Tuktu drilling costs..... For those who cannot see my "copy and pastes" from the report......APEX is stating in their proposed 2012 Tuktu field work program to AXI, drilling at a cost of $300/m [all in], based on last years costs [historical].
Reference - Appendix 4
And the authors of the report went on to say the following [Section 18.0].......
18.0 RECOMMENDATIONS
In the opinion of APEX Geoscience Ltd., and the authors of this report, the results of the exploration program conducted at the Tuktu Property in 2011 were sufficiently encouraging to warrant a significant follow-up work program both at the Tuktu deposit and the Tuktu East areas.
For the Tuktu Deposit, the following work items are recommended in order to continue its advancement and provide information for a Preliminary Economic Assessment;
- Infill and Step-out Drilling: A sizeable drill program is recommended for the Tuktu deposit in order to provide further information regarding the extent of the banded iron formation. This program will include in-fill drilling between current drill intercepts, step-out drilling at either end of the currently defined Tuktu deposit and step-down drilling to examine the depth extent of the deposit. This program should be designed in order to provide additional information to allow for the potential upgrading of all, or a portion of, the Inferred Resource discussed in this report to the Indicated category. A drill program on the order of 12,000m (~3 x 2011 program) is recommended in order to accomplish this goal.
- Metallurgy: Detailed studies should be initiated to examine the metallurgical characteristics of the Tuktu BIF in order to determine its potential for producing a viable iron ore concentrate. There are currently several tonnes of coarse reject material from the 2011 Tuktu drill core samples in storage in Hall Beach, NU, that could be used to create various composites for this work, as well as the archived core located at the Tuktu camp.