what makes a good graphite deposit, page-20

Freeway, while it's fair enough to say that "Ïf SVM turns up with more graphite than SYR, there will be a problem", let's keep things in perspective. There are at least 50 companies (probably more than 100) currently actively prospecting for graphite in Canada, Australia, Sweden, and several African countries. Literally hundreds of graphite mines have existed in the past, all over the world.

What have they found?

According to the US Geological Survey, up till a year ago, the total amount of graphite reserves in the entire world was about 70 million tonnes.

Balama has changed that picture completely. It has already been shown to hold more than 100 million tonnes of graphite. Only one other deposit in the world has even one fifth that much, and all the others contain less than one tenth of what we know is sitting in the ground at Balama.

So, with all the exploration since the dawn of history, exactly one deposit of this magnitude has been found. Balama is a geological freak, which should not exist. It is off the scale, and way outside any probability curve.

Confronted with a project which is able to plan an initial production rate, at very low cost, of more than 200K tonnes of graphite per year, it is hardly surprising that people trying to promote small mines in Canada and elsewhere would like us to believe it won't happen. They are whistling in the wind.

Nobody can say, absolutely, that there will not be another deposit of similar size - but don't bet the mortgage on it!

Cheers, Prime1