This value is primarily added through the discovery of long-life world class deposits with significant long-term embedded option value. Therefore it is important that greenfields exploration programs be focused on the discovery of such deposits and that as analytical as possible an approach is developed to facilitate the early recognition of such deposits, once they have been discovered.https://www.bhp.com/-/media/bhp/documents/investors/reports/2006/060514cwgseg2006confscript.pdfThere's a better document I'm trying to find again but BHP is pretty open about how they want tier 1 deposits in almost all cases. They are completely disinterested in the surface stuff, so it's not an applicable statement to say the surface stuff cannot be a tier 2 deposit because it did not meet BHP's criteria. It would be fair to say that it did not appear to be a tier 1 deposit and they could not find the deeps at the time.
Also, resources obviously grow over time. Casting judgement so quickly when we have fairly promising signs leaning towards the surface stuff being tier 2 and economical, heading into a copper bull market is just as silly as the people who were expecting 10% copper in the deeps. Overly fearful vs overly optimistic, both are too emotional.
I'm glad to the bears here who do actually discuss in good faith though, because balanced views are a good thing.
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