Who says the ball was dropped?

Having drill permits in hand is not the Holy Grail. Yes they will be required and they have been in the works for some time. Perhaps we were lead to believe they would be issued sooner than now but there has been significant changes both in the direction SLI has taken and with the regulator in Peru.

First and foremost, SLI, based on Quantec Phase 1, went on a claim staking spree. In hind sight, it is obvious that took priority. I applaud them for this.

The 43-101 clearly indicates the the EIS was submitted in August. My guess is that while the claim staking was taking place, the EIS was sidelined until the Peruvian gov't reorganized its regulations. Again I can't lay fault or blame.

So in Aug the EIS was formally submitted. In a time frame of 2 - 3 months it moved to the the consultation stage. To quote the Technical Report:

Currently, the Tesoro E.I.S. has been submitted to the Peruvian government and is under

review, ‘Observations” from the government review are expected by early October 2010.

Furthermore, there is still much work to do prior to drilling. If one goes to the Report's Recommendation Summary, As of the beginning of Oct there is at least 7 week of work to do prior to commencing the drill program. This assumes that all the tasks recommended would run concurrently, which they may very well not. Now factor in delays and FUF. It always takes longer and costs more than one thinks.

I think that taking extra time and care in doing all the prep work prior to drilling is most important. The better understanding of the entire property the geologists have by the mapping, sampling, trenching and geophysical compilation work they have the better. In fact if they spend twice as much time and money on recommendations 1A through 1D before beginning 1E is fine by me. Its the cheap part. $300,000 vs. $2,200,000

Better solid ground work laid and then the drills are aimed at higher probability targets than punching holes willie nillie.

As fast as pulling high yield cores will make us, bad cores will break us.

I believe the permits will be in place when they are truly required so I don't think the ball was dropped. Doing it right is more important than doing it fast, especially if we have what we are all hoping for.