There are a number of options that are available to the company.
The one I would like to see happen is going to be a combination of a few things.
First, Chris keeps talking about a resource that district scale. We know there are multiple named and unnamed targets, and it is clear that Chris and the team are hell bent on proving up as much ground as possible as quickly as possible. They have their performance shares and we want as much gold as we can find in order to have has high a SP as possible for the next round of funding.
Now once we've proven up 8m+ oz of resource at Korbel (already at 4.7m oz) and another 5m+ oz of reserves at RPM (which Chris said is looking like it could be better than Korbel) - for a total 13m+ proven oz of gold.
I also think we will have started drilling the next most promising prospect in order to try and get another 5m+ oz of either inferred or measured and indicated gold.
This means we will officially have a globally significant resource of 15m - 20m oz of gold in a highly prospective district with potentially many million more ounces to be discovered.
We would also be looking at a probable mine life of 25+ years for 15m oz.
With ~20m+ oz of gold both banks and miners would be falling over themselves to get involved, but when you are in a position like this, money isn't the challenge, it's the other value that a potential partner can bring that really defines who you should choose.
Going from explorer to miner is no small feat, and this is especially so when expected to do this with the goal of exploiting a 20m+ oz resource. On top of this, we need to factor in the remoteness of the district and the challenges of the terrain and environment.
The myriad of obstacles will likely be a stretch even the most experienced operators.
I think @arkus said the road would cost about $800m to build, and we would also need supporting infra like electricity as suggested. Now I'm not sure how this gets funded, either govt funded with a usage tax as suggested, or Public Private Partnership, or even a private road, but yeah, it's a few years work.
Then, I don't know, but let's say we need another $500m (pulling this out of my arse) for a total of $1.3B to build the road and the operation the region needs (and deserves) to mine 750k oz of gold per year.
We could also unlock value by proving up a resource and then selling it off - and then splitting costs for infra development.
Anyways, let's get that first milestone, and worry about the rest later.
NVA Price at posting:
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