Two other drills will focus on converting inferred mineralization above the 1,200 metre elevation at Eagle's Nest to the measured and indicated classification.
Sorry folks, but I've been having major computer problems the last few days. Let me just say that if Bill Gates happened to be nearby, I'd be tempted to give him a knee to the cajones. Friggin' Winblows....A routine automatic upgrade corrupted my registry, or something like that. After spending way too many hours on it, I'm now hearing that a complete reinstall might be the only solution. Thanks, Bill.
I've already had a previous version of this message go off into never-never-land. They're never as good the second time around, but I shall press onwards nonetheless, and hope that this one makes it onto the board.
Under 43-101 reporting standards, inferred mineral resources cannot be used for economic assessments. Given that Noront has been taking bids for the completion of a feasibility study on the Eagle's Nest complex, the substantial inferred resource tonnage in the latest 43-101 Technical Report has to be upgraded, or it must be ignored for the purposes of the feasibility study. So, they must upgrade the inferred resource to the extent reasonably possible.
The problem arises from the fact that there are too few drill holes intersecting the body of mineralization below the previously identified Eagle 1 body. From the March 9 NR describing the completion of the TR, "Drill hole spacing is approximately 30 metres for the Indicated Resource and 70 metres in the areas of Inferred Resource." So, they will be carefully selecting drill parameters so as to infill the dataset, so that the Qualified Person completing an updated Technical Report can have greater statistical confidence in the continuity of grade, and the boundaries of the deposit itself. The latter issue is represented by the recurrent phrase describing the deposit as being "open on strike"; the boundaries of the deposit are not yet clearly defined. Conservative estimation of the deposit boundaries would likely underestimate the volume of the deposit, and thus limit the tonnage also. So, this infill drilling has the potential to not only upgrade the resource category for economic assessment, but perhaps also increasing the tonnage and even the average grade.
Once an economic assessment of the deposit is completed, it would be hoped that a significant proportion of the indicated and measured resource would be categorized as a mineral reserve, which would indicate that the mineral resource is thought to be economically recoverable. In other words, a reserve is a resource that you should be able to make money through mining it. There's not an exact correspondence between the two sets of concepts, but indicated resources tend to become probable reserves, and measured resources tend to become proven reserves.....subject to project economic viability, of course.
It's important that these definitions are understood by everyone, in my opinion, as they have been standardized under 43-101 reporting guidelines. Every time you see these specific words used, they have specific meanings defined in the following documents. I've somewhat simplified those definitions, above, to aid in comprehension, but the actual text of the definitions is neither very difficult nor technical. The Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (CIM) definition standards for mineral resources and reserves are here. The CIM guidelines for valuation of a mineral deposit are here. Other 43-101-related links are found here.
Lar
P.S. With these computer problems, and tax filing looming over me, I have to focus on solving my computer issues once and for all. That is likely going to involve migration to a new computer platform, so I'm not going to be around much for a little while.
