Re: i never said "sure bet" ...GNH is a very good bet ...1 in 2 for a mine
posted on
Feb 26, 2012 11:55AM
New Discovery Resulting in a 20KM Mineralized Gold Belt
Danny, I agree with you that the market is fickle and that this is what creates opportunities, huge opportunities in cases like GNH.
However, your claim that GNH, AT THIS POINT has a 50% chance of becoming a mine based on a preponderance of evidence is wrong and dangerous!
The experts at SGS and Tilsley still cannot agree on the genesis of the deposit.
The whisper number for the 43-101 is 500k ounces. However the drilling has shown that the deposit is not a uniform body starting at surface going down for miles like the original thinking was that lead to the claims of 100M tons of ore.
What we do have is a fair size ore body, close to surface that is irregular in shape and should yield somewhere around 500k ounces as a first RE. The contained gold has been shown to have excellent recoveries where gravity alone yielded a median of 84.8% and with cyanidation, reached 98.3 as a median. This more than any drill results supports a better than average chance of GNH becoming a mine.
The biggest challenges right now are:
Getting the necessary tonnage to justify building a mine.
Having an ore distribution that makes extraction economical.
The first challenge is getting reduced with every set of good assays we get. However, assuming our first RE comes out at 500k ounces, we still need 2.5M ounces to bring us to the magic 3 million ounces that most serious gold mining companies will need to consider to buy us out. That is still a long way from done and we will need time, money and the good graces of mother earth to get there. Having said that, getting good results in the 88 zones and Champagne zone will increase our chances of getting to 3M ounces considerably. I would even say we are close to a tipping point where we could go from 1 out of 10 to 1 out of 5 with good results in both locations. When these results come out, if positive in both zones, it would justify a share price around 60-70 cents IMO.
The second challenge is ore distribution to make extraction economical. At this point, we do not even know if we will be better off with an open pit or an underground operation. We need more drilling to get a good model of the distribution of the gold and then we need a mining engineer to look at our results to formulate a mining plan. This is all part of a pre-feasibility and feasibility study and is beyond anyone here. I am hopefull that with our resource so close to surface and grade improving at depth that we will receive a positive pre-feasibility study but it certainly is not a given at this point.
These are the reasons I think our chances are 1 in 10 Danny, not because of the valuation the market is giving us. It was just an interesting coincidence that I wanted to note that my take over price is 10x our current share price.
The graphite history in the Champagne zone where they found graphite up to 15% over a potential 5km length would add very serious fire power to our potential. This however, at this point is really an unproven scenario and should not be a significant factor for anyone thinking of buying shares at this time.
Respectfully,
Glorieux