Dan. The following is an attempt to respond to your questions.
<"The Info". I received a 50 pages document containing a bunch of infromation from Russel Twiford. To the best of my understanding he is developing and improving the leaching process. This package include both relevant and irrelevant info, including a Scinetific American article on metal clusters (and Buckyballs). This since Russel believe that a large proportion of the valuable metal is in the form of clusters, and thus presents special assaying and extraction challenges. If Russel's hypoteses is right, then I have some news for him, this part of the AU/PEG can be extracted much more easily than the rest. But I would rather see a proof that his assumption is correct first. I think that you can get this package from Fishbaine.
<Each tons contains $3000 ...
Each ton of enriched ore contains about 7 ounces of Pt and 3-4 ounces of Au, plus other PEG. Thus the value of $3000 is on the conservative side. From looking at some assays of the sludge, it seems to contain quite a lot of Rh, but I am not sure if the figure of 7 ounces of Pt I received was actually PEG and thus included the Rh. In any event, today the price of Rh and Pt are similar (not so in the past, however, Rh always sold at a large premium to Pt, but the supply/demand equation might have changed permanently), so assume the same price. Still, conservative.
<Define upgraded ore, and How was it upgraded. There used to be a quarry on the site producing gravel for construction. The upgraded ore is what they left over, and consists of sand with particles up to 1/2". This happens to be quite enriched in the metals. Of this material they have 600,000 tons. Of course, once they finish this they can contiue and mine the rest of the body. In the write up it stated that the gravel operation was there for only 6 months (May November 1993). If this operation created 600,000 tons of enriched ore trying to make gravel, guess what you can do when you enrich to extract metals.
<Where are the press releases. I do not know. Frankly, I personally think that they should not engage in a campaign of a continuous flow of press releases since that will hype the stock and cause it to become volatile. Furthermore, there are always going to be instances of information that was not correct (simply because the process is still unstable and the exact knowledge on this site is still limited) which will later be viewed as "misiformation" and used by a slick lawyer to start a "class action" suit. Why run the risk. Report only what you absolutely know to be the factual truth and that is it. Smart people like you and other on this thread will recognize both the potential and the pitfalls in this situation and act accordingly.
IPM extraction problems. I have not received their package yet. My experience dealing with highly paid consultants is that they are very good at promoting themselves (and thus justify their astronomic fees), but because they are such experts in the field they operate in they know all the reasons why something cannot be done, rather then how to do it best. I am an idependent inventor (and generalist technical consultant), and out of about 40 patents to my name (95 % in the last 7 years), I would say 5 are generic techologies. In most cases, the clients that ask me to invent these where informed by me that :" I am too stupid to know it cannot be done", this has become my motto.
Hope this answers your questions.
Zeev |
