Hi
@52570,
As some of you are aware, I spend most of my time in Mali, and have been watching developments under the guidance of the new BOD.
I must say I've been impressed with their professionalism, and enjoyed the opportunity to meet with the party who visited Mali in September under the leadership of Greg Walker. Today's announcements were confirmation of their apparent intention to take this through to production.
I stayed out of the fuss about the PFS, but at the time I don't think anybody mentioned the (JORC?) limitation on using Inferred tonnage in published PFSs i.e. you are only allowed to use resources which are Indicated and above in PFS/DFS/BFS. Presumably this is why the BOD is currently making sure that this "upgrading" aspect is not being left behind in the drilling matrix.
It's also good to see the focus being placed on an accelerated start-up (Q4/2019), but a note of caution here. As I hinted a long time ago, permitting (i.e. to get an Exploitation Permit for a brand-new Malian company involving equity held by the Government = mandatory) takes a finite amount of time and negotiation, and it would be foolish (maybe even illegal) to start development of a treatment plant ( or even overburden removal) before this is in hand. However, you can't really apply for an Exploitation Permit until you've provided the Government with an acceptable Feasibility Study (at least DFS, maybe BFS). As we know now, we are still some time away from that, so this is a potential bottleneck that the BOD will need to keep their eye on.
The power problem, in my opinion, will be able to be tackled aggressively by consideration of the installation of a hybrid solar/diesel system. It needs to be said that grid power in Mali is not completely reliable, and we know it's expensive, so hybrid needs serious consideration. There will be people at the Journée Minière et Petrolière in Bamako next week (which I'll be attending) representing hybrid companies whose model is to pay
all the client's capital costs for power, and sell the electricity "across the fence". Right at this point, I don't know how the cost would compare to what's been (or being) used in the revised PFS, but I'm sure it'll be cheaper than grid. And at no capital cost, too. It's not a no-brainer, but certainly worth study.
Otherwise, I'm quite happy with the way this is being handled, and the erudition of most of the posters in the BGS space.
