i expect pirquitas will go into production this month or next, but not reach commercial production until the second quarter. for one thing, the silver circuit will be the first one completed, since that's where most of the value is. so when they do start production, they may not have the tin and zinc credits, and the costs will appear higher in the second quarter than we can expect later on in the year when all of the problems will have been worked out.

in a way, that's just as well. now they will be selling their silver for $13+, while if they had gone into production a couple of months ago they would have been selling it for $9-10.

the next piece of important news should be the san agustin project, early this coming week. geologix exercised a 60-day option to purchase the property from silver standard back in december, and the deadline is february 10. so now geologix has to come up with $34 million in cash, and with their stock trading at 23 cents, that is going to be a tall order. they have done lots of drilling, and proved up a resource of 3 million oz of gold, 85 million oz of silver and large amounts of zinc and lead. it's low grade, but there's a lot of it.

silver standard owns 1 million shares of geologix, so maybe they will work something out, but business is business.