Ann: High-Grade REE Discovery, page-52

@coto ... "Most first pass exploration programs dont find anything substantial."

That's very accurate, however the really big performers are those like WA1 that do have a massive hit on the first pass drilling and there is a very good reason for this..

Companies always drill the best prospect first. It would be silly to do anything different. If the best prospect, identified from gossans, or some type of geophysics is not outstanding, then the odds are the rest of the search will be poorer.

There are lots of examples of company makers on the first pass drilling, like Sandfire, Sirius, Liontown, Chalice, WA1.

The examples of those that found something great after multiple drill campaigns on the same ground are few and far between. Usually something so deep it wasn't detected by geophysics and was a 'lucky' find.

Assuming that SGQ drilled the most likely area for the possibility of a great find first, then without anything spectacular in the initial drilling, why would anyone expect better in follow up drilling?

Another aspect to consider is that BHP's Olympic Dam deposit has REE at around 0.5% grade, or around 5,000ppm with some areas much higher. They don't bother trying to collect these REEs, they all end up in the tailings dam.

These REEs have already been mined, crushed and ground, yet BHP deem them not worth the processing to gather them.
Then there is something like SUM with a REE deposit and a hit of over 15,200ppm as part of their drilling yet has a Mcap of only ~$5M.
The REEs are not going to lead anywhere IMHO...

Hope you have a great Christmas and new year as well....