I was doing some digging into the Yanacocha gold mine to use as a comparison to the Tesoro. I found what I think are some very interesting points.

The full size of the Yanacocha operation is approx 11km x 5 km. But within this total area, there are several pits, with the largest open pit being around 1.3km x 1.3km with a depth of approx 800m. The next biggest pit is around 900m x 900m with a depth of approx 400m. These estimates were taken by me by looking at google earth and measuring, I believe the image was a couple years old, so these pits are most likely a little bigger now.

The importance of the size, to me, is that the biggest pit could fit into the Tesoro and take us down into the heart of the anomaly very easily. Remember the size of our anomaly is 1.8 km x 1.7 km and with a depth of 1.3 km. Although our anomaly is bigger than the main pit at Yanococha, its possible the anomaly could be mined without having to get more property to the west. Also, the Yanacocha operation is the largest in Latin America, just to help put into perspective, the size of the anomaly. If we want to take this a step further, the full size of the Tesoro, since we got the new claims, is getting close to the full size of the Yanococha project. So, by this comparison, the Tesoro is big enough now to contain a large, if not one of the largest, open pit gold mining operations in the world. I believe its estimated that Yanococha contains 40 plus million ounces of gold.

I was looking at the early history of Yanacocha, and was pleased to find that little drilling had been done on this property before they went ahead with the mine and started pouring gold. Probably only around 60-70 holes were drilled looking for gold before they started mining and it may not have even been that many, because early drilling was focusing on silver. The main thing to get out of what I am saying is; they didn,t do much infill drilling at all to prove it up, they were satisfied with very few holes to go ahead with mining. They did infill drilling after they were already in production. This may help validify what I was saying before, that we don,t need a lot of holes drilled to get an offer. The big miners know what they are looking at with very few holes.

I also noticed that it only took them 1 year from the time they decided to mine, til they poured their first gold bar. Amazingly fast. I also saw that there first gold recovery rates from processing were very low,50-60%, they have brought the number up now to around 80%. Our early recovery rates from bulk samples were in the tune to 80-90% recovery rates, an excellent percentage. But getting back to their first recovery rates, they were mining this then (1992-93)and had an average grade of around 1.7 g/t to start, around .8 g/t in 2002 ,and have consistently dropped the grade over the years. Their cost to mine per ounce was around $140 p/o in 1993 to the same in 2002. So, real cheap to mine at only getting .8 g/t then.

So, for me, if we can average a gram per ton through that anomaly, we are off to the races big time. Thats probably why Lori hasn,t released any results yet , she knows it, and would like to get a little more proof in her back pocket.

IMO