When Spartan pulled the plug on the Dalgaranga operation in...

When Spartan pulled the plug on the Dalgaranga operation in November 2022 the gold price was around $2.6k Aussie. Currently that price is up above $3.0k. In the meantime the guts have fallen out of the nickel and lithium sectors in WA and I've seen some outfits such as International Graphite number crunch assuming costs have remained steady over the last 12 months. On 80k oz pa being produced it could be argued that about $32m of free cash flow is being left on the table. And I find it frustrating that Simon Lawson keeps moving the goalposts: last year he was saying he wanted at least 5 years of mine life before deciding to get back into production, now it seems it is 8+ years or is 10+ years.

But, yes, I know that I've lost the sooner rather than later argument on restarting the mill (though I do worry there are several pissing competitions going on in the WA gold sector with the likes of SL and the Silver Lake team trying to out-macho others).

So, accepting that SL seems committed to hold off on going back into production I hope he gets fair dinkum about drilling. At the moment he is suggesting 5 rigs and 28km of drilling is about right. But is that proportionate to the once-in-a-career prospect that SL keeps telling us he has at Dalgaranga? Westgold, which is a producer not a full-time explorer, has 6 rigs operating. And some of the ASX lithium explorers have drilling campaigns of 50km up to 90km. I'm probably wrong on this count as well so happy for the error in my thinking being pointed out.