Have you not been reading my posts ?
Did you not note the large capital letters... and the brilliant red text ?
I don't think I've been in the least bit ambiguous about my dissatisfaction with a management who are apparently failing on purpose... and concurrently... in more ways than one.
My prior posts have made it clear enough that I think that there are only a couple of possible explanations for the serial mistake that HAS BEEN made and repeated, here:
1. First is that they really didn't know what they were doing initially... so that fundamental ignorance about "how best to proceed" meant that they couldn't figure out the need to recover the grid themselves back in 2008 when they should have done it as the first order of business... or couldn't figure out how to do it. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of management... but, it allows that simple inexperience could gain from the benefit of a learning curve... which appears to not have occurred.
3. Another is that, with a flat learning curve, they are also blindingly incompetent... so that they couldn't even follow a simple two step program and get the steps in the right order... Or, after the first failure, they weren't capable of reading... so they didn't clearly understand what the 1st Chance report clearly required of them in the two step sequences of: a. recover the grid, b. drill holes. Chance's first report puts a professional opinion in their hands that unambiguously obviates management ignorance as an excuse. Note, also, though... that even an effort made in trying to claim ignorance or illiteracy as an excuse... is hardly a ringing endorsement of management, much less the quality in the management effort that attaining a success requires?
2. Another is that they've failed on purpose in crossing that threshold to prove the resource... and in many ways that looks like it is the most likely case. That, if true, still isn't necessarily a full proof of nefarious intent and nothing but... however, note carefully, it is quite fully consistent with that potential in nefarious intent, and nothing but. It leaves wide open the need to ask the question... about whether what they've done in failing repeatedly, even failing in serial fashion in making the same mistake repeatedly, while failing to adhere to the recommendations in the first Chance report... is in fact an intentional practice of fraud...
There is a range of potentials that spans from "we will not promote a pink sheet"... perhaps meaning that they have, wrongly, never intended to deliver any of that type of success without having first escaped the limits of the pink listing... to a multiple fork in the road... that veers between a range of options from purely purposeful fraud... to the potential of management infighting enabling and perhaps driving mistakes and errors that have been allowed...
It is not possible to fully sort that out... without knowing more than is known now about many things...
What is true... is that whether due to intentional fraud... due to a level of professional incompetence that is not able to be corrected with paid professional advice... or due to an ongoing struggle for control and/or direction of the effort... they have repeatedly failed in a circumstance where it is not plausible that they should.
The evidence in hand now requires recognizing that it is NOT CREDIBLE, as a practical matter, given at least three swings at it... that they've failed three times (or more) in crossing the threshold to proving the resource.
Initially, perhaps they were ignorant about the need or how to meet it... so "strike one" perhaps due only to ignorance (which is not a recommendation of management quality) which meant the first NI43-101 didn't hit the target: The first report didn't define a resource when everyone (correctly) expected that it should. The minimal threshold that existed then (and now) to proving the resource by making historic information current... was then, and is now, ample reason to believe it should be a simple matter to prove the resource current.
The first Chance report removes that potential for claiming ignorance as an excuse... and given all the efforts that have been made in the time since that report came out they should have easily satisfied the requirements. That they did not... is strike two.
Then, add the current round of effort in "ready, fire, aim" drilling... desperately driven by Dan in spite of others advocating patience... which effort proceeded to again duplicate the prior mistakes exactly, as if the Chance report did not exist... or as if the grid had been recovered when it had not been. So, that recent round of drilling driven and promoted by Dan Byrnes... failed... in strike three.
Is it plausible that they actually believed they had recovered the grid when they had not ? Their own statements... directly from Dan... make the astounding assertion that it didn't actually matter if they had... only because "no one would know the difference" if they lied about it and proceeded without it as if they had it. In the unambiguous result, they clearly CLAIMED to have recovered the grid when they had not... and proceeded as if they had when they had not... and now they are trying to posture as good guys, after the fact of being exposed in that lie by someone accidentally finding physical evidence of a prior hole that clearly exposes and proves the lie about their ever having properly recovered the entire grid.
That will require asking hard questions about who did that work... what they were directed to do... and who said what to who about the result and the value of the result... that allowed Dan Byrnes to claim they'd met best practices in the effort made to recover the grid... enabling them to proceed as if they had.
My opinion, stated here clearly enough before, is that it is NOT AT ALL HARD to accomplish that task... of relocating the grid. The current report backs that analysis: that it is not at all a difficult task. That it is not at all hard... is reason enough that I, and others, have been willing to assume that it WAS accomplished.
The current "2nd Chance" report removes that as a question... by SPECIFICALLY DIRECTING them in "how to" proceed from here... in a way that anyone with a clue would already know... with the direction provided this time meaning even those as clueless as SRSR management appear to be... cannot possibly get it wrong.
The 2nd Chance report makes it clear, at a minimum, that the current management appear, at the best, to be blindingly incompetent, as in "not having a clue". The current report appears it has been dumbed down in being written at a simpler third grade reading level... to ensure there is no possible potential for misreading it. The report directs them in HOW TO DO things that it should never have a need to address... and it appears it very carefully avoids going beyond that "focus on recovering the grid" direction by NOT presenting any other recommendations... as that might only distract them. This report backs that deliberately dumbed down and still scathing view of management ability... with a number of other items that in aggregate are reinforcing.
