We know there's gold in them thar hills but it would be helpful to have some idea as to what would be a reasonable estimate for the BG area. The historical production amounted to about 4 million oz but is there some average value for greenstone belts? The company websites try to compare the BG play with others but they don't provide a source for their information so it's difficult to know how much is promotional. Most of the historical production is pre 1960, so it's without the benefit of geological models or geophysics. In fact most of the mines were incidental to highway and railway construction since overburden clearing and bedrock blasting were required. Given this history, it would be reasonable to expect to get at least double the historical production, which would be another 4 million oz. I believe Brian Maher was quoted with an estimate of 10 million oz but it wasn't clear if it was a total number or new resource. I've been searching for a good source of information and the best I've found so far is :
http://cgc.rncan.gc.ca/mindep/synth_dep/gold/greenstone/pdf/dube_gosselin_qtzcarbvein_synthesis.pdf
Their Table 1 provides a good summary of production and reserves for greenstone quartz vein deposits. The table is only current to year end 2002 bu that just means any estimates extracted will be conservative. They define the BG area as a district, so I'm going to assume we can compare districts to come up with an average value. I only used the 16 districts in the Superior province under the assumption that the gold bearing intrusives had similar concentrations. The average value for these 16 greenstone districts is about 12 million oz, which means it's reasonable to expect to find another 8 million oz in the BG gold camp. The next step is to review the resource estimates to date to see how we're doing. Ontex should be able to get their Brookbank resource estimate up to 1 million oz with additional drilling next year. Kodiak will be releasing a resource estimate in Q1 2010 which should be in the .5 to 1 million oz range. Premier Gold is expecting to produce a resource estimate in Q1 2010 to be followed by another one later in the year. There is a historical estimate of 1 million oz on the Hardrock property but I not sure what they will come up with since I haven't been following them. Their current market cap suggests a resource valuation of 3 million oz or more but I don't think that's likely based on the limited review I've done. Those are the resource estimates I've looked at so far and there may be others I'm not aware of. It appears the BG area will have somewhere in the 3-5 million oz range for resource estimates by the end of 2010. Then there's the upside prospects that require more work such as Kodiak Milestone, Kodiak West Geraldton, Sage King Solomon's Pillars and others. I don't see any problem coming up with 8 million oz over the next 2 years, which is just an average amount. I ask myself how much of this area in untested and my conclusion is that this area is likely to become above average. The next thing to look at is the land situation and clearly Kodiak is number one.I'm sure the big boys will start to get interested sometime next year as they can't afford to ignore a gold camp that may have 10 million oz or more potential.
