Morning Briefing: Elemental Royalty Increases Strategic Interest in Quilla Resources

Good morning and welcome back to the Mining Stock Daily morning briefing. I am Trevor Hall.

It's Thursday, July 16.

A mixed picture in metals this morning, and a bit counterintuitive given the headlines. Gold is pulling back — down 0.66% to $4,034 an ounce. Silver is off more sharply, down 1.86% to $56.67. Copper, though, is the outlier to the upside — up 0.88% to $6.35 a pound. More on the copper supply setup in a bit.

The biggest macro story this morning is geopolitical once again. The United States has carried out another round of airstrikes on Iran, this time striking a supertanker deep inside the Persian Gulf, near Iran's primary crude export terminal. This follows a series of Iranian shipping attacks earlier this week that sent Brent crude surging 12% over three sessions to briefly punch through $85 a barrel. Oil has backed off slightly this morning as markets gauge whether this escalates further or gets contained diplomatically.

The copper supply story got louder this week with two separate developments worth watching together. BHP Group reported a 5% drop in fourth-quarter copper production, hurt by weaker output at both Escondida and Pampa Norte in Chile, with the company flagging an expected further decline in Chilean copper production for next year. In the same week, First Quantum Minerals is exploring the sale of a minority stake in its Taca Taca copper project in Argentina — one of the largest undeveloped copper deposits on the planet. Lower near-term output from Escondida while simultaneously racing to stake out the next generation of development-stage projects: that's the copper supply squeeze in a sentence, and it's exactly why copper has been running hard all year.

We'll get to the news from the miners and explorers in just a moment, but first a word about today's sponsor.

This episode of Mining Stock Daily is brought to you by…Revival Gold

Revival Gold is one of the largest pure gold mine developer operating in the United States. The Company is advancing the Mercur Gold Project in Utah and mine permitting preparations and ongoing exploration at the Beartrack-Arnett Gold Project located in Idaho. Revival Gold is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the ticker symbol “RVG” and trades on the OTCQX Market under the ticker symbol “RVLGF”. Learn more about the company at revival-dash-gold.com

Here's what you need to know today.

Elemental Royalty has entered into a US$25 million strategic investment package with Quilla Resources to increase its royalty exposure to the producing Chapi Copper Project in Peru's Southern Copper Belt — a district that also hosts operations by Freeport-McMoRan, Anglo American, Buenaventura, and Southern Copper. The deal adds a new 1.0% NSR royalty over Quilla's Pampa Negra and Candelaria concessions, bringing Elemental's total NSR interest at Chapi to 3.0% across those areas — and simultaneously gives Elemental approximately a 9% equity stake in Quilla as it advances plans to triple production from 10,000 to 30,000 tonnes per annum of copper cathode. Chapi restarted production in Q1 2026 after a decade offline. CEO David Cole called the new concessions 'important contributors to Quilla's Phase 2 expansion' and noted the management team's track record at Antamina and Buenaventura. Elemental funded the deal from cash on hand (NASDAQ: ELE, TSX: ELE). News Release

Onyx Gold has delivered another strong batch of results from the Argus Gold System at its Munro-Croesus Project, 75 kilometres east of Timmins in Ontario's Abitibi greenstone belt. At Argus North, the headline hole MC26-274A returned 3.5 grams per tonne gold over 28.1 metres, including 5.3 g/t Au over 17.8 metres — and the Argus North zone has now been intersected from near surface to more than 700 metres vertical depth, still open. At Argus Main, hole MC26-324 returned a broad 1.0 g/t gold over 93.0 metres — notable because it finished in strong mineralization at depth, including 19.3 g/t over 0.7 metres in the final four metres, with follow-up planned. And in a new area 250 metres northeast of Argus Main, first-pass drilling hit 2.6 g/t gold over 7.3 metres in MC26-316 — opening a new target along the Argus Fault corridor. With four rigs running, 110,000 metres of drilling planned, and approximately $18 million in cash, this program continues to demonstrate both scale and grade continuity (TSXV: ONYX, OTCQX: ONXGF). News Release

ATERRA Metals has released its Phase I drill results from the Totora Cu/Au Project in Chile's Dos Amigo Mining District — 15 kilometres south of Tintina Mines' Domeyko Sulfuros development project. The standout hole, AFROD01, drilled into the higher-grade core of the Frontera copper-gold deposit, returned 284 metres grading 0.64% copper equivalent from surface — including 180 metres at 0.71% CuEq and a 70-metre interval at 0.82% CuEq. A second hole at the Totora Porphyry returned 194 metres at 0.41% CuEq. The Frontera deposit has a historical resource of 16 million indicated tonnes at 0.56% CuEq and 34 million inferred tonnes at 0.54% CuEq — Phase II drilling and an NI 43-101 compliant resource estimate are next. (CSE: ATC, OTCQB: CSSCF). News Release

Trilogy Metals has announced the publication of a coordinated federal and state permitting schedule for its Arctic Project in Alaska's Ambler Mining District — establishing for the first time a defined timeline toward a Record of Decision by September 2028. The Arctic Project is a high-grade polymetallic VMS deposit containing copper, cobalt, zinc, lead, gold, and silver, and is being advanced through the Ambler Metals joint venture with South32. Having a published, coordinated schedule from both federal and state agencies is a significant milestone for any Alaska mining project — the lack of timeline certainty has historically been one of the key overhangs on Ambler district projects. Separately, Trilogy disclosed earlier this month that the U.S. Department of War has proposed a US$35.6 million strategic equity investment in the company — a signal of the national security dimensions of domestic critical mineral supply (NYSE American: TMQ, TSX: TMQ). News Release

And Graphite One has cleared a key regulatory hurdle for its planned Active Anode Materials facility in Conneaut, Ohio, with the Ohio EPA formally accepting the company's air permit application as complete and commencing technical review. It's a process milestone, not a final permit — but it confirms the application was complete and moves the project into the substantive evaluation phase. The Ohio facility is designed to produce synthetic battery-grade anode materials for lithium-ion batteries, with an initial capacity of 10,000 tonnes per year expanding to 25,000 tonnes. (TSXV: GPH, OTCQX: GPHOF).News Release

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That's it for today everyone. Have a great day. Stay safe.