Jason: I think that the Johnson method of shaking and baking the ore is probably the only thing that will work on this ore body. Intuitively, if you've complex-mineralized gold locked away in the desert dirt, I feel you're going to have to first grind the heck out of it to break apart the grains to be able to fully access the complex gold mineralization so you can eventually convert the same to metallic form. If the Johnson method doesn't work, I don't see what other method will, though I hope I'm wrong.
If the Johnson process works, we'll be on our way, stock price-wise. Gold market-wise, if the international financial community becomes convinced that this is for real (and it may take years instead of months, who knows), a psychological blow may be dealt to the gold market. If one lakebed contains a billion oz of PMs, people will naturally expect that other such geological structures exist in the world. FL is a nice place but probably not unique in world geological terms. If one is hoarding PMs, the natural reaction to the possibility that PMs exist in the world in virtually unlimited recoverable amounts (thereby rendering precious metals non-precious) would be to sell first and ask questions later. PM prices could collapse eventually.
But the flip side of the coin is this. I'm uncertain that it's feasible to process, say, tens of thousands of tons of ore a day since you need to grind the head ore and stick the result in a reduction oven. If it takes, say, 15 minutes to grind the ore to the requisite degree, then you may not need a vast amount of grinding equipment and capacity to accomplish the grinding task . On the other hand, if it takes, say, 15 hours, then the amount and capacity of grinding equipment, real estate, electricity and so forth required to do the job may too great to process massive tonnage a day. So the financial community may decide that if this whole process works, it cannot be done on a large enough scale to cause a massive increase in gold supply, so gold prices may not collapse.
FWIW, Maxam Gold's recovery method will also probably work because the Peoria 7 property contains metallic gold as well as complex-mineralized gold. Their recovery method targets the metallic gold and other PMs. Yes, they're losing the complex-mineralized stuff but if you can profitably extract the metallic PMs with no fuss and muss, who cares? If you've got 10+ million oz of metallic PMs, you can go into production right away and worry about the complex stuff whenever.
Any other opinions welcome.
Regards,
Rand |
