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Gold/Mining/Energy : Maxam Gold Corp. OBB:MXAM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J.L. Turner who wrote (3320)	12/8/1997 12:50:00 PM
From: GlobalMarine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 11603

Hi JL: Glad to share my thoughts here. Looking at the Dec 2,97 news release, the word "efficient" doesn't refer to the extent to which all of the precious metals that are physically in the ore can actually be recovered, because it's impossible to count and weigh all the atoms of gold, silver, PGMs and so forth in the ore and I don't think there's a recovery method (economic or not) that can recover every last atom of PMs in an ore sample. In the good old days, as it were, chemical assays were the norm for assaying ore, and it was instructive because it shows an actual recovery of PMs. Now that fire assay is the norm, companies usually do not recover the PMs by directly smelting the ore, so fire assay doesn't represent a recovery grade. "Efficient" simply means recovery grade divided by fire assay grade in the press release. Kind of a hypish word perhaps, but then again it's possible that is the industry word to describe the extent to which recovery grades approximate fire assay grades. Hence, if fire assay shows up 2.51 oz/ton and the chlorine/bromine leach shows 5.25 oz/ton, while the "efficiency" may actually exceed 100% (recovery grade / fire assay grade exceeds 1), the head ore itself could possibly have, say, 7 oz/ton of gold but the chlorine/bromine leach takes out 5.1 oz/ton only. As regards magnetic fractions, have a look at the Jul 22,97 press release. The head ore sample is separated into two parts or fractions, magetic and non-magnetic and then individually assayed. So on the Dec 2,97 press release, they assayed the magnetic fraction for PGM content. PPB means parts per billion in terms of weight. Try thinking in metric terms and it's easier to understand. For instance, there are 1000 grams to 1 kilogram, and 1000 kilograms to a metric tonne. Hence, 1000 PPB means 1 PPM (part per million) which means 1 gram per tonne (one gram a tonne, BTW, is kind of a round-number minimum grade that hard rock mines need to make money, though it varies from mine to mine depending on type of ore body, infrastructure required, mine location, etc). Looking at the Dec 2,97 press release, it says 324 PPB, only a 1/3 gram a tonne, not that much. The attachments show a variety of different numbers, with recovery grades higher than that of fire assay. Sorry, J.L., but I don't know what the negative numbers for Osmium and Ruthenium mean. Typo perhaps? Regards, Rand