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Gold/Mining/Energy : Precious and Base Metal Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E. Charters who wrote (25914)	12/23/2003 5:00:15 PM
From: Condor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 39344

. the thing to keep your eye on with PFN is the scale of the resource. It is low grade rock, but it is remarkably consistent, and perhaps vast. Freudian slip? :o) If its economical its ore and if not its rock (waste). Thanks for the detailed opinions on River Valley Eric. IMO hank90210 is on to something... palladium at $500 will be a serious catalyst. Would you care to comment on the lack of interest in Palladium (witness the price)? For the life of me, I don't understand the disconnect. If I remember correctly while doing drilling penetration testing in the Ind. Eng. dept. at Falco we had usual hardness of 50,000 P.S.I. in rock. Sulphides.....ahhhh...like butter. Had to watch against mudding the bits. Cheers C

To: E. Charters who wrote (25914)	12/23/2003 10:09:08 PM
From: hank2010	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 39344

"There have never been a core intersection like that anywhere else ever drilled" That's a pretty wild statement Eric! Sheridan used to always report his results as "platinum group metals" and tried to hide the fact that the ratio was 6 parts pd to 1 part pt. (when pd went higher than pt they changed the name to North American Palladium). And let's face it they (the company, not the promoters and their cronies) never made any money mining that "low grade rock" until pd prices went way up. In 1989 your 1400 foot intersection was worth $13.65 per ton. At $400 gold that works out to .034 oz/ton. Talk to the Newmont boys, or the Battle Mountain boys or the other Nevadans. Or talk to the Noranda/Hemlo gold crew. The Golden Sceptre property to the west of the Lac Minerals deposit had enormous lengths of low grade gold. They did not call it ore though. Or talk to them Sudbury boys about Inco's Victor or Falconbridge's property in the same area. I remember + 20 foot intersections of +20% copper with multiple ounces of gold and multiple ounces of pgms. If the wall rock was barren and you spread that +$3000 per ton material over 1400 feet you would still have a better grade than .07. Murray Pezim used to claim his Eskay Creek intersections were the best ever seen! I have drilled rock on 3 continents. Anywhere else is like drilling in a snowbank compared to Sudbury. Even the taconites in Labrador and Minnesota are a lot easier. Check with the drill bit manufacturers. The expensive, but top quality Fagersta/Secoroc and Sandvik bits and steel are the weapons of choice in Sudbury. Nobody else can measure up. I have a buddy in Missouri who manufatures drill bits and ships across the country and to Africa. He freely admits that his bits will not measure up in sudbury rock. The toughest rock in Sudbury, IMO is the Wahnapitei quartzite. If it is fine grained, it not only drills slow,but it is abrasive as all get out! It will wear the skirts off your bits before the carbide is finished. There are places in Sudbury where Bucket teeth on excavators have to be changed every day. And it is not the hardness of the rock that is the prime determinant in the design of pit walls. It is the fractures, faults and stresses that are more important in keeping a stable wall. Look at the jagged rock cuts through Northern Ontario (except for relatively homogenous granites) and compare them with those steep but smooth faced walls in the soft rock of Kentucky and West Virginia or the Virgin River Canyon on Interstate 15 in the arizona Strip. I also disagree with you as to the effect of labor costs on mining costs. The best loader operator I have ever seen anywhere worked for me on a project in Zimbabwe. I made sure he was the highest paid man on the job. They paid him the equivalent of $110 per month. The hydraulic shovel operator was good also. could have gotten a job at any mine in the world (with the right visa!). I understand the Autoworkers represent Falco workers in the Sudbury area. In the Detroit area, the costs of benefits for the retired autoworkers are said to add $1000 to the cost of each vehicle. Placer Dome has recently learned about an additional cost of open pit mining in this country. Ted Turner, the Greater Yellowstone coalition and natural resources Council have held them up thru court action at Golden Sunlight. In their view open pits should be reclaimed by back-filling! I looked at an underground operation that my client expressed interest in buying from Lonrho. 10 foot vein dipping at 45 degrees, so the muck would not even flow. They were making money at .04 opt gold. That opened my eyes! there is a different concept among Africans as to what is economic compared to Canada and the U.S.