we hadn’t discussed previously, and that the key risks are already known, but he also wouldn’t promise they won’t raise again even if this round is meant to last about a year.

Viva Gold CEO Interview with James Hesketh

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