Kevin:
The Northern Miner article had three or four factual errors and is printing a Correction this week.
The key errors are a) that we have not spent US$10 million in drilling -- we picked up the data from previous drilling -- and b) we have no current plans to conduct deep drilling, or any other drilling on the Wenatchee project until either, we get a partner or we have significant new funds of our own. A partner is possible down the road and new funding is unlikely under current conditions, but we are always looking for reasonable options.
There were a few other errors and misleading issues in last week's article. This is how they will handle it this week:
"Correction
Previous owners of the Wenatchee gold project in Washington state spent $10 million exploring the Compton,Wenatchee Heights and Matthews properties. In our issue of Feb. 2-8, we incorrectly attributed those
expenditures to new owner Yamana Resources (YRI-T).
Previous drilling at Matthews encountered a 200-ft. intersection (1,860-2,060 ft. below the surface), from which eight separate gold intervals were reported, including 50 ft. grading 0.26 oz. gold per ton and 5 ft. of 1.15 oz. gold. Yamana is reviewing past work and is seeking a joint-venture partner. The company believes the properties have potential for deep-lying, epithermal gold-silver deposits."
Kevin:
We do have several good projects but we are focused on the one with the best cost / potential ratio: Santa Cruz Vanguardia. We are drilling there right now, using our own drill and crew working on a couple of promising properties where we have very good silver and some good gold indications. I released results on this a couple of weeks ago and discussed it in the quarterly report.
I hope to be able to put out the next set of results on this shallow reconnaissance drilling before the end of the month, early March at the latest. As I've been saying recently, we are cutting back sharply on all spending; we have sufficient funds for 1998, with no changes in the market or joint venture partners or financings; and we are focused on Santa Cruz. We are letting go of some land; we are looking at possible JVs on a number of projects; we are compiling data on both PNG and Indonesia; and we are continuing low cost field work on a couple of other projects.
I hope this helps.
Greg |
