From experience the majors don't throw money away on exploration. However, they do walk when results do not meet their criteria or the goal posts are shifted in some way and the beancounters deal with the millions spent on "failed" exploration.
BHP walked from Oyu Tolgoi in spite of some good initial results apparently because they decided to move out of copper. More often the expectation of a Tier 1 style deposit not being met is the main reason for dropping a farm in or JV. Many reasons are possible.
There is no guarantee a given tract of ground will yield a significant deposit (pre Mr Spock's Tricorder). I (and obviously many) do like the potential offered by the Paterson province for more large discoveries.
It does seem to be a case of when the next major one is found rather than if.
On which tenement? AZY, JV, other
How Big? Most provinces show a statistical variation of deposits from one (generally) very large one ranging down to sub economic.
Interesting question that would need to be answered by the company.
Some thoughts. 144 sq Kms - Minyari/WACA both open with some 700K inferred ounces of Au plus Cu. Open Pit and Underground would be needed to extract all this resource - Not going to happen until a lot more drilling is done to firm up the resource to indicated and add more hopefully.
This was the largest defined JORC resource available to AZY outside Citadel and has a reasonable chance to be a satellite pit supplying feed to Telfer's hungry plant while Havieron is being brought on line.
Geologically the Minyari Dome is structurally complex.
Good in some ways. Lots of ground preparation and repetition of favourable stratigraphy.
Bad in others. Continuity is a real problem. The Minyari deposit has been cut off by faulting (Roger Mason AGM comment) with the on strike (N & S) extensions (if any) being very difficult to locate. The current drill program includes Aircore drilling to try and resolve this issue.
Geophysics are very tantalising for this small chunk of ground and will also be tested soon if not already in part.
Is it the best ground? For AZY probably though IMO the potential for large discoveries exists throughout the Paterson.
For AZY it has good exploration potential and is of a much more manageable size than the c5000 sq Kms now held in JVs/farm ins. The treasury is well filled with exploration costs covered for the next year or so. Unless ... they find a big one on the Minyari dome. Please do.
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