RE:RE:RE:Lumpy ;
A "p.s." on my post and the focus on that fault at 625mN vs a mineralized drill intersection interpreted as top of the same system way out near 1300mN. With the caveat I'm not a geologist and the huge timelines involved in geology, emplacement of rocks and minerals, movement, folding, faulting, erosion, leaching, later events ... make it a very complex science determining how and where mineralized ore bodies come into being. Finding economic ore bodies is extremely rare and difficult. So I defer to the professionals, I might or might not have interpreted what I have read correctly.
A slip/strike fault knocking the northern continuation of the high grade HNE ore body to the West, and also likely downward, can be consistent with a continuous extension of HNE much further North and in much larger tonnages than so far determined to be the mineable resource at HNE. The odds appear to be good this is the case.
The materiality of faulting is a matter of degree - if the fault allowed the northern and southern portions to slide some 50m or 100m from their original continuous positioning the overburden and surrounding strata of different layered rocks can remain much the same as the fault was the movement of large blocks of strata from surface to depth. The same strata appearing in the drill core may have allowed Greg Crowe to interpret a similar positioning of the mineralized ore body at the Northern mineralized zone, and his conclusion they had hit the outer top of what was much the same as what had been extensively drilled further South. He also told me that the number of drill holes lost (very expensive at depths over 1200m) was in part because there is a hard granite cap overlaying the target areas that deflects the drills. On the other hand OT's drilling contractors revealed they had made a recent drill hole over 2000m deep at OT, yet we have not seen a drill result that correlates with such a deep hole.
Greg Crowe's view of the continuation North of economic high grade mineralization is consistent with the conclusions of a seminar meeting of some of the world's top porphry geologists convened by IVN's geologists around 2002, after IVN's blockbuster discovery holes had been drilled.
They theorized the long OT corridor of mineralization had been emplaced by an exceptionally powerful and lengthy pressurized mineralization event pushing deep hot fluids into native layers of rock along a N-S axis, with its center most likely somewhere close to or North of the JV line. They theorized that later movement had tilted the N-S chain of resulting deposits to break and dip towards the NE in large raft sections - which is why at the Oyu Tolgoi South deposit the ore body is shallow and can be mined as an open pit near surface. It also suggests that somewhere between 1300mN and several more kilometres North on the JV property, and to the SW of Heruga at the far South end of the JV property, it is possible there are further similar ore bodies that may have far more shallow portions than Hugo North and HNE.
The geologists also theorized and suggested exploration to the East and West flanks of the OT trend where porphry deposits often might be accompanied by precious metals deposits, particularly gold, in a halo type arrangement where the gold-carrying fluids emplacing the main copper/gold mineralization had travelled further from the pressure centre. Such deposits can often be shallow, if they have not been eroded away, leached, faulted or folded or otherwise lost. At the time of the signing of the Earn-in in 2004 ETG's most recent geological report had made a recommendation of continued drilling to the East of OT at a suspected shallow gold target named the X-Grid. Nothing further was ever heard of that target.
Here we are into "conspiracy thinking" but consider in 2004 the potential political implications for development of OT if there had been a valuable shallow open pit mineable high grade gold deposit discovered on ETG's licences. A valuable mine that could be exploited with a much smaller capital investment and readily available open pit technology - in comparison to the difficult and specialized block caving technology and massive deep mine targetting Hugo North and HNE, and requiring a leading global operator like Rio Tinto to manage. There may have been logic in not pursuing such targets until the main project was much further advanced.
IVN ran a major proprietary technology IP survey (they called it Zeus) over all of the OT area and in the period 2004-2009 Friedland said they knew they had a much bigger, generational series of mines and ore bodies at OT. The supposed reason ETG reserved a 30% interest in shallow mineralization was that was the limit of RC drilling they could pursue themselves, whereas IVN's results at Hugo North trending towards the ETG property line were showing the main OT ore body was much deeper. But there were other targets elsewhere on the JV which might have been shallower and might also have been deferred for later exploration/drilling. Which still means one high value drill hole elsewhere on the JV might reveal an immensely valuable shallow deposit in respect of which ETG would have a 30% interest. Just another potential value-added discovery on top of an already hugely valuable suite of resources discovered at OT on ETG's JV ground. Entirely speculative but ... within the realm of possibility. And a reason why without further exploration it is so difficult to value the JV.
cg