When I read several months ago that ECU was exploring at properties other than Valerdena, my first thought was that we were losing our focus and that we needed to concentrate our avalible finances on what we already have. Today's news release by chairman Roy contains the key to why we are exploring offsite. That key is the fact that 97% of our Velerdena resorce is sulphide ore while only 3% is oxide ore. According to our January 2009 NI43-101, we have 1,454,000 tonnes of oxide ore, or at least we did when the report was issued. Since then we have mined 100,081 tonnes of oxides in 2009 and 149,164 tonnes of oxides in 2010. Since we are now mining higher tonnage by using cut and fill, we will need to mine 200,000 tonnes of oxide ore per year to feed the oxide mill at a rate of 550 tpd.

If we assume we have mined another 70,000 tonnes of oxides so far this year, we should now have 1,134,755 tonnes left. But not all of those tonnes are avalible. Some are in veins that do not have any nearby mine workings. About 402,100 tonnes of our oxides are at the San Diego mine and I do not know if we want to mine this ore due to fact that Golden Tag recently tried to sue us out of existance. Subtracting the San Diego tonnage leaves us with 732,655 tonnes. At our burn rate this is another 3 years 8 months worth if every last tonne other than San Diego is mined.

This apparently is the reason we are exploring at the Nazas property reported today by Mr. Roy. He did not tell us much about the property, but did say that the mineralized zone is 15 meters wide at the surface, processes well at our oxide mill, and may be bulk mineable. Sounds good to me and I hope we hear more soon such as grade, strike, and depth of the mineralization.