Havieron will it become a mine? Yes says blind neddy with the results of GGP and then their hyper active JV partner NCM.
- How?
- How Big?
- What does it mean for the Paterson province as a whole?
No real surprises to any of these questions - just a matter of what is in the details and one's take on things.
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The How - high grade initial mining on a smaller scale with a ramp up to large scale bulk mining Vs straight to bulk or some other approach.
Trotting out some of my earlier data which is still pertinent and suitable for a lazy Sunday.
Discovery history to early GGP.
Havieron compilation.pdfPossibility of mining at depth from some Australian examples.
HAVIERON PATHWAY TO DEVELOPMENT.pdfDepth an issue?
Probably not unless there are local technical issues.
I haven't done an, in depth, search so these two examples are probably the tip of an iceberg of what is being done these days.
Phalabora (Carbonatite with mixed minerals in South Africa) has block caving, below a huge open pit, to at least 1600m. The Volume of Interest (VOI) mentioned in here is likely to be a term that will become more 'main stream' as more block caving mines are developed. Not every part of the volume is ore grade but has to be extracted because it is a block cave. Sorting may become even more important as technologies improve.
Another Rio JV, Resolution, is contemplating mining at 1700m below surface.
Could add Cadia East, perhaps El Teniente/Chuqui and others in Chile to a list that already exists and is probably going to expand in the future. Au mines to 4Kms in South Africa but these are narrow selective extraction processes. Even in S Africa the geothermal gradient impacts on depth of mining with Au to 4kms but Platinum etc mines to the NE restricted to some 2Kms.
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How Big?
MRE ~50Mt at 2g/t with lots of large intersections outside this since that was produced.
I was somewhat surprised by how limited the MRE was in the recent announcement. If my understanding is correct it is the highlighted black outlines which are almost difficult to see in the sea of expanded potential resource.
Sprott put out a range of estimates following a site visit in 2018.
havieron sprott first eq Jan 2019 report site visit.pdfSince then the size has expanded from their simplistic 80m cylinder model. Their comment about estimating such deposit sizes is still very relevant. Expand the cylinder to 160m radius and extend the depth extent to 1500m and come up with some idea of what is possible. Probably well in excess of 10M oz Au and reasonable copper credit. No surprise NCM are smiling with the drill rig and decline as SP is over drill results at Minyari.
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Already see the influence of Havieron on Minyari. Winu and Hav. have certainly enlivened activity in the Paterson.
Go AZY.
(20min delay)