RE: RE: AGM
The wild card is Bissa, we know from the new HRG corporate presentation 1.6 million oz have been identified. Additionally there are more claims to be drilled and Burkina Faso is quickly gaining a reputation for a good place to be. Bissa alone will bulk up the gold reserves
It`s been a couple of years since I`ve looked at the Bissa details. However, I believe the current 1.7M Bissa ounces (43-101) is from only one area of the Bissa property. From what I remember, there are 4 other areas on the Bissa property with the same or similar geology and thus it is believed that those 4 areas have similar gold bearing potential as the first one. The expectation has always been that the Bissa resource will grow to at least 5.0M ounces. Though, as you can see, if the other 4 Bissa areas turn out to truly be as fruitful as the first one then the potential of reaching 5 - 8M ounces from Bissa (alone) should not be tossed out.
The Banfora Group is completely separate from Bissa. Banfora is the one with the high potential Labola permit. I believe it is located about 300 km from Bissa. As such, if Banfora/Labola is eventually successful, it will be a complately separate mining operation - hopefully our 3rd organic mine in Burkina Faso, eventually. Again, the original Labola exploration results showed that 9 of the 18 holes shows visible gold, and plenty of high grade intersects. In addition, the holes were drilled 1/2 mile apart but yet so successful that they established a massive 11 km strike length.
I don`t know much about the Ouaga and Kaya groups, but they are treating them as separate properties and separate exploration projects.
There is also solid exploration prospects in the Taparko-Bouroum area that will end up increasing Taparko`s mine life materially.
They have separated the 35 Burkina Faso permits into these 5 groups primary exploration groups. This will allow them to dispatch teams to specific exploration groups. If they wanted to move super aggressively in Burkina Faso, theorectically, they are now set up to drill all 5 groups simultaneously.
I also have a though on Bissa development. I have no idea what their development plans are, obviously. However, it is my believe (based on some of the original/early data on Bissa) that they might be able to somewhat fast track Bissa into production. It will still take at least 1.25 - 2.00 years (from final feasibility) to reach production, also depending on how quicky they get permits and environmental assessments (Burkina Faso`s government is going all out to bring in new mining business so these should not create issues), but they could ramp up production in 2 phases. The first phase is to build a heap leach operation to process the low grade ore. Heap leach operations are relatively cheap to build and fast to put in place. Then in about 3 years time (after heap leach production start up) they can build a milling operation to process the high grade ore. This 2 phase approach could help to drive out really fast cash flow from Bissa, at US$1,200 - 1,500 gold price. Also, starting with heap leaching means really low up front capital cost requirement. This is very significant. HRG should have enough cash in the bank by the time Bissa is ready for development. No financing should be needed if they use this fast track approach. As you may know, securing financing is often a big reason why juniors / mid-tier companies take so long to bring projects into production, especially in this environment. It will be huge if HRG can eliminate that step completely. This should also help Bissa to move faster (from HRG`s presentation): ``Significant synergy may be realized between Bissa project and Taparko mine``
Anyway, as mentioned, I have no idea what their devolpment plans are for Bissa. Hopefully they decide to move aggressively forward and use a fast track approach (with development, but simultaneously move agressively with exploration also). High River is now a cash loaded company that can afford to move aggressively forward with all property locations within the portfolio.