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Gold/Mining/Energy : Corner Bay Silver (BAY.T) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elizabeth Andrews who wrote (932)	6/12/2000 1:54:00 PM
From: Frankly Speaking	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4409

Elizabeth, From a lurker, it's always interesting to see your questions. How are you going to play this one? Long or short? F.S.

To: Elizabeth Andrews who wrote (932)	6/13/2000 10:49:00 AM
From: Claude Cormier	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4409

Eliz, First, thanks for your questions. <<I still haven't heard about the cactus issue I raised.>> First have you ever heard of a mining operation not going into production because of the presence of cactus. I haven't. But to reassure you about Alamo Dorado, the immediate region is sparsely vegetated with few cactus around. <<Where was the water from that they used to perform the column tests? Same chemistry as the water at the site? >> The water used for the leach tests was of course water from Tucson, not from Alamo Dorado. I am sure you know that no miners will spend additional money to carry water from the operation site to the lab site. The reason is simple. Only occasionally, the water will have an abnormal PH that will cause intolerable variation in the recovery rates. This happens mostly in locations where predominant minerals are sulfides. When this happens, the water is simply treated. This is not an expensive process. <<A heap leach test is 99% more reliable than column leach as there is no compaction and you can't duplicate the weight of a 20 foot heap in the lab. >> Heap leach tests are the ultimate proof, I agree. But very few operations do one before they get into production? Why ? Column tests have proved to be reliable in most cases. You do leach tests in the field only when your lab results have discrepancies or when the ore is complex. In our case, the bottle roll tests and the column tests almost match. As well, the mineralization is clean with no other metals than gold and silver present. No contaminent. BTW, the main mineral is chlorargyrite. It is a silver chloride with a very high SG, that disolved rapidly. It is not an exotic mineral, although it is not a common one either. <Also what about the clay situation? >> Very little clay present in the system. <<And did they mention consumption of lime and cyanide?>> When is the last time you saw that consumption of these elements would dramatically change the economics of the mine? It is rarely a major factor. At this point in time, BAY doesn't have the final count and ratio on this. But the general comment is that consumption is moderate. Let me add that since the ore is simple with no other metals to be cleaned, so we should expect normal levels of reagents. <<What's the distribution of silver in the fines? >> What do you mean ?