I'm no geologist, but the first cut at 1bn tons looks pretty good; I think Grasburg/Escondida might be around 6 bn tn each, so with a bit more drilling (we have three prospects - south of the boundary fault in the east zone, the main zone and the east ridge, none of which are included in the initial resource) it seems possible this could be a quarter or a third of those. Grade looks good for a porphyry - copper equivalent of say 0.8 should be easily commercial. I'm a bit surprised that it is coming in half gold half copper, as when NCM bought in a few years back I think I remember them saying they thought it it would be copper heavy. Also no word on arsenic - at that time the story was that the arsenic declines as you go deeper, hopefully this is what they are now finding. This looks like a good asset to me, but would be grateful for other people's opinion.
NCM Price at posting:
$25.09 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
