Thanks for the updated pictures.
I think we can put to bed the rumour of the tailings dam flooding the whole site.
There is no difference in the water level on Woody's pic on Oct 26 to the Nov 1st pic above.
Clearly the main tailings dam wall (to L on pic) hasn't been breeched, and even if it overflowed without breeching the water would flow to the Left (West) away from the plant.
The water level shown on Aug 13 is lower than the more recent.
Bamako, the wettest part of Mali gets on average 40 inches of rain pa, with the wettest month August with July #2. This compares with Darwin's 68 inch average.
There are literally 100's if not 1000's of tailings dams in wetter places than Goulamina and it is dealt with.
In any case November to May are the driest months, as at Nov 1st you can see there is no flooding and the recent Activities Report puts us on schedule.
Regarding not being able to get the steel to site because of flooding, I'd refer back to the Activities report which said:
" Steel fabrication is critical path package and has been impacted by global supply pressureswhich remain tight..."Despite the above statement they say they have mitigated some of the delays and other supplies are unaffected and most importantly we're still on schedule. Even if they did have a couple of 100 idle staff, the average skilled salary is $1500pa or a bit over $4 per day. If that was to happen in Australia - big problem on $500 per day.
I get it that shareholders want more information on the suspension however for reasons previously discussed they have to keep it confidential. I think they've been very upfront with the construction schedule, challenges, costs etc.
Compare that to our peer Liontown.
They've maintained they'd have construction complete in this current Q (before Dec 31st) with commissioning starting Q1 2024.
They now say they are only 55% through construction (compared to our 45%)
They haven't been upfront and announced this, just slipped it into a presentation, saying 1st production mid 2024 - that 1st production will be the start of commissioning. Does September count as mid 2024?
Core also had delays, originally 1st concentrate production slated for end of 2022, they achieved DSO within that timeline, concentrate was some time later, but no announcement to say it's delayed.
I think Simon is very upfront with their progress reporting and he'd update us on the suspension if he could.
(20min delay)