Drilling or PFS/FS - where should we put our moneyFriends, any future activity will come with the price of further dilution. So the question is where to put this money to make most of the money for us. From my experience over the last 20 years - I would say FS. First Uncertainty: it is a more straightforward process of process optimization and will provide tangible results for sure, while drilling is more risky and even if we find something in QV that has economic potential, which is already questionable, we still are far away from any resource or reserve statements as it will be purely explorative.
Second Time: Time is an issue in several aspects in this decision. A. it will take years to get a reasonable resource/reserve estimate for QV, as after this initial explorative drill campaign additional delineation campaigns will need to follow. But more importantly, we enter into a potential time frame where explorer has a chance to sell their assets for a fair price. The difficulty will be to decide what is the best time to sell, as it would be good to this more towards the end of the hype but this is difficult to know when the end is there and we have learnt it the hard way in 2011. So most important, dont miss the right time again
Third Permits/Community Engagement: The sooner we tackle this issue and provide the community with a clear and tangible vision regarding their future role and participating, the more likely the permitting process will succeed. While drilling provides some jobs for a limited amount of time, moving the project to FS and in production and providing this clear vision on the the local and regional community will have a much better sustainable and long-term effect. A project with an additional billion tonnes of resources but blocked by local resistance is worth nothing in the end. PF/FS makes it more likely that the community will be part as a simple drill campaign.
So, I believe the earlier we start this process, the more likely we will succeed. I remember very well the last twenty years, and if we have a window of opportunity to have community and government support together with rising copper prices, we should not miss it. Otherwise, billions of pounds of additional resources are almost worthless, as we have seen in the last ten years.