I hope that's a rhetorical question sidfish .We have been...

I hope that's a rhetorical question sidfish .
We have been involved in the CTO discussion for years - some may have finally cottoned on to the fact that the Development Costs (due to the expensive and extensive tunneling) are too high.
Yet after all the discussion the Development Costs strangely remain the elephant in the room in this forum !
Am I the only one who can see or is talking about this huge cost ?

Doesn't anyone else read the cash reports - why is everyone ignoring or not taking into account this huge cost ?

WHY ??????
WHAT'S GOING ON ??

What's more this elephant (to my way of thinking - and I'm not a mining engineer, please note) will not get smaller with scale .
Logically (to me, anyway) you need to tunnel x amount of metres (and spend z amount of dollars) to get to (and before you can start to mine) y amount of oz's, - so the Development costs are what they are .. and you can readily calculate them on a per oz basis.
There will be some variation as the spacing between the gold pods (i.e. they may be spaced closer or further away from each other) quarter to quarter - but I'm sure the company has worked out an average Development Cost/oz of gold produced and should be informing us.
Otherwise we can do the calculations ourselves - it's easy !

Anyway if we are turning a blind eye and not taking into account this huge Development cost - let's be sure about one thing - the Lihirs of this world look at the cash reports and take note of these huge Development costs, here.

Some people may be asking less important questions at the GMs .. imho.