Re: Commodities

Some interesting comments from the Rio Tinto Exploration Fact Sheet;

"The evolution of a project from initial testing to commissioning can take 10 to 20 years involving a series of study stages to reach investment approval and implementation. The exploration process can be divided into five stages. The number of opportunities that progress to the next stage decreases as we move through the process. .........."

"The mining industry norm is that approximately 0.03 per cent of conceptual targets that are assessed lead to a discovery. This means that only one in 3,000 of all ideas in the exploration pipeline would proceed to the detailed evaluation stage........

Obviously even finding a worthwhile project is no sinecure.

An example is Frieda River.....started with Carpentaria Exploration (MIM) through many others till now Highlands and Pan Aust., and still a long road ahead, after about half a century, and how much money, and still no guarantees, even though it remains one of the world's potentially biggest untapped gold/Cu resources.

BCL/BML are getting the job done, in no less trying circumstances.