Hi Folks! Boy, MMU president Rick Boulay answered my (& this thread's) queries with swift diligence. -More proof of Marum's commitment to shareholders.
I shall relay Rick's excellent comments here for us-all (posted with his acknowledgement):
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Hi Jesse:
Thanks for your request for more comments. Here is some feedback from some of the postings I scanned. As you know I can only respond when asked, so keep asking.
Market action: Interesting. I checked with market surveillance a couple of times today to take their read on market ebb and flow. At the end of the day, total volume was about 590,000 shares with 125,000 pro trades on the buy side and 107,000 pro trades on the sell side. That's about as good as it gets, about 40% pro trades. Very liquid. No declared short positions to speak of. Too bad. I really like short positions since they are money in the bank in the sense that they have to be covered at some time in the future.
One commentator published a lot of material on metamorphic rocks. Beats me!. That has nothing to do with our play. To my knowledge the nearest metamorphic rocks are 400 km west in the Cordillera or 500 km north on the shield in the Northwest Territories. Oops, or 2,500 metres down in the underlying craton. Still it has nothing to do with our situation.
More on the lab situation. Loring has been around for 40 years. I have known the principals for 20 years. They are extremely competent and reputable. They have done forensic work for the ASE and various securities commissions. They routinely test their own work by running blanks and preset standard charges. Additionally, at our request they are running Canmet standards in every batch. Even more, we routinely submit blind standard charges and duplicate samples with different identifiers. I can't think of anything more we could do in the quality control area. Another thing, following the initial set of sample results, all samples are now split into three parts, one part retained as an archive, one sent to Loring Labs and one split sent to other laboratories on a rotating basis. I think the first set of duplicates (triplicates?) was sent to Bondar-Clegg in Vancouver. At least that's what our consultant Apex indicated they were going to do this time around.
Somebody asked how many samples were taken.... about two truckloads worth. A few till samples where we were able to find till, lots of stream samples, lots of auger core samples, and rocks from every outcrop we could find. It will take months to sort through all of this, however our style is to run precursor samples of anything that looks interesting then follow-through on positive hits. Metals come first because they are fast and cheap. When we found the gold rich samples in August we sat on the results because we were not sure this story had technical integrity and "legs" to carry throughout the regional stratigraphy. The September results confirmed this new dimension to the Chinchaga "stew" and we announced the results as soon as they were received to inform the shareholders and to unburden ourselves of a disclosure responsibility we had been carrying since late-August. Our plan now is to disclose on a current basis as results arrive. This means that shareholders can expect choppy results with each batch of analyses since it will be awhile before we can assemble the data and smooth it out. Of course, we will be criticized for not presenting a complete picture, but the alternative is to shut off the information flow until all the results are assembled into a statistical package. We can't please everyone.
Someone called in and asked about the nature of the host rock. Its a volcaniclastic rock, that is a volcanic ejecta or rock that formed from stuff thrown out of a volcano. Its current appearance is that of a coarse mudstone, really ugly, with chunks of lappilli or clay balls formed by wet volcanic ash and oolited, little balls that form by rolling around in shallow water. The rock is also saturated with sulphides. We have pictures on our website. There is little to no carbonate or limestone in the rock or nearby and we have no quartz veining to speak of. Only some very rare carbonate veining. Don't know why. Come to think of it there's a lot we have to learn about this new mineralization.
As to the size of the samples, the initial ones were standard specimens, treated according to the usual rules regarding gold exploration. That is small bags of, say, about half a kilo split out from the larger samples shipped down by truck, crushed and ground and sampled with a one-assay ton aliquot, that is, about 30gms. This is a universal standard for exploration and most development projects. However, we will likely escalate this into total bulk extraction on 100Kg samples within a month or so. This procedure is really a mini-mini-mill production test that has the great benefit of evening out nugget effects and grade spikes. Its not complicated. In fact, gold is really easy to work with compared to anything else (diamond analysis is difficult). Gold is easy to detect, easy to concentrate, easy to measure and the results are completely reliable. The fire assay technique is the be all and end all, its absolutely simple and absolutely reliable and very inexpensive, about $15 including lab preparation charges, compared to $1,500 to $5,000 per diamond sample.
One commentator good-naturedly pointed out that we are finding gold as the gold price is starting to move. We are not dramatic directors with the ability to change the scene as we go along. The geology of the area and the incremental exploration information we develop directs us rather than the other way around and we are obliged to do the best professional job possible and disclose the results as they become available. Besides, we have been looking for gold in the Peace River and Chinchaga area since 1994 and even fought an expensive lawsuit over the matter in 1996, just after we acquired the initial 13 Chinchaga permits for their gold potential. We did not find diamond indicators until late-1996 (as part of our gold exploration program) and did not perform any systematic diamond exploration until 1997. Our northern Alberta exploration roots are in gold exploration and have since expanded into diamond exploration and general metals exploration depending on what we find. I suppose that it would have been better to announce the gold find in August, but we have never been forced to back down on a technical announcement and our preference is to make sure of the facts before we make an announcement. In retrospect, this might have been a mistake in this case.
More on sample processing, we are also hot-dogging certain diamond samples in a rather unsystematic way because we want the results for next week when we go back to the field. The penalty here is that some of the samples we would otherwise process first, but don't need for field work, will be delayed. That's life.
Keep those questions coming, I really like the tough, critical ones since they are the best kind to keep the shareholders informed. Also, check into the web site from time to time since I now do it all myself and can update it whenever i want to. Its disorganized but in a current and topical kind of way and its more efficient since I don't have to waste time dealing with an HTML programmer.
Best Regards
Rick Boulay
boulay@canuck.com
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Marum Resources Inc.
marumresources.com
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- what a great read-- Thanx a million, Rick!
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Regards,
-j
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