I'll give ya my best take on this Rand:
<<I'm pleased to read that IPM has gone to vendors for help and that Lee Furlong said he did not want to be an R+D company.>>
Oh, he was decisive about that -- they were looking for a standard ultra-mafic platinum property to drill and develop (like Stillwater)and that was their main goal. Hysterical side story, Heresay, but it's a hoot: A friend of a friend claims he was flying airial scouting for IPC years ago -- and saw some redish rock outcroppings that intrigued him -- but he was low on fuel or something and turned back. The spot turned out to be the Voisey Bay nickel desposit!
<<Given that IPM is moving to fire assay their backlog of samples now with a reading of 0.0x oz of gold per ton as opposed to the much higher numbers from Auric's fire assay method>>
Whoah, you can't compare this until the _same_ hot holes that went to Auric for the AGM are done by this fire assay method. There are hot spots. The material IPM just reported on was from COC trenches picked at random by Bateman, and I believe some old BD (auger drill) samples lying around at the lab. We have no idea if the new assay would read higher in many areas, and I think it's likely.
<<one can infer correctly or not) that the recovery methods they will now investigate with Bateman will yield not enormously higher results>>
Not neccesarily, and one can not infer that they won't impove this assay! It is obvious IPM was not ready to make this report and needed (as usual) more time to test. I've heard they've been working with 5 fire assays. The registered lab sets a certain repeatability standard, I'm guessing such as: 90% of all splits must repeat with no more than 10% variance (any SFA will give variance on splits)... For all we know there could have been better results on other modified fire assays infuriatingly stuck at 12% variance. I've posted time and again, developing a new fire assay is a bitch! Despite all the delays, and I'm sure some mistakes, they have pulled one off and say the Pt. is close. I think the odds are they will eventually get the pt. assay. Imagine if Fridays results had been double by pt. .04 to .16 -- or trippled by Pt/pd .06 to .24 -- a different picture emerges. Or,what if these assays were representative and drilling could map it out -- and half the property were ignored and the higher half persued? The potential is still huge. CC is right they do need economic extraction, but as far as waiting for it, no one gets in these stocks cheap once all these things are proven out, so pass the Pepto.
As far extraction numbers,it's still all speculation, but the consensus I hear is forget this gpgi style process where you smelt precips into a dore bar and then electrowin. All focus is one finding a more conventional low-grade process, heap or C-I-P type circuit. These can cost under $10/ton. Higher grades could easily appear down the line (IF!) they crack extraction -- as the deposit definately has a sweet spot, and there is a geology model that contends the best grade stuff may be at the north end of the underground bowl or very deep in the middle. Terry Christopher posted a diagram. This ain't proven, but it's surely possible. Anyway, regardless, the buzz I hear is whatever they are persuing is going to be low-cost heap or cold vat leach -- so IF they pull it off -- a huge low-grade deposit could be as profitable as the Carlin trend. Bottomline I doubt they are now going to persue any method that requires very high grades to be cost-effective.
<<That is, if they really thought they could recover 0.25, I don't think they would settle for an assay that reads only 0.0x and proceed to fire assay thousands of samples.>>
Of course they would Rand! They had to give the market something, and they do need to prove up anything they can -- esp. if Bateman has given them the nod that they would use this fire assay to opine "resource status". Also, we all want to see _more_ holes to see if most trend toward .02 or .08!!! Finally, it is not a problem to go back later and say, "oops, we are recovering so much more!"
You don't have _choice_ about these things with DD-type refractory ore! You take what you can get and try to improve. This has not been done before. And this DD situation is ground breaking. May work, may not, that's the bet.
Lew Green |
