Ann: Drilling Underway at Greater Fosterville, page-5

Game on at last, only 25 days since the EL was granted and S2 have a rig spinning! Its just a shame it took over 700 days beforehand. I wonder if there is any self-awareness at all within anyone at Resources Vic to at least recognise how inept that is, or if that is just viewed as normal. Anyway, I guess given the POG etc that maybe its inadvertently played in S2’s favour? So maybe, in a perverse way I should be thanking Resources Vic….but not sure I’d go that far.

I know there has been ongoing speculation about Agnico’s long-term strategy with Fosterville and generally being in Aus. But all things considered, not a bad Q3 result for them, slightly lower than forecast production due to focus on ventilation upgrade development works. But more importantly (imo) some of the commentary seemed to express a longer term view:

“In the third quarter of 2023, the Company completed optimization studies that are expected to de-risk construction of the ventilation raises and the operation in the long term.”
And;
“Exploration drilling at Fosterville during the third quarter of 2023 continued to target the Lower Phoenix deep extension from the 3912 drill drive and the Robbins Hill area”

Clearly, it’s just a guessing game what their long-term strategy actually is with Fosterville and how easily they may be swayed one way, or another, based on exploration success either on the ML, or on surrounding ground aka S2.

They also kept the exploration results close to their chest in this quarterly, but did mention:
“UDH4761 intersected 10.8 g/t gold over 10.0 metres in the Cardinal splay at 1,828 metres depth, approximately 190 metres down-plunge of the mineral reserves. The result is the deepest visible-gold intercept in the Cardinal splay achieved to date”

We can expect a detailed update on exploration results in Jan 2024 from Agnico, so it will be interesting to see what that holds in terms of O’Dwyers Fault/Curie Zone exploration. Let’s see what S2 can achieve by then!
GLAH