** BIGDUDE ALERT ** O.K. here is the scoop,
Whether or not you believe Freeport is up to you, but I believe they have done a credible job in their work and would never have screwed up as much as would be required to get zero gold. My surfin pals also have pieces of Bre-X core, they turned up zilch too. Nobody I know with rocks from Busang have found any gold in them, so Freeport is not the only one with a problem finding gold in the core.
Next, Freeport states that the gold found in samples prepared by Bre-X is different than gold found in the small amount of gold found in the drill core. That in gold mining terms, is a code for Freeport saying that this was a salt job. An Australian metallurgical consulting firm named Normet noted in their July 1996 report that the "gold particles shapes were mostly rounded with beaded outlines"....that means that this was placer gold. Placer gold is not found in hard rock drill core, in other words, the placer gold was induced to the samples. Since the samples used were 13 kg in size, prior to splitting off 750 gram samples, that large size is relatively easy to salt using placer gold given the large original sample size. The most recent Kilborn report states that they used sample rejects that were prepared by Bre-X, so their report findings are useless to confirm gold at Busang, contrary to the Financial Post Headline (So don't trade off the headline dudes). It also appears now that Barrick also relied on these same rejects to perform their calculations at Lakefield, they did not drill fresh holes. Also, it is my understanding that Lakefield is not an assay lab, but rather a lab were more production orientated testing is done, not assaying checks. So the claim by Walsh that Barrick's due diligence was fine, is also meaningless, Barrick is also not saying anything because of confidentiality issues.
I can continue for several more pages on issues ranging from the Filipino mafia that controlled the sample preparation to what really happed to Mike de Guzman, but I will not bore you.
Dudes, don't get suckered by the FP headline. The evidence is clearly very strong that some nasty stuff went on here. Even if there is a small remaining gold deposit, the Indos are now making moves to reduce Bre-X's final percentage. Dudes....be very careful.
Bigdude |
