RE:More Bob Moriarty on Novo & Merry Christmas allAimH,
Yup, it's quite a big difference between surface mining and deep down at 15,000 feet. It's way too hot down there (55 deg C) and it could take 1 hour to get miners the surface. From 2003 to 2015 the Tau Tona mine, SA, has production drops to 1/3 (from 600,000 ozAu @12gpt, to 200,000 ozAu @ 8gpt) while production cost was up by a factor of 5 (from $170 to 900 per oz).
With the conglomerate near surface, Moriaty and Barron were talking less than $100/oz (never mind US or Cdn, or Aus) with simple portable equipment such as rock crusher, screener, sluice boxes...Alright throw in a more expensive Steinert sorter! Total cost is still below $10M to get going with a quarry type operation. I would urge QH to go for at least 10x the current size. Instead of some 500kg (0.5 tonne) sample scoop up something like 5 tonnes, or even better, make it 10 tonnes, since he has 20,000 tonne sample permit to chew up, 20,000/10 = 2000 loads. It will take some time (several months) to get all this processed, but even at 15 gpt that would translate into 300,000 oz Au x 1000/oz profit = $300M (50% = $150M, not shabby at all). This is only a small part of Purdy (area of 100m x 80m), depth ~1m. My math OK so far?
One nagging question: I have been searching hi and lo for the location of the site where they had the first sample (the one that shows 87gpt and 46 gpt), but so far I have not found it. Can you or someone provide me with some pointer?
Would this be near Trench 7 (along the strike and near the boundary between Purdy's and Comet Well) or at the NE end Trech 1,2,3...8? Reference Figure 1 of 2 November 2017 NR. Figure is attached, hope that SH does not wipe it out.
GH