Andrew, is Eric having you guys believe he's a mine engineer?? If he's doing this in any sort of professional sense he could be raked over the coals by the Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario.
MTech stands for Mine Technician or Mine Technologist. Haileybury School of Mines puts on 2 or 3 year courses to get the respective designations. A lot of respected people come out of there and a lot go down to Michigan Tech to become full fledged engineers (Walter Sedgworth of Homestake for instance). However, Haileybury is not an engineering school and most grads become mine surveyors, assayers, shift bosses and the like. Usually, for the gold industry up that way, whatever is left of it. The only thing they teach about diamonds there is that they go on the end of a drill bit.
As for this sample size debate. Jeesh! Do what the gold boys do but with a twist. Split the orebody into panels say 60m on strike and 60m up dip, sill the panel out. Bulk sample the sill tonnage. If she don't make the grade go onto the next one. If she does, drift and fill updip to take the rest out.
The $64 question until the fall is, what is the average grade with a reasonable degree of assurance? I guess Eric's definition of reasonable is a 3 million tonne bulk sample but there comes a time to make the call. If MRDI is happy with 6000t, I'm happy with 6000t.
Once this average is known, and a sufficient margin is indicated, then mining becomes relatively easy. Open up numerous panels to allow blending. In other words, the panels where the predicted grade is overestimated, get cancelled out by the underestimates. (The ole' 15 wrongs make a right approach, the one we use everyday underground.)
What I like about this play is, I cannot see much downside at least until the bulk sample results comes out (buy on mystery sell on history). So providing WSP can restrain from issuing options to all their aunts and uncles (which seems to have been the practice to date, am I wrong or has the share float not tripled in the last two years), and they keep pumping a bit of news out now and again, the shareholders should stay in line.
If the bulk sample comes back good, then it is time for them to stop screwing about and get a serious partner whose going to finance this pup. |
