RE: estimate inferred resourceCould you enlighten us as to how you arrived at the 3 million number? The results announced are great and undoubtedly will increase the overall grade and the ounces of contained gold. However, if you look at where the good holes were drilled, you will see that they are very close to previous holes - stepouts are often as little 25 metres; the good intersections are limited by other holes that have much lower grades and that were included in the previous resource calculation. The longitudinal projection on their website gives a good visualization of this year's intercepts relative to older drilling. If this year's results were out on the edges of the drilled area, then yes, you could say that there is potential for a big increase in the resource. I don't think there is much possibility of a 3+ times increase in the resource as you have suggested, given that this year's intercepts are surrounded by holes with lower grades.
Here's some help with the calculations (these are rough, mind you)...let's say you have an intercept of 1 oz/t gold over 25 metres (true thickness), limited on all sides by other holes that are all 30 metres away. Thus, you would half the distance to the other holes to determine this particular hole's distance of influence, in this case it would be half of 30 metres = 15 metres. Thus, the area of influence around this hole would be a circle having radius of 15 metres (area = 15 x 15 x 3.14 = 706.5 sq. metres) Let's say the rock has a density of 3.0 (may be high if there are not a lot of sulphides). Then the calculation for ounces of contained gold would be (volume of rock) x (density) x (grade); for our scenario, the volume of rock related to our 25 metre thick intercept would be 25 m x 706.5 sq.metres = 17662.5 cubic metres. Now, multiply volume by density to get the tonnes: 17662.5 x 3.0 = 52,987.5. Now, to get the ounces of contained Au, multiply the tonnes by the grade: 52,987.5 x 1 oz/t = 52,987.5 oz Au. So in this little scenario, our 25 metre intercept of 1 oz/t, that is constrained by holes 30 metres away, would give roughly 53,000 oz Au to the resource. Obviously, it is a bit more complicated in reality, but it gives you the "ballpark" numbers. So, in this scenario with this drill spacing, you would have to add close to 40 such intercepts to add 2 million ounces to the resource.
If we get some of these bonanza grades out on the edges of the drilled zone, then "game on"...resource could increase much more dramatically. This year's results do look good, though, in the sense that they are proving some nice high grade "shoots" within a lower grade mass of Au-Ag mineralization.
Northrail, If you've got some better calculations, please post.
gm2