"Arequipa was bought out with ~29 holes, we now have 43 holes done. With all the trenching,geophysics and drill holes, plus historic data, we should have way more than enough data, once compiled, for an offer to become formal."
Since St. Elias is often compared to Arequipa on this forum, I thought I'd have a look at their historic drill results. They are actually quite hard to find. And while I don't know a lot about the history of Arequipa Resources and their Pierina deposit, the little bit of information I could find showed some interesting facts. More on this in a minute.
When majors go looking for projects to acquire, they take into account more than just the number of ounces in the ground. The average grade is as important as the size and shape of resource's footprint, how deep it's buried, and how many other challenges exist infrastructurally, topographically and geologically. The higher the grade, the closer to surface, and the closer to infrastructure ect., the lower the cost to produce and therefore more desirable.
The Pierina deposit appeared to be high grade, very close to surface and near infrastructure. The drill results I could find showed the resource beginning just a few meters below the surface. And the total depth of drill holes didn't appear to exceed 200m. Looking at more recent infromation from Barrick, the deposit lies in a footprint measuring 1200m long x 450m wide by 260m deep.
The above quote from Sculpin suggests that with 43 drill holes (plus historic data), St. Elias has enough information about Tesoro to sell it to a major a-la Arequipa. Had St. Elias returned drill results similar to the Pierina drill results, I would have agreed.
Below is a table comparing the best Pierina drill results I found with the best Tesoro drill results from the last news release. I have multiplied the drill length by the grams per ton to get a meter/gram drill number in order to compare apples to apples. In a past post I suggested a drill number of 100 m/g was usually economic.
|
Company
|
Length
|
Au Grade
|
Au Length x Grade
|
Ag grade
|
Ag Length x grade
|
Ag in Au Eqivalent
|
Total Au equivalent m/g
|
|
Arequipa
|
144 m
|
6.82 g/t
|
982 m/g
|
173 g/t
|
24,912 m/g
|
470 m/g
|
1452 m/g
|
|
Arequipa
|
54 m
|
7.72 g/t
|
417 m/g
|
208 g/t
|
11,232 m/g
|
211 m/g
|
628 m/g
|
|
Arequipa
|
88 m
|
6.58 g/t
|
579 m/g
|
130 g/t
|
11,440 m/g
|
215 m/g
|
794 m/g
|
|
Arequipa
|
107 m
|
5.98 g/t
|
640 m/g
|
pending
|
|
|
640 m/g
|
|
St. Elias
|
0.85 m
|
7.08 g/t
|
6 m/g
|
none
|
none
|
none
|
6 m/g
|
|
St. Elias
|
0.50 m
|
6.08 g/t
|
3 m/g
|
none
|
none
|
none
|
3 m/g
|
|
St. Elias
|
0.50 m
|
4.68 g/t
|
2.3 m/g
|
none
|
none
|
none
|
2.3 m/g
|
|
St. Elias
|
0.50 m
|
6.06 g/t
|
3 m/g
|
none
|
none
|
none
|
3 m/g
|
If you compare St. Elias’s best drill hole against Arequipa’s best hole, you’ll see that Arequipa's has 242 times more gold or, if you like, it is 24, 200% richer. And "richer" isn't the right word here, because as you've probably noticed, St. Elias's grade is actually very comparable to Arequipa's. Where St. Elias falls down is intercept width. Width of the intercept is what shows volume. Width of the intercept over tightly spaced holes over a certain length is what defines a resource footprint. Does St. Elias have a resource footprint? Without one, what is there to buy?
The above information is for the purpose of comparing Arequipa drill results with St. Elias's drill results. My intention is not to get into an arguement over whether or not St. Elias is holding back stellar results. Forum particpants can draw their own conclusions.
You can find the article I used here:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1996_July_5/ai_18491001/
