Yeah it doesn't really make any sense.I went back and looked at...

Yeah it doesn't really make any sense.

I went back and looked at the JORC resource definition and scoping study for the 2 golden mile deposits they are mining, Comstock and Shamrock.
So combined they are supposed to be:
133kt at 3.2g/t for a total of 13600 ounces.

I also had a look at the previous drilling results on those deposits. Looks like they put in a decent amount of drills over them and from the results it looks like they should be pretty decent deposits. Some of the results are below:

So the production information TBA puts out is really lacking. I have never seen such poorly announced information. They don't clearly state the kt or ore processed, the head grade, the tails grade, or the kt ore mined. They put out some information but it is never enough and doesn't match what is industry best practise for announcing the performance of a mining/processing operation.

Regardless from the information they have released we know the following:

1. Mined ore is approx 92kt. Start of March announced 36kt was sitting at mine stockpile, 40kt had been crushed and 16kt waiting to be crushed.
2. Ore kt processed is unknown they don't clearly state it any where
3. Produced gold ounces to date is 465oz.
4. Based on the expected average grade the 92kt should have 9500oz

So with the above data it is impossible to know what is actually going on. The "vibe" of the announcements definitely doesn't sound positive.

But I can't tell exactly what has happened. My thoughts are:

1. If the ore was seriously diluted due to poor mining practises I would have expected the mined kt to be much larger than the JORC deposit. But that is not the case as 92kt is less than the deposit of 133kt. Also it would be fairly obvious. So you think you have 92kt out of 133kt of ore but you are only half way through the mine plan, you know something is wrong. But in this case it would have needed to have been diluted 1000%. So you think you have 92kt of ore but you are only 10% through the mine plan. Can't see how that can happen. The operators would have to be completely brain dead.
2. So was the gold just not there to begin with? Well lets just say they have processed half of the ore to produce that 465oz and say they get a similar amount for the other half so they end up making 1000oz. That would mean the JORC estimate of 9500oz (for the mined ore) ended up being only 1000oz! I can't see how such a massive drop is possible. I have seen cases where JORC drops but never by 1000% a drop of like 20-30% maybe but 1000% is just ridicules.
3. They just mined the ore from the wrong places. I also struggle to see how this is possible. So they have a 3D model of the deposit with GPS coordinates, they can take hand held assays as they go. They put up photos of the Geo in the pit marking out the ore bodies to be mined. So it should be hard to get things wrong. Like it is pretty basic really.
4. Perhaps they have not actually processed much of the ore to date? Or perhaps a lot of the gold they have processed has been caught up in the plant and will come out when they do a mill clean out? If so then the next pour should be bigger.

But yeah no idea. With the poor information released it is impossible to work out what is happening.

Hopefully they actually put out a meaningful announcement next week with some proper data.