I said on an earlier post I was going to have a look at the st...

I said on an earlier post I was going to have a look at the st Barbara announcements to see what relationship Gondwana has with the very successful St Barbara (SBM) operations at parker range.
Earlier today I commenced the research and found St Barbara has operations much closer to Gondwana ground than I previously thought.
page 2 of their report on southern cross is very revealing.
http://www.stbarbara.com.au/upfile/AnalystPrezSXO_Feb08.pdf
The report is in pdf format and is locked which prevents a copy and paste so I'll summarise as best I can....
I haven't been able to identify the tenements in the alliance with St Barbara (SBM).
The link above is from the site visit of the St Barbara Southern Cross operations and is dated feb 08 so it is very current .
GDA's most recent exploration/market update and the annual report mentioned the new GDA discovery target at Zeus.
Zeus is on the northern boundary of GDA tenements and is just 2 km south of the SBM Hercules operation. SBM's Bronco operations and drilling extends from 1km south of Hercules to 2km south and adjoins the Gondwana Zeus target. Of interest in the SBM presentation slides (slide 6)is the sulphidic sediment extending south into the Gondwana Zeus target. ( if I am reading the maps correctly).
That is, Zeus is just 2kms south of Hercules and SMB's GVG ,great Victoria and Grand National open pits and current drilling ( see the SBM's March quarterly report in which they updated reserves).

Slide 37 from the feb 08 presentation identifies the dec 07 resource as 1,432,000 oz of gold and 600,000 oz gold reserves. The slide has an aerial photo as the background which shows a sizeable township supporting the mining operations which will be of considerable savings to GDA as far as establishment costs. ( I don't know the town population or holding/ expansion capacity).

SBM seems to have undertaken cost effective surface operations which is a similar goal to that identified in the GDA updates in relation to what type of operations GDA might be moving towards. SBM however have progressed from surface to extensive large open pits and now underground operations.
(p 19 gives some visual perspective via an aerial photo)

They have 20 + open pits.
SBM stated they had 12moz endowment (slide 2).
Compare the most recent GDA annual report maps figures 1,2 and 4 to help locate the GDA tenements adjoning the southern extension of the sulphidic sediment south from SBM's Bronco and Grand National operations. It looks to run right into the GDA tenements.
SBM's Grand National op' extends ~ 1km to 2 km south of the large open pit at GVG (Great Victoria), the sulphidic sediment continues south as well (fig 6).
The GN op's of SBM appear to be just north of the GDA Burbidge East target.

SBM state their mill capacity is 2.5m tonne per annum at a head grade of 2.52g/t average with an 07/08 forecast production of 170 to 175 thousand oz at a pant cost of $221/oz average produced ytd Dec 07.

See the SBM March quarterly for further details which has been published since the visit to southern cross presentation. The quarterly also talks about the potential for SBM of some Zinc, Copper and Silver base metal resources of high grade.

To the west of Zeus is SBM's Edwards Find. To the East of SBM's Grand National operations looks to be GDA's Pathfinder, which is north east of GDA's Golden Rod.
After reading the SBM presentation on their field visit, I understand the content of the statements contained in the GDA annual report and market updates and I am pretty happy about our prospects in Parker Range.

The issue as I see it is one of scale and capital. The GDA reports talk about targeting boutique/ high yield operations as opposed to bulk mining operations on the GDA tenements.
I'd like to see how this is proposed, the tonnage estimated and the time frames to set up operations to start extracting gold to take advantage of the current gold prices.

I did a fairly detailed assessment of the gold operations of Mantle Mining if anyone wants to have a look at the thread I posted on MNM headed something like "what's the intrinsic value of Mantle Mining gold".
Mantle are a lot more advanced than GDA but so is their share price (20c) and of course SBM is a producer ( around sp 80c levels). Different market caps of course and different targets but the gold scenarios' have some comparability.
Pages 4,5 and 6 of GDA's Annual Report are worth a re read in conjunction with SBM's quarterly and the SBM Feb 08 report from the site visit to Southern Cross.
Nearology (Ala Flinders nearology to Fortescue)is not a recipe for success but it is much better than farology.

I haven't been able to find anything yet in the SBM reports about the alliance with Gondwana that will cost them $9m to $15m to purchase 51%-60% interest in GDA tenements holding gold reserves( which one's I haven't been able to identify yet)

Time for a GDA and tonic.

Hope everyone has a good week this week , cheers Fatstocks.