tenski,

Post says: Mineral rights (minerals in, on or under the ground) are held by the mining company and surface rights (all trees on ground)are owned by the timber company. Since both companies are private, the mining company has to negotiate with the timber company in order to get access to the area in question.

It sounds reasonable, just like a home owner would have the surface right, but a mining company if they stake their claims at the same location, then the company would have the mineral right underneath the house, they can explore, dig as long as the digging is deep enough so that no damage would be done to the home (e.g. a sink hole would swallow the house). The other option would be to buy off the home owner(s), so the company can have both surface and mineral right.

For the case at hand PRB has a similar situation with the cottagers (about 10 of them) on the far side of the lake. But I am not sure about the timber people about their rights. Perhaps some expert could weight in.

Assuming that the timber people have only the right for their trees, then PRB is free to dig underneath (deep enough so that the digging would not impede the timber operation). This would apply to the wedge area, if no open pit is planned for this area.

For the 50-50 JV, it would be different, on two counts: (i) there is a JV and (ii) most likely it would be an open pit area, at least a small one to access the high grade zone.

Wrt the cottages, just looked at slide 13 (the one that shows the elongated deposit with a break at the wedge (which has not been JV'd) and if one extend the strike toward the SE (not an accurate extraopolation) the extension would seem to miss the cottage area. At most it would touch the first (NE) cottage only (the cottages are in the white area), but next comes the green area (lumber again) before hitting the 100% Probe area.

If the lumber people don't have the mineral right then what would prevent Probe from going under to look around and to mine the deposit which is located deep enough for not disturbing the timber above?

In summary, except for the current 50-50 JV, Probe should go ahead to build an access ramp for an underground exploration. Anyone had a chance to have this kind of discussion with Dave?

goldhunter