I beleive Barricks gold reserves are due for some restocking. Barrick, to my knowledge, has not made any purchases in the last year to replenish. While other major,s have been active in aqusitions, it seems strange for Barrick to sit idly by while a lot of the gold resource is being snatched up. They have to be sitting on an awful wad of cash, whereas they didn,t compete in the aqusition game yet. They are saving their money to buy something! The Tesoro has the possibility of making 1 great company on its own, with a possible mine life of 20 years or more(probably a conservative number of years). The Tesoro has the potential to set Barrick for life (20 ,30 years).

As you mention Kherson, if the Pascua Lama doesn,t get approved, it will leave a large void, but as hog mentioned, he thinks it has approval, and as I will say, I dont think it will matter much in a decision to buy us, as I tried to explain why in the first paragraph.Remember, I think that article in my last post about Barrick was dated 2001.

It was interesting to me, to see the scale of the buyouts in the last while. Cliff,s Natural Resource offers $4 billion or so for Thompson Creek Metals and Goldcorp offered Andean 3.4 billion. These buyouts here would represent a $30 -$40 share price for us. Compare the quanity and quality of the resource bought to the Tesoro possibilty, and this again will give you extreme numbers for us.

Peter Munk is a smart man, and when he unhedged Barricks gold price that day, I listened to his reasoning on BNN. I beleive he is sitting and waiting for us. Here is an excerpt from Barricks web site about the unhedging and earnings.

History

2009

In 2009, Barrick met its original gold and copper production and cost targets and achieved some significant milestones. In addition to delivering the Buzwagi mine on time and on budget, Barrick significantly advanced its Pueblo Viejo project and advanced its Pascua-Lama project into construction. During 2009, Barrick also grew the industry’s largest reserves which are now 100% unhedged with the elimination of the Gold Hedges in the last quarter of 2009. The Company reported record adjusted net income of $1.8 billion1 and record adjusted operating cash flow of $2.9 billion2, up 9% and 29% over 2008, respectively