Just when I thought this thread is interesting it devolved into...

Just when I thought this thread is interesting it devolved into tin foil hat conspiracies about apocryphal professional downrampers and stock manipulation Bulls and bears have their fair spread from supposedly the 'more informed' through to inane sheet talking fools... but it amazes me how people on a stock chat site can't read different opinions, knowing they come from opposite perspectives and different agendas. Only facts talk, BS walks, otherwise it comes down to subjective judgement of the project, commodity, sector, macros, risks, Lassonde curve etc etc. Honestly, if you need the protective blanky of pretending professionals are wasting their time Sunday's to manipulate a penny dreadful then perhaps you're too insecure to be punting junior resource stocks?

As a card-carrying Contrarian Bear i like to see challenge and push back on the bulls and test an investment thesis. The more negative substantive facts and opinion, the less confidence you will have in the investment and so the more uncomfortable it becomes. That is a good thing though, if you're too comfortable you are probably over-confident, which is rarely a good thing. If nobody can counter baseless scaremongering then it's probably not scaremongering, it's a warning right. Usually it only takes a bit common sense to refute silly scaremongering, though some technical knowledge speed up the process.

Takes the "mining professional' @ChinaSyndrome placing huge importance and risk that Resource Geologist Kinnes doesn't have 5 years of Rare Earth experience, having spent his career largely in coal. Maybe they are a bogger driver or some such, because with such large, wide spaced drilling into a pluton size deposit, but virtually no lithological controls on mineralisation Halleck Ck MRE hardly requires a +5 year rare earth expert. There are 3 main processes to estimating a suitable MRE imo:

Process; database validation, modelling skills, statistical validation (like an architect designing a house, process driven output with house specific design and engineering aspects transferable between different designs)
Geological understanding and interp; this can be tricky without any experience or assistance from those with lots of experience in the deposit type. At the stage of drilling and geological interp, Halleck is not tricky and the Resource Geologist has 3-4 other experts and/or geologists been working on Halleck for years to lean on. It's much easier to come up to speed with project specific geology than learn the skills of data validation, wireframing, statistical anlsysis, modelling skills etc.
Subjective Judgement: the many decisions on what interp, controls, modelling variables, and output inclusion/exclusion etc that goes into the final MRE (the E stands for Estimation btw, because so much of a mineral resource is subjective judgement on insufficient data that it's not considered a 'calculation').

Of the above inputs, subjective judgement is by far the most critical in what the final MRE looks like. Kinnes looks like he has 20 years crunching resource models, so coal or not he would be all over the technical process. The 2023 MRE was estimated by two very experienced independent consultants, in conjunction with geological input from the company geos, which was 1.4Bt, so the 2024 MRE Update is only a modest expansion based mostly on the very deep hole at Overton adding depth.

"Would you let a Heart Specialist perform Brain surgery on you, or even a Med student who is undertaking to become a Brain surgeon?"... LOL. to far even for hyperbole. It's a very simple MRE on a very large and almost certainly very deep plutonic intrusion, where almost every hole in the RMP ends in mineralisation... albeit there is internal variation.


The large Inferred Category resource is not controversial, blind freddy can see the mineralised pluton is very large and likely much, much deeper than the 300m hole 28 (which appears to get higher grade with depth). What is unsupportable, and the big change from 2023 MRE, is the re-interp of Indicated Category and the inclusion of any Measured Category at all...


Just googled a table to explain the difference in confidence levels required between Inferred, Indicated and Measured categories. Inferred is so open, implied and unsupported by facts/data as to be ball park only. Indicated can be argued by the resource geo (ie subjective interp) but Measured resources are simply high confidence built on substantial data to the level of a detailed mine plan and final economic viability... yeah, nah!

Even at 90m hole spacing there is huge, unexplained grade variation downhole and between holes. With a 1000ppm cut-off it could be said that the entire RMP is mineralised, and thus a simple grade average will suffice, and grades averaged between 90m spaced hoes are Measured confidence. Each 90m spaced drill hole contributes ~3Mt of ore to 100m depth, approx 1 years production... except it's almost certain that head grade will be critical to the economics.

The opex is highly skewed to processing and concentrate leaching (mining being very cheap per tonne). For example, an average head grade of 3666ppm TREO is 50% lower than 5500ppm. There is obviously internal variation over 30,50, 100m depth that has 5,500 TREO grades... do they come to surface between holes? is the variation vertical, dipping, flat or random? what is the extent and continuity of higher/lower TREO zones between holes? What is the orientation and density of low-grade BHS in the CPM (looks shallow SE), there isn;t even a single twin hole not that I expect TREO is nuggety. In short, infill drilling is required to test and confirm the interp of grade continuity between 90m spaced holes that statistical variography simply cannot answer with any confidence.

The Independent MRE'23 chose a simple 100m radius around each hole as Indicated, which is debateable but fair considering on higher cut, lower avg grade mine extraction assumptions. Joining up many orange circles so they overlap on 100m diameter doesn't change Indicated to Measured... especially when the met breakthrough implies that a 50% higher TREO feed grade for only a modest waste or low-grade stockpile mining strip penalty would improve enormously the capex and opex for a given final REO production target.


In summary, agreeing to lift much of the MRE up into Indicated and Measured categories implies less drilling required in the future and more robust economic feasibility studies on the current MRE. Both are false premises imo, but the upside is infill drilling may well identify low waste strip early pits with higher than 'average' head grades and thus superior economics than the pending scoping study (not withstanding that scoping studies are notoriously optimistic and under-costed vs DFS and then reality).

GLTAH