grades, page-33

If energy costs go up for KAL then they go up for all operators. By all accounts the gold is shallow and therefore easy to get to. there was a time when I owned BDG shares and this whole energy cost thing came up. This was in the good old days (last year) when gold was around $500 and oil $50-$70.

The thing about BDG is that there is supposed to be 15 g/t down there. But it is way way underground, under the historic workings, beneath the city of Bendigo. The whole deal didn't come off anyway but that's a story for another day. The point is despite fantastic grades BDG was to cart it's ore up from a long way underground. It was to be a tunnel mine. For that reason it had it's skeptics. Would fuel costs make it uneconomical ??

In this respect KAL has it easy and can be energy saving by the fact that the ore, albeit lower in grade, is simpler to get at. Not every operation gets it as easy.