Yes, no doubt we'll be hitting the ground running, Oily.
To which end, surface work from last year's highly promising field campaign (some of whose spectacular trenching results were mentioned at the end of yesterday's Announcement), combined with insights from the Soviet-era dataset should give us a good leg-up.
I'd imagine twinning a few of the better Russian holes might be a priority, as this may not only give us good results in their own right but also, by corroborating the earlier dataset, help speed the process of converting historical resources to JORC-compliant. Early confirmations will, in a sense, carry more weight in this process, give us more 'bang for our buck', as immediate fidelity to the Soviet numbers will raise confidence in the overall set. So why not re-drill some of the better holes!
I think what I liked most about yesterday's Announcement was the promise held in this paragraph over and above what we already know of the historical Soviet exploration of the Spasskaya field:
"...While the eight prospects are genuine exploration targets in their own right with Soviet era resource estimates indicating the potential for economic quantities of copper the Company believes the true opportunity is exploring an entire mineral field using modern exploration technique particularly geophysical surveys where there hasn't even been regional aeromagnetic surveys flown. THIS POTENTIAL FOR UNDISCOVERED DEPOSITS HAS ALREADY BEEN DEMONSTRATED TO THE COMPANY WHEN IT DISCOVERED A MASSIVE SULPHIDE HORIZON LOCATED WITHIN A GEOLOGICAL SEQUENCE CONTAINING BARITE BEDS. This type of setting is often associated with VMS deposits and the massive sulphide horizons and assays have confirmed that the horizon is highly prospective with low grade zinc (~2.0%) and lead (~2.0%) mineralisation. The barite sequence can be traced for 6km and has been subject to historical mining with reported average grade of production at 55% barite..." (p.5; my emphasis)
Recall that the Kazakhs already list the inventory at Spasskaya as:
"...In general, total forecast resources of copper in Spasskaya Copper Ore Zone are estimated to be 1,974.8 thousand tons by C2, P1 and P2 categories, comprising Burnak Ore Cluster – 400 thousand tons, Koktas-Sharyktinsky Ore Cluster – 290 thousand tons, Spasskiy – 60 thousand tons, Kyzylshoky-Koktalskiy (Piramida Gornova, Chili-Uzek) - 256.0 thousand tons, Altyntobinskiy – 290 thousand tons, Khadzhikongan-Nurkazganskiy – 353.0 thousand tons, Shaytandinskiy – 170.8 thousand tons and Koktas Zhartasskiy – 155.0 thousand tons.
Besides, exposure of epithermal gold and silver deposit is expected; evaluation of forecast resources – 10-15 tons of gold and 100-150 tons of silver by P3 category..."
