bill pincus, the ceo of esperanza silver gave an fairly long interview at financialsense.com.  you can find it near the end of the third hour on the broadcast page.

of interest to us is especially the san luis joint venture, but sso is also the largest stockholder in epz, with 14% of the shares.  epz is in an enviable position for a junior exploration company, as it has a joint venture partner with deep pockets (that's us) which is funding all of the development of the san luis joint venture.  so epz retains a 20% interest in san luis, and doesn't have to spend any money on it.  pincus would like to see a production decision on san luis by the end of this year (and so would i!)

it appears that they have found another mineralized area at san luis, called the bp zone, and sso should have the necessary permits within a few weeks, and will then start drilling aggressively.

their other advanced project is the 100%-owned cerro jumil, a large tonnage but relatively low-grade deposit.  pincus said there is no question there is an ore deposit, they just don't know how big it is yet.  epz has $14.5 million in the bank, which is enough to do the scoping study, and go most but not all of the way to full feasibility.

epz should have a resource estimate for cerro jumil this summer, but even if all goes well, it won't go into construction until at least late 2010, so it is a year behind san luis.  the company may issue some equity to fund the feasibility study, but building a mine will require major financing.  this is a company with a $60 million market cap, and it will need say $150 million, and maybe more, to build a mine at cerro jumil.  by that time, san luis should be in production, so the logical thing to do would be to sell its 20% interest in san luis to sso.

a lot can happen between now and then, but trying to issue equity to build cerro jumil would result in massive dilution for a company of this size.  of course epz may yet hit something at one of its other targets.  if it makes a discovery at one of its other projects, that would certainly help its share price, and its ability to raise money through a stock offering.  but the one asset it has, and could monetize to fund the construction of a mine is its 20% interest in san luis.   this depends on the price of silver and gold at the time, as well as epz's ability to raise money in the equity markets, and a lot of other factors, but i think there is a good chance that sso will eventually end up with the entire san luis project.