mining RobertoThere seems to be quite a bit of discussion this morning about mining a deposit under water. In my view, the parts of the deposit that are under the lake would most likely be mined from undergroung with a crown pillar left for the final efforts of removal by an open pit. This is analogous to what is being done at the Pamour mine in Timmins. The old mining here was underground with a number of pits and they are now building a superpit. This involves daming off the northern part of a lake and rerouting Highway 101 south of the lake. Mind you this is all for acccess to a deposit that currently has head grades of about 1.7 grams. My point is this is all doable. No doubt at Roberto the infrastructure will be more costly but the key elements of roads and power are close by, and the grades are very attractive. Even metallurgy seems attractive as most of the gold is free with only minor amount closely tied to sulfides.
Regarding tonnage if one uses back of the envelope calulations of 2000m strike length x 2000 m dip extent x 10 m width x 1/3 oz you get 12 million ozs. So why not 10 million?