I've read some of the recent posts and had a number of conversations with people over what has or hasn't been going on, along with what has been "rumored" to be going on. Here are some thoughts pertaining to that:
  1. there has been a runor that Anaconda will be using the Dufferin mill to process ore from their upcoming bulk sampling program - while that has the potential to make sense for both parties, I have been informed that at prsent there is not a deal in place to do so. That doesn't mean that one hasn't been agreed to in principle, but there is not a formal in place at the moment.
  2. there has been a rumor that there is an independent mining contractor that has an greement in place with the Anaconda and there is another rumor regarding RCG being in negotiations with an indepedent as well - the natural leap was the rumor above in #1 was just semantics and that there is an Anaconda deal deal in place with RCG, but that it is being done thru the contractor so the answer I got when asking if rumor #1 above was true, was accurate only in that the deal wasn't directly with Aanconda - I expressly addressed that as well and was told there was NO deal in place with an independent either.
    1. this is where it gets a little more interesting, as apparently RCG has been discussing an arrangement with an independent mining contractor, but the concept was to have them take over the mining of Dufferin, not to be brought in to run things for Anaconda. "IF" RCG can finalize a deal to have the contractor take over operations it would make a ton of sense to then finalize a deal with Anaconda to provide milling services and use that cash flow / revenue to help fund a small familiarization project for the contractor with respct to Dufferin as well.
    2. I was told point blank that in order to get Dufferin back on line a financing of some form would be required. I was also told that the current board / executive think that the doing something at current levels (or current equivalent after a consolidation) would be too dilutive. That only leaves a couple of options
      • get the price up somehow before doing a financing to reduce the dilution. This would require something of substance, but the milling work would help, announcements regarding a Tangier assessment would help, etc
      • sell the company or one of the projects to put some cash in the bank and remove the dead duck stigma.
      • do some form of a merger / acquisition with Anaconda - more potential here if the milling happens and is successful.
  3. There has been a fair bit of discussion over whether the lease / rent / acquisition of equipment has been well handled, since there seems to have been a lot of the cash we did have rolled into that, without much success. I was originally told that the equipment was just not good and that we had to spend a fair whack of money to repeatedly repair it. The hiccup with this is that if the equipment was rented and also in a state of disrepair or questionable condition from the start, RCG shouldn't have been paying for that, the vendor should have. When pressed, I was told that there were operational issues on site that caused a reasonable number of the issues, as opposed to the equipment being as faulty from the start as some have indicated that they believe.
    • this begs the question - who was managing the acquistion of the equipment, the operation of the site and hiring and supervision of the staff. From discussions I have had with a few people the most influential person on that fron for the 1st 6+ months of the year was Greg Gibson and he apparently is no longer heavily involved and him no longer leading the operational charge is what has opened the dorr to the company looking at contracting the operation of the mine.
  4. On another note I have asked about the need for funds - there is a never wavering answer that "we need to do something in the way of a financing - additional loan, equity, debenture, whatever" and while none of these has happened Jack still informed me that to the best of his knowledge bankruptcy is not an optoin being considered by those with the most to lose.
    • I have asked about Sprott Finance potentially acquiring the projects in lieu of repayment and was told that is not on the table right now.
    • I have asked if a consolidation and subsequent financing at a higher price point is being consdidered (can't do one under 5 cents anyway)and was told that right now that is not being worked on, but it was not summarily discounted.
    • I have asked if selling a project is a realistic financing method and was told that is always a possibility but a no an active project at present.
    • I have asked about the potential to acquire something else in addition to the current properties and refinance based on the introduction of that new project - like the answer about selling a property - the answer was that it would make sense to look at if they found the right acquisiton.
  5. There has been the suggestion that the mill was recently cleaned up and a decent recovery of gold came as a result. While Jack is not at liberty to explicitly answer the question of what was recovered, he provided enough of an answer that I am willing to bet the information is correct. He also indicated that the belief is that with the proper staff / training that he mill is reasonable operational condition now and that although will need a good chunk of cash to restart mining that the mill is ready if they do.
On a slightly different note, I have had a number of strategic / operational discussion with Jack and have asked a few questions in the form of "do you believe something like this would make sense" as opposed to "I believe this would make sense, are you looking into it and have gained some insights, at least assuming that they Jack is being honest:
  • I believe the board (along with Sprott) are a fractured group without a clear vision for the road ahead and I believe the crash and burn in the 1st 9 months of this year were a result of that. They may now be planning something whereby keeping the market here for a bit longer is intentional - I do not believe that getting it here was intentional - and that has been suggested by some.
  • I believe Jack truly gets his hands tied by the board, but i also believe that he is out of his element in terms of stickhandling the strategic addressing of the poers that be. This is not a condemnation of Jack rather the board for putting him in this position.
  • I believe true functional operation of the mine has been more at fault for the state of things than the geology - because even if there were / are geological issues, they should have been addressed far before the company was simply broke. Here I will pin some of the blame on Jack - while he was not the guy making the on site decisions or making the decisions regarding the financings and/or when and how to finish the acquistion of the 00% of the properties, he was the CFO and the management of the budget, the delineation of the pitfalls of overextending the company funds, the calling out of those spending the budget that was allocated, needed to be on the table he had responsibility for and instead more than should have been was left in the hands of others. Until the company had proven cash flow the funds that were used to pay out the property (even at a reduced rate) would have been better served as funds to ensure we have operations
It should be noted that there have been a number of rumors come out of sources local to Nova Scotia and while I am sure that something "like" what was the start of the rumors actually happened, there have been a number of conclusions drawn that have simply been wrong. The rumor mill will always be full even if the Dufferin mill isn't.

I may have missed a few things and will add to this if I think of something, but I hope this helps bring perspective to the table on some of what has been happening.

Salut, 
Leigh McBain