The report is most meaningful, to me... in the things it DOESN'T say directly... that it really should.
First, being a geological report... it can't come right out and say "management is incompetent"... however it succeeds in that anyway. The issue with holes drilled with magnetic induced wander that requires re-logging them with gyroscopic instruments in order to ensure solid enough position data to make them useful... really isn't a major thing in terms of the data quality impacting the resource definition... mostly because validating the historic resource is far more dependent on recovering accurate position data for the historic holes than it is on recovering more accurate position data for holes SRSR drilled... which don't contribute much anyway. That the report uses the device of striking through SRSR's information to show it as "not passing grade"... is telling.
SRSR's homework has been graded... and found wanting. It is an embarrassment.
The same is true of the report handling of the QA/QC problems... which is again NOT a new issue... but another instance of work done that will need to be re-accomplished to make the result matter..
A new issue presented in the claim that SRSR's work drilling vertical holes versus more precisely twinning the angles of the Gulf Dominion work... has wasted effort and reduced the potential value of the information provided... relative to drilling new holes at angles that might work better in proving true widths. I don't fully agree with that opinion.
Still, based on this report:
Warren Hawkins should be fired and replaced.
Dan Byrnes should be fired.
Scott Keevil should be fired.
The board members should all die of embarrassment.
This company requires better leadership... a far more competent leadership... than that it has now.
Of course, that puts you back into the chicken or the egg debate... which isn't at all about the geology or the sequence of event... while the chicken or the egg debate... is not ever resolved by both frying the chicken and scrambling the eggs.
It is not at all clear that it is even possible to fix any of it... now.
That's where we are now. It is simply FACT that you cannot avoid the problems the report reveals... only some of which we were aware of before it came out.
Putting the "geological report" in context of other information ?
Awareness that existing management are challenged in crossing a simple threshold that appears it presents very little obstacle... and has never been much of an obstacle... is not a proof that anything is made better by making things worse and doing things even WORSE than they were done before... while adding in an additional layer of management who are even more clueless... or, adding in a layer of conflict over control, between competing clueless parties. But, neither is the failure just delivered evidence that reducing the obstacle the threshold represents... which has happened in spite of management's efforts... will make it any easier to drag the management kicking and screaming across that threshold if they don't want to cross it.
But, that's where we are... and what it seems we've got, now...
Scott's approach versus Dan's was still significantly MORE correct... or, at least, "consistent with" more correct... although the evidence in hand now requires recognizing, and logic requires, that there is a difference between that circumstance and causality. More correct in relation to and based on the circumstances... doesn't mean that being more consistent with the circumstances would ever matter in proving a different result... if they don't want to deliver that result. The burning wreckage of that last round of funding and the roundly failed effort it enabled... does nothing at all now to suggest that patience wasn't then the vastly better option... than "hurry up and fail faster".
There is more than one way to explain Scott's "patience"... and his interest in sustaining it.
One is that he truly was on top of things and knew being patient was the right approach due to market conditions... and other factors... like having not yet recovered the grid well enough to enable acting on it, or not yet having figured out how to recover it well enough, etc. We obviously don't know what they knew and when they knew it... or how the events that have unfolded relate to the nature of the decisions considered.
The only clear impact of Dan's "effort" thus far... is to dramatically amplify the risks...
Another potential... is that while Scott wasn't on top of things at all, he still knew that being in too much of a hurry couldn't help... and would only amplify the risks... which is exactly correct... and fully proven, now. Those advocating "hurry, hurry, hurry"... were flaming idiots... and their idiocy is proving costly to all of us, now... save perhaps those who "traded" on an expectation that putting a known ignorant basher in charge... might fail... or, those who might still benefit, if a success ever does occur, from throwing the rest under the bus to do private placements far below the market based on the Dan Byrnes driven expectation that it was not possible that another round of funding could deliver another failure... which it has.
Another potential is that Scott wasn't on top of things at all... in a positive way... but is in terms of never really intending to allow this to succeed in EVER proving a resource. And, that potential would be consistent with Scott and Dan working together to create a conflicted situation that makes success increasingly unlikely... which seems it is what we see occurring in fact... lacking only proof of that being their intent. Of course, that would be fully consistent with the routine pattern that does occur in almost every stock scam... failure often being the outcome desired and most easily enabled by those working for that from inside the companies.
Another, of course, that the waiting game was largely about patiently building potential in information that would only serve to more dramatically amplify impacts... when the threshold WAS finally crossed...
Perhaps that event only delayed significantly if not prevented by Dan's purposeful interferences...
Scott's understanding (?) of and approach to timing was correct... in being consistent with the requirements of the situation. Scott NOT being in too much of a hurry was... is now all that much more obviously... correct...
Equally as obviously, that view of managing better, or optimally, in relation to timing... is not capable of being an excuse for screwing up big time and by the numbers, repeatedly, in those things most critical to success in the most basic items in operational performance.
However, neither is it at all rational to expect that anything can be improved significantly... by both making it vastly worse... and fighting over it...
Dan's "ready, fire, aim"... clearly a disaster... delivering exactly the opposite of everything he promised when selling his ideas and himself to those who foolishly bought into the flagrant BS that he spun...
Motives ? Intent ? Who can tell... without conducting discovery.
Fortunately... or not... it appears that at least some discovery will occur... that might reveal those things. |
