Sorry no idea how much energy is used to grade up (Beneficiation) manganese to 40%. However I am confident it will be good drill result for SPI. Have been buying for SPI for 6 months however also take look at CHURHILL MINING CHL in UK its old parent company that I assume still has an agreement to get revenue from SPI if manganese is mined. CHL have gone up from 20p to 68p since mid April since they crashed from 130p last year when they found they probably did not have some local liscence for the coal discovered in Borneo. They did get an Indonesean backer on board and price changed up then but it did go up hugely yesterday, coincidence?. I took a punt at CHL at 29p in April the same day April I bought 100K SPI 14/04/11 for 0.12c and am thus very happy especially as I can only do limit orders from UK for SPI.
Below is reference link and copied text from where I saw re CHL its also deep in a PDF on CHL site.
http://www.minesite.com/companies/comp_single/company/churchill-mining-plc.html 'The consideration to Churchill for the acquisition of the 80% interest in the South Woodie Woodie Project was 25 million new ordinary shares in Spitfire, making Churchill Spitfire's largest shareholder (28.8%).
Churchill is also entitled to retain a manganese production royalty should a mine be developed. The production royalty is price indexed so as to ensure Churchill retains substantial leverage to any future mining cash flow'.
CHURCHILL
'On 3 March 2011, the Company and Ridlatama was subject to a surprising negative ruling from the Samarinda Administrative Tribunal. The Tribunal action was initially undertaken by the Company and its Indonesian partners, Ridlatama, to protect the validity of the licenses that make up the EKCP (the ?EKCP Licences)'
SPI Price at posting:
23.9¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
