Greaser, I would like to make some comments on this part of your post;

"If the majors want the property on the basis of the open pit and the anomaly I think they would also be aware of the potential of the other two unknowns. These form the basis for an offer when they are buying what is fairly well known and what is a good potential for adding to their reserves. I think Lori and her knot of specialists, including the Quantec engineer are firstly going to make sure that they know the grade of gold in that eastern deep area before committing to any offer, thus this appears to be a priority for the deep drill that is resting there, hopefully right now. They seem to think there may be impressive grades there and don’t want to not confirm this possibility."

I have been asking myself and as of late, a few others, why the deep drills at this time?

There is so much unexplored at the surface that needs to be tested. We have numerous Titan targets at/near surface, all over that property.An initial buyer would be interested in all of the surface proof,s before he was interested in the deeps. The surface for an open pit mine is the most important and needs to be evaluated before they ever consider whats at depths of 500m,s and beyond.The surface is where you start mining on an open pit, and all data from that area has to be considered before a decision is made to go ahead with a mine.I would assume most of the surface proof is done at this stage in the game via trenching and surface samples over wide areas. So, I am guessing that Lori has that proof in her hands by now, it wouldn,t seem logical for her to bring in deep drills, if she didn,t. Keep in mind, she is doing things systematically and use that common addage here," horse before the cart" when reading my whole post. It may give you the best perspective into what I am trying to say.

So, in my thoughts, you start proving up a property from the surface down. You prove what you can at surface because you need this important data to guide you at lets say 200m depths when drilling. You prove up the top 200-500m of surface in our case and proceed to depth after you have a darn good representation of whats within that first 500m. You don,t drill to depth this early in the game unless you have very compelling evidence that the shallow targets are economical. See, the depth could be drilled as a measure of mine life, but this comes way later in the game for almost any property. It would take 7-10 years for any miner to even get to the 500m level, by going by time periods of other mines, the 500- 1500 could take 10-25 years to get down there. So, the biggest question would be, why is she trying to prove up an area at this early stage in the game, that would normally be proven up after there has been 100,000,s of meters of drilling done to the shallow in other companies deposits?

You might use the argument, that well she didn,t find enough widespread surface gold to warrant an open pit mine, and is trying to prove up the depth of veins so she at least has something worthy of a mine. I would disagree with this argument on the basis that still the surface has to be proven up first. We have 2 adits that we have bulk sample grades of ~1 oz/t, these are rich areas, and by proving these areas up near the surface at 50m intervals would take a lot of drilling and time, but it would be the first thing you would do if you couldn,t prove up a resource worthy of an open pit. We had, as of a couple years ago, 50 plus veins at surface. There is little doubt in my mind, that this has possibly increased considerably since then due to further trenching and exploration. Don,t try to tell me thay may have found more veins, but they may be barren of gold. I wouldn,t buy this for a second and I think good evidence of that would be the latest found vein, the N-1 vein. This vein was found last year as a result of proof testing the geophysics.The geo went to an area that was previously thought to be low in gold values, dug a hole, and found a vein with a gold grade of around 2.5 ozs/t or 70 g/t or better. This new vein alone would require much drilling to define its extent, and 6 holes or so would not do it. So, why take shots in the dark with deep drills where we have so much at surface that can be drilled now.

This leaves me with the opinion, that if Lori knew we were safe from any premature offers, she would continue to take her time, and prove up the surface. Why waste money on deep drills if we are early in the proving up stage? I would guess that the drill holes hit in the anomaly and it caused her to go deeper to look for a possible source and maybe even a higher grade part of a deposit. If she revealed drill holes now from the anomaly and they were excellent, a possible offer could come. With so much left to prove on the Tesoro, an offer on the table, people selling some stock, she could lose control of the situation and be forced to accept a low ball offer. She would have never had the chance to prove up the deep mine life, that could add immense value to the sale of the shareholders. She most likely thinks that the best course of action for now is to set on these results for as long as she can, because she needs time to prove this up to a degree to get maximum value. By releasing results too early, could jeopardize her strategy and the shareholders may never get the true value for their shares.

By drilling deep, gives Lori a couple aces in her back pocket at the time of an offer. A hostile bidder cannot come in and say, ok, you got 500m from surface proven up, we offer x amount of dollars. Because Lori can then say, hold on, we have 1000m below that 500m, that says our resource could be much bigger at depth and here is the proof. The hostile bidder is then forced to up his bid, or risk other interests coming into the bidding with the realization and proof that the resource is much larger than initially anticipated.

Look, I could be 100% wrong on my thoughts, but for now, this is what I am thinking.