Pour the double-double, because the drills did the talking while the rest of the world watched the Strait of Hormuz.

Copper and gold came out of a single BC hole by the hundreds of metres, Ottawa's LNG dream picked up a billion-dollar partner, and oil sat at a one-month high on Middle East nerves. Gold slipped, silver slipped, and the juniors mostly shrugged it off.

🥇 Gold (spot): $4,065/oz 🔻

🥈 Silver (spot): $58.00/oz 🔻

🟠 Copper: $6.37/lb 🔺

☢️ Uranium (U₃O₈ spot): $85.15/lb 🔻

🛢️ WTI Crude: $79.50/bbl 🔺

🔥 Natural Gas (Henry Hub): $3.60/MMBtu 🔻

📈 TSX-V Composite: 889 🔻

💵 U.S. Dollar (DXY): 100.7 🔻

What happened. American Eagle Gold ($AE.TSX ( 0.0% )) dropped the first hole of its 2026 program at the NAK copper-gold porphyry in BC's Babine district. Hole NAK26-83 cut 154 m of 1.21% copper-equivalent inside a broader 280 m of 0.96% CuEq, all starting at surface. The same hole logged 801 m of 0.49% CuEq down to 834 m depth and pushed the South Zone high-grade core 100 m further north.

Why it happened. This is the opening act of a fully funded, 50,000-plus metre campaign, roughly 80 holes, the biggest program in the company's history and one of the largest in BC this year. A new road-and-trail network cuts the helicopter bills and lowers cost per metre, and the company is sitting on about $50 million in cash. American Eagle is also trying to fold in neighbour Pacific Booker Minerals, which would stitch NAK and Morrison into one Babine district platform.

What it means for your position. Grade like this over these widths, from surface, is the kind of number that turns a porphyry from a science project into a mineable shape. With nine months of drilling ahead and step-outs already turning, this is a name where news flow, not patience, sets the pace. Just keep the skeptic on: porphyry economics live and die on the copper price and the strip ratio, so temper the grade with the eventual capex a deposit this size demands.

👉 Read the full story

Cascadia Minerals ($CAMNF ( ▲ 3.73% )) finished a 2,261 line-kilometre airborne QMAGT survey (Quantum Magnetic Gradiometer Technology, full tensor magnetic gradiometry) over its entire 180 km² Carmacks copper-gold project in the Yukon, flown by Dias Airborne at 100 m line spacing.

Conventional airborne mag reads one number, total magnetic intensity. Full-tensor gradiometry reads the whole gradient tensor, so you get sharper geometry, orientation and depth on buried intrusions, structures and alteration. Translation: fewer blind holes. Cascadia will fold the data into its geological model to rank targets before the next drill program.

So what. This is targeting-as-software again, the cheap kilometres you fly before you spend the expensive ones you drill. With an Agnico Eagle earn-in alliance behind it, Cascadia can afford to be picky. Just remember geophysics never assays out, so treat this as a map upgrade, not a discovery.

👉 See the survey

Founders Metals ($FDMIF ( ▼ 0.29% )) confirmed a new gold discovery at Antino Northeast in Suriname. First-ever drilling on a kilometre-scale gold-in-auger anomaly, discovery hole ANE009 returned 58.5 m of 1.00 g/t gold from 18.6 m, including 18.0 m of 1.59 g/t. A hole 1,200 m away hit 53.0 m of 0.46 g/t, so the system has real footprint.

It is the fourth target Founders is running across a 70,000 m program, with Gold Fields and B2Gold both on the register. Mineralization is open in every direction and most of the anomaly is still undrilled.

So what. A gram over sixty metres is not a barn-burner grade, but a fresh discovery on a new structure is exactly the optionality that re-rates a district story. Watch whether the follow-up holes thicken it or whether it settles into a wide, low-grade halo.

👉 Dig in

What happened. Five North Coast First Nations, through MNT Investments LP (the Gitga'at, Gitxaała, Haisla, Kitselas and Kitsumkalum), signed an option to invest up to $1 billion in the proposed second phase of LNG Canada, the Shell-operated mega-terminal at Kitimat. The structure: MNT can buy a majority of a special-purpose entity that owns a Phase 2 storage tank, then leases it back to LNG Canada for the life of the project, with the capital raised through a planned bond issue.

Why it happened. Phase 2 would roughly double Kitimat's export capacity, and it still needs a final investment decision, now sitting with Ottawa's major projects office and expected by year-end. Indigenous equity, potentially backstopped by federal loan guarantees, is capital and social license rolled into one.

What it means for your position. This is the clearest signal yet that Phase 2 is marching toward FID, and that is the demand pull under every Montney gas producer and the Coastal GasLink toll base. If you own Canadian gas, the second train is the story that fills your pipe, and the big feedgas suppliers like Tourmaline ($TOU.TSX ( ▼ 0.69% )) are the leveraged way to play it. Caveat before you get excited: this is an option, not a sanction, and the FID is still Ottawa's to give.

👉 Read the full story

Canada's rig count fell 11 to 179 last week, still up 17 from a year ago. That is the drill-bit end of the patch taking a summer breath.

The egress end is doing the opposite. Coastal GasLink is feeding LNG Canada, the Trans Mountain expansion is running full, and Alberta's proposed West Coast oil line heads to the major projects office this month. TC Energy ($TRP.TSX ( ▼ 1.53% )) sits in the middle of the gas story as the Coastal GasLink operator.

So what. Fewer active rigs plus more takeaway capacity is a bullish setup for the midstream toll-collectors and a mixed one for the pressure pumpers. The molecules already in the ground now have somewhere to go, which is exactly what a producer wants when oil is printing one-month highs.

👉 See the rig count

Source Rock Royalties ($SRRRF ( 0.0% )) declared its monthly dividend of $0.0065 a share, payable August 14, and on the same day granted 291,000 restricted share units to its officers and directors.

So what. Nothing wrong with a royalty shop paying insiders in equity, it aligns them with holders. But clock the ratio: shareholders get two-thirds of a cent a month while management gets a fresh slug of upside. On a name this small, insider RSUs move the share count more than the dividend moves your account, so read the vesting terms before you cheer.

👉 Read the full story

That 801 metre run of copper and gold in American Eagle's NAK26-83 is nearly as long as the Burj Khalifa is tall (828 m). One hole. Most juniors would call that a resource and issue stock against it.

Keep your grades high, your dilution low, and your drill holes long. See you tomorrow.