Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Gold/Mining/Energy : GITENNES Exploration (ase:GIT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elizabeth Andrews who wrote (989)	8/26/1998 1:44:00 PM
From: E. Charters	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1092

Well the main problem with them is they don't have the in depth drilling or open pit delineation expertise where needed. They persisted with drilling in a rock where they got in places 5% core recovery and 5 metres a day in difficult situations and wasted the most precious resource. Time. I advised them to use an oil rig, high torque low speed drill that will recover the rock and do it fast. The 150 a foot cost no doubt would have made them reject it. BUT, what do they waste in time at 5 metres a day with a staff of 20? They had 10,000,000 to drill with. At 150,000 a 1000 foot hole they could have drilled 60 definitive holes. Admittedly expensive. But they would have a delineated open pit and enough sample to do a mini bulk metallurgy. The other solution was to go underground right away and do enough drifting to get the same answer with a pilot mill. That would have cost the same thing. In the final analysis it cost about 25 million to do an open pit feasibility on a property like that. BUT, let's say you decided to wildcat it. A few holes tell you it is wide and semi consistent with some really good high grade and some average low grade over terrific widths and it is heap leachable (it is). Well, 25 million will do a stacker and plant and trucks. So you cut the pit since it is already 400 feet wide, such that you MIGHT go to 1200 feet deep if the ore is there.. removing waste trucks at 1.00 a ton from the top and making money on the ore as you go. You could heap leach and make enough money in one year with those widths to drill off the rest and discover, IF you have to go to 1200, 800, or only 600 on the open pit final depth. What have you lost from a shallow bench of the top that was a tad too wide? Not much. The top waste can be ripped and the shallow stuff is dirt cheap to remove, so it is not going to prejudice the rest of the wide and sometimes high grade ore that is also dirt cheap and high profit. But they did not get that brave. They were as cautious as lambs. Lions develop ore bodies. Not hyenas or lambs. EC<:-}