I was just playing around with some numbers to see how economically viable the Tesoro could be. Although these numbers are close estimates I use, I beleive they will put me in range for what I was attempting to do. For an exploration company to find a big enough deposit to become a mine is no easy task. I beleive it was said somewhere that the percent of exploration companies finding resources capable of becoming profitable mines, is extremely low. I will try to show you that we have at least one in the Tesoro, and maybe several, depending on how you look at it.

At Pascu Lama, one of Barricks mines, they move 45,000 tons of earth a day. Now mind you, all the earth does not contain gold, but I wanted the tonnage of dirt that could be moved at an open pit mine per day.

So, for instance, on the Tesoro, 45000 t earth moved a day, say if this soil did average .5 g/t, that would equal 22,000 g/t gold a day. That equates into 700 ozs per day and over 200,000 ozs per year, based on a 300 day year. A .5 g of gold today is worth approx $22. If you take in mining costs from pg 19 of the link provided below, you will see that it approx costs $16 to mine a gram of gold at the Pacu Lama. That would give the company a profit margin of approximately 40%. That is a nice profit and very economical!

http://www.silverwheaton.com/Theme/SilverWheaton/files/docs_silver%20streams%20tech.%20reports/2009-10-28_Pascua-Lama_TR_(amended%20FINAL)%20(2).pdf

Another thing to mention is; Hog has showed you in some of his previous posting that there are mines in operation with grades of gold being mined at .2 g/t.

I beleive I have been conservative in my numbers on this post and it shouldn,t be hard to see that we have a mine at the Tesorro. 1 mine should support an sp of at least $7 or $8 with approx dimensions of 1500 meters cubed. The facinating thing to me is, its very possible to have several of these small mines contained within the original Tesorro land package. Any and everyway I look at the Tesorro, its at least one mine, we proved that by the small scale high grading mining we have done there our selves. I say high grading because the tailings piles have not been processed and quite possibly could contain an average grade of 1g/t, way above the economical grade of ,2 g/t. The economical grade of the tailings pile would most likely be very low, like .1 g/t because it is just lying there on the surface and could easily be scooped up and processed. It did say in the technical report that all the tailings piles from our limited mining can be processed at a later time.

When an explorer finds enough deposit to be able to claim they have a mine, they are a success. SLI hasnt claimed this YET, but I know we do! And I beleive very shortly that the industry and investment community are gonna realize this!

My freinds, I think this is the start of one exciting ride!