SFF vs SLI As I write this, Seafield and St. Elias have virtually the same market cap. Seafield has a global resource of about 3 million ounces at about 0.7 g/t. They have done a prelimary economic assessment and determined a net present value of 249mil. Cash costs to extract the gold are 524.00/oz. They are growing their deposits with step-out drilling and upgrading the resource category by in-fill drilling.
By comparison, St. Elias has none of these things. At the global average discovery cost of 30.00/oz and the average maiden resource estimate taking 3yrs from the point of discovery, St. Elias could expend another 3yrs and 90 million dollars to get to where Seafield is today. And that's assuming St. Elias reports a discovery hole today, which they will not. Additionally there are no gaurantees they ever will.
While the future of St. Elias's Tesoro project is currently unknown, the saying "A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush" is actually quite apt in this situation. If you can get past the sexual overtones.