It's not that interesting. There's heaps of gold there and it's...

It's not that interesting. There's heaps of gold there and it's not gonna be much of a challenge to mine, but: Anyone who's ever tried to design a surface drilling program on an open pit mining operation knows how hard it is to build a drilling pad in between the pits, dumps, haul roads, etc. Any pit will tend to create a drilling shadow - an area that you can't drill because the pit's in the way. Building a pit on that topography could create all sorts of problems for the exploration effort.

I just had a better look at a few pics of the project - the topo isn't that challenging. I worked at a mine called Hidden Valley in PNG that was much worse than that. It used to be a huge steep sided mountain but it's well on it's way to being a big hole. Then there's Grasberg: