Hello Cowboy,
Your post says among other things: "... it is simply legally defensible and lets the consultants sign their names to it without fear of law suits".
My comments are as follows:
- You raised quite a few interesting points, especially the one above, so I would deal with it first.
- This statement is quite true, since the consultants are getting paid to do a decent job, based on facts (the drill data, etc.) and scientific/engineering principles and practices so that their results would be acceptable to the engineering scientific communities... and in compliance with the rules for the NI catergory. Yes, there are rules that they have to follow and the Regularors are quite sticky about methodology (e.g. interpolation and extrapolation of the drill data) and even wording (using a wrong word would get some scolding). The consultants must have a licence to work in this business (e.g. professional engineer qualification, the P.Eng. title). Doing the wrong thing would cause a loss of licence... and livelyhood, since their reputation would be ruined ans nobody would want to deal with them.
However, some other remarks in your post are in the pessimistic side, for example:
- Water: Excessive water beyond the capacity of pumping capacity is certainly an important factor. All miners have to take this seriously and this would be one of the factors that would have to be addressed in the PEA and BFS based on the geological facts. Ground water is an important issue, not only from the potential flooding point of view, but also in the potential negative effect of the mining operation to the environment. Everybody, especially self-proclaimed "environmentalist", is talking about the EA these days, and all miners are aware of that, since that is the first thing people would raise. For the miners (and bankers), flooding of a mine would be the first thing they would need to avoid before millions/billions of dollars are spent on building the mines. One expensive and painful example was the flooding of Cigar Lake Mine traping billions of dollar worth of deposit and underground equipement under water.
- Resource: Resource estimates, in compliance with the NI standard, are real, and the rules are quite specific, e.g. they do not allow the "inferred" category to be included in a subsequent economic assessment, but "inferred resources" are useful as an indicator of the size of the deposit (they also real numbers that have to be based on factual data).
- Arm waving estimates: This should not be considered as arm waving, since the consultants must be prepared to defense their numbers to the world. A better name for it would be "sensitivity analysis" which must be again based on actual data, sound engineering principles and practices.
Pit versus Underground (UG): This is an interesting point. Given the "tightness" of the deposits (columnar), especially the higher grade East pipe, there is some merit in considering an UG operation from the beginning, rather than the 2-stage: open pit then UG at certain depth. There are 2 important factors, using NOT Eagle's Nest Ni proposal as an example.
- EA: It would seem that UG is more acceptable than open pit for some reason (out of sight aout of mind?) NOT has the entire operation, including waste, underground.
- Price: Assuming a price in the range of $8000/tonne, or ~$3-4 /lb, this would compare favourable with a Ni operation (~$ 6-7/lb ?).
The NOT Eagle deposit is similar, straight down just like the ZEN deposits, but they have data at greater depth. ZEN deposits are open at depth, but data not yet available...It would be interesting to sink a long drill bit to find out how deep this would be. They may find the body of an up-side down elephant below. The East and the West pipes are just the two legs?
If this were the case then they would need to start over with their predictions...But, in my opinion, the East pipe alone would provide enough deposit to make some serious money in many years, if ZEN wants to be a miner. There would be no need to chase the elephant body, unless ZEN wants to cash in and sell the entire deposit to some major when the SP goes balistic when/if the first few drill holes showing evidence of the elephant body.
Cheers,
goldhunter
