poss. billion dollar in ground ree jorc res ?, page-39

Generally good points nihilism. My responses:

The resource is tiny?
*Comparisons with PEK in terms of resource size are not that informative as PEK is mainly LRE's whereas HAS is HRE's.
*HAS has 65,270t of HREO at a Sept 2011 price of $380/kg. I calculate that to be worth $25billion - so big enough I'd say.
*HAS still has more to JORC at Hastings plus it has Yangibana.

The grades are low?
* Yes they are. Especially the TREO grade. But the HREO grade of 0.18% is pretty good. Similar to the grade of HREO at ALK (0.21%) although well behind MT Weld (0.42%)
*The high TREO value per kg of $380 compared to say ALK's of $199, plus the focus on just a few main products may mean that a high OPEX is not as big an issue as thought.

Second point?
*I assume you are talking CAPEX here? I think its a bit early to be making decisions on this as its not just about grade.

Third point?
*Isnt this just the same point again?

And you final point?
*Still on about OPEX, which as you say, could be very high. But as I mentioned the issue of OPEX is not only about grades. Recoveries look good.


To support HAS further:
*Earlier work done on the Hastings site does give then a jump on the development process
*They've lined up top people on the board and under contract
*The market cap is tiny at present
*They are now funded for ongoing work

I'd like to finish by saying I'm pretty much an amateur at this stuff so am certainly open to corrections. Id love someone to point out to me that my arguments are not great and hence save me the capital!

I'm aware that I haven't gone into the CAPEX/OPEX issues deeply but Im awaiting the results of the scoping study by Jacobs before I assume these are going to make the deposit uneconomic, as you have perhaps suggested.