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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold Price Monitor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: long-gone who wrote (83970)	3/30/2002 7:07:54 AM
From: IngotWeTrust	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116972

Not nuts, just an industry insider instead of statistician. I live in a commercial goldbelt, remember? Not a week goes buy that another Kinross, PDG or other well-known name isn't sniffing around. Exploration goes by many names...and believe me, all the majors know where all the care and maintenance mines are that are mothballed for various reasons, not the least of which is gold price. And, as Peggy Witte proved so eloquently, each and every one mothballed back in the 30's up to FDR's edict in WWII shut down lingo...they all have zones between levels and deeper that readily yield more gold with L-I-T-T-L-E "exploration" efforts. Show me where on Bob's site you can find that he's figured out a way to quantify care and maintenance ounces and collates/tabulates THOSE oz with his "exploration" ounces number...I'll be the first one to slap him on the back and do the "atta'boy BOB!!!!!!!" thang if you can back up THAT interpretation of Bob's data to support your faulty argument!!! One of the reasons Enema Enigma hates me so is because I stuck it in his face early how "reserves" are run in and out of balance sheet "confessions" due to market conditions and just what a gold mining company wants his/her competition to know about. I'm personally know of 8 mines here on care and maintenance that have over a million ounces PLUS of drill proven reserves per EACH that haven't had an exploration program since about 1927--and THAT's using early 1900 drilling technology. Why should they prove up more...at these prices??? As a Barrick accountant, he couldn't stand me making the GENERALLY KNOWN practice of balance sheet asset manipulation a commonly known industry practice. Ditto A dude on ole Prodigy who called himself Denver Geologist. But it's true, never the less...it's one of the industry's little secrets...just like off balance sheet financing through the Cayman's is one of corporate America's Enron-like little secrets. In fact, I'll even go so far as to say there is NOT a gold industry related number reported by the biggies, let alone the mid-tier mining set that is a "clean resource calc number"---not even close. It's just the nature of the business and the way the gold mining business in particular is played. Did you know that Rothschilds...yes THEEEEEE Rothschilds still maintain their gold lab in your beloved Colorado--it too is on care and maintenance...one of their biggie "lab rat" techies is one of my personal and dearest friends in this business. Now tell me why Rothschilds with their already trillions of ounces IN GOOD DELIVERY FORM and out on lease would bother to keep CLOSE track of their former staff and their lab ready to walk into tomorrow and flip on the range hoods and heat up the furnaces at a moments notice---if they didn't know where the gold ounces already are? Exploration stats declining my foot!!! Hrmph! Product price ALWAYS dictates drilling programs...doesn't matter whether we are talking drill rig count for oil or for copper or zinc or tantalum or platinum...OR GOLD. But those with these massive care and maintenance ops on these properties don't need to "explore" when they already know what they are sitting on. However, keeping track of movement/availability of R/C drills is certainly one way to keep track of the pulse of increased "exploration" in this sector that is a hell of a lot more "accurate" than the official numbers released in the annual glossy reports by any publically traded mining major or mid-tier producer. If I can use an allegory:... one of the problems with the feds "unemployement stats" reporting every month is that the discouraged job seeker "falls off the head counting radar"/matrix, and is no longer included in the "unemployment" numbers. IF s/he is no longer receiving unemployement checks, the assumption is made that they are either not looking any more and don't qualify to be counted, or they have gotten a job which no one checks against the "Employeer/FICA" records so to speak. Or they are employed part-time like yourself, and don't get counted at all...in othewords, show me the category where 2 part-timers equals one whole "employed worker" category in those screwy unemployment numbers that thrills the Treasury Bond Market monthly in Chicago>????!!!!< Ditto the discouraged mining co. who isn't "reporting exploration" programs... These care and maintenance ops/ounces are simply under-reported, a niche which is being very actively explored out here in Eastern OR. Why explore for more when A) you already know what you have and most have "misplaced your EXISTING reserve calcs due to the passage of time, and B) why look for more during times of low prices...if one isn't mining but on care and maintenance status, where are the bucks going to come from to pay the "exploratory drillers?" I dare you OR Bob or any industry pundits for that matter to calculate, let alone report and quantify exploration stats when so much has already "fallen off the radar screens" statistically during periods of low prices. It's just like silver, Richard, there is OOOOOOOOOOoooooooOOOOOOOoodles of it out there. Maybe not in good delivery bar form, but its here, there, everywhere, just waiting for a price trigger to bring it flooding back onto the market and INTO good delivery bar form. Selah