RE: Pescod's Late Edition--WOW!Thanks, CalifDreaming, for posting this from Pescod. This strikes me as pretty stunning stuff from Lionel. He provides a framework for guesstimating how many ounces EAS has. And, unless I'm off my rocker, the market seems to WAY under-appreciate the EAS story. My back of the envelope number crunching says that EAS may have over 20mm ounces of gold in their key properties. (PLEASE NOTE that Lionel provided no figure for how much gold EAS has in the ground; the calculations below are mine.)
In the article, Lionel first states that EAS has a "very robust" gold portfolio in Indonesia, and that EAS invested a lot of time on both the Sangihe and Abong gold projects in 2008, including completing 209 drill holes between them. He describes these as “decent size projects” that “any junior would give their eye teeth to have.”
EAS’ objective last year was to use that drilling to issue 43-101 numbers; they thought there’d be 3-5 million ounces proved up between the two properties. So, let’s be conservative, and say the number is 3mm ozs.
Now, in Miwah, he says that their drilling in the main zone is seeing “much higher” grades than the 1.2 g/t average provided by their past rocks sawn channel sampling. Further, he speculates that there “should easily be north of 100 or 125 million tonnes of material.”
So, based on this, let’s assume that the Miwah Main Zone is 150 million tonnes at 1.75 g/t. This calculates to around 8.4 million ounces.
Then, Lionel goes on to say that the South Miwah Bluff discovery will “add ounces to the game” and that that footprint there is “growing to a substantial size approaching that of the Main Miwah Zone.” EAS has put out some tremendous bonanza grades from early work and the drilling there so far suggests it could be a much higher grade zone. Based on this, I could perhaps conservatively assume that the South zone will be half the size of the Main Miwah zone. However, let’s make the grade 3.5 g/t., or, double the Main Zone This grade isn’t all that much of a stretch given the bonanza grades of their sampling and preliminary drilling. With those assumptions, the South Miwah Bluff discovery could add another 8.4 million ounces to the deposit.
Last, Lionel reveals that EAS has yet another property—Sipopok—that is 1.2 km north of Miwah, and is about half the strike length of the Main Miwah zone. (This is the first I’ve heard of Sipopok; couldn’t find a reference to it on their website.) He says that “early indications (from Sipopok) are similar alteration and gold mineralization.” Further, he says that this provides additional “upside to the Main Miwah zone.” Okay, Lionel, let’s say Sipopok will be half of the Main Miwah Zone, or 4.2 million ounces.
Given all these assumptions, Miwah, South Miwah, and Sipopok total 21mm ounces. EAS owns 85% of Miwah (don’t know about Sipopok, but let’s assume it’s also 85%), so that’d mean their ownership would be of roughly 17.9 million ounces.
Now, add in the ounces from their 70% ownership in Sangihie and 80% ownership of Abong, and you can throw in 2.2 million more ounces. This suggests that EAS may own over 20mm ounces of gold.
This figure doesn’t count the value in EAS’ other properties, either. They also have some large gold-copper porphyry projects that majors have sniffed around in the past, more epithermal projects, and their strong uranium properties portfolio.
The market deems the value of this company as ~US$135mm. Those of you who are smarter than me, please chime in... This story just seems too good to be true.