Every mining company with decent ground keeps drilling to maintain their reserve profile.
If you have a greenfields discovery, you would probably need at least 10 years in reserves to attract the financing and get an acceptable return on your investment. For a brownfields expansions with relatively modest capital requirements (like SPR), I reckon 5 years of reserves would be more than adequate for a restart with the reserve growth drilling ongoing and funded out of cashflow (not shareholders pockets).
At SPR's current rate it could take another 2-3 years to complete the studies, finalise the permitting and get the required underground development in place. It has taken BGL ~2 years to get their underground development in place to support the planned production rate.
SPR Price at posting:
92.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
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