Member Info for AGEOS

Continuation:
The obvious causation for disruption to investment in new natural pozzolan initiatives is the Trump administration attack on environmental protection legislation and how that will impinge on future fly-ash supply. In the longer term context typical of industrial mineral mining projects the uncertainty is of little consequence but in the shorter term, of a few years, the market for natural pozzolan may be slower to develop than previously anticipated. That is why I cited the 2017 CS Project Study Report’s scenario of an initial development of the perlite resource to produce both pozzolan and perlite offtake, as being a possible first phase. Only when the greater natural pozzolan market, opening as a result of a decline in use of fly-ash, comes on stream, would the CS non-perlitic pozzolan resource then perhaps be exploited.

Progress to date on the CS Project is already skewed in favour of perlite development with the two MOU’s signed, whereas the non-perlitic pozzolan resource appears to be still awaiting requests for bulk samples for in-house testing from prospective clients. There is a reference in the July 4th RNS under Marketing to samples being provided for customer testwork but I would be surprised if this referred to the bulk samples normally required for potential product development. Bulk sample testing of a HQNP is usually an extremely exacting and lengthy process as there are potentially hundreds of tests to be conducted for hundreds of possible end products. The Geofortis lab took three years. The SAI (Strength Against Index) tests already completed on 80 composite drill samples are necessary to meet ASTM C618 Standard for natural pozzolans, Of the other ASTM tests I am not aware of any ASR (Alkali Silica Reaction Mitigation) tests having been reported but as Mineralx quotes (Tue 16.53) what appears to be 3 such tests from an RNS perhaps he would be so kind as to indicate the precise source.
How long SRES takes to achieve an MOU and/or offtake agreement for its non-perlitic pozzolan resource, therefore remains to be seen. In the meantime, as others have posted, the processing plant design and opencast plan are imminent and may provide an indication of the probably resource target for initial extraction.

AGIOS/INTHENO

Mineralx and Rodster thanks for your response. I can reassure you both and anyone else who drew similar conclusions from my posts that I most certainly do not have the negative view of the CS Project Pozzolan prospects which you imply. The cautionary note I expressed in the first line of Paragraph four of the Tue 14.38 post on Implications merely reflects the severity of competition in the market for natural pozzolan compared with that for perlite. They are distinct products even though both may have pozzolanic properties, and should be assessed within the context of different markets.

My current assessment of the SW US market for natural pozzolans is that until sometime in 2017 it was full steam ahead to replace the anticipated shortfall in Class F & C fly-ash due to coal power-station closure in response to increasingly stringent environmental protection legislation both at Federal and State level. Since mid-2017 there are indications that some of that steam has dissipated. There is evidence of investment initiatives stalling or being put on hold until market clarity improves.

For example, Purebase Minerals an industrial mineral holdings company based in California, put on hold in mid 2017, two major pozzolan projects, the 280 acre Snow White Mine in southern California and the 1000+ acre Long Valley Pozz Deposit in the north. Also, those who followed up my reference to the Geofortis $20M Reno Pozzolan Processing Plant will have seen that the project was due to complete earlier this year but appears to have been delayed from mid 2017. No doubt projects of this scale will complete in time, hence my highlighting them as future competitors but in the meantime they appear to signal company caution in the natural pozzolan market.

To be continued.

Dubliner, yes still a holder on basis of the perlite prospect and ready to add more if opportunity arises. Hope you have made good use of what I assume were healthy MARL gains. Thanks for your appreciative comments as good to know my contributions are of use to some at least.
Best wishes
AGEOS

Continuation:
Of the various conceptual mining and processing plans proposed in the 2017 CS Project Concept Study Report it is interesting that one of the alternative scenarios suggested, is initial mining only from the perlite zone, for processing as a pozzolan, but in the screening circuit scalping off certain size fractions for sale as raw perlite (page 22).

I leave readers to draw their own conclusions from these observations.

Best wishes to former MARL investors and best of luck to all.

AGEOS/INTHENO

An estimated Perlite Resource for the CS Project of the order of c4Mt, even with the possibility of further as yet unquantified resource to the NE of the Main Zone, may be much less than anticipated by some. However, in the context of total US mine production of 520,000 metric tons in 2017 (US Geol Survey estimate) and total Nevada State production of 19,884 tons in 2016 (latest available figure) the CS Project Resource is a significant number.

The Nevada State total comes from 2 opencast pits, The Popcorn Mine near Fallon in Churchill County, owned and operated by E. P. Minerals which uses its total production, 17,476 tons in 2016, for filter products, and the Tenacity Mine near Caliente in Lincoln County, owned and operated by Wilkin Mining and producing 2408 tons in 2016. There are only 7 perlite mines in the 5 SW US states, of Nevada, California, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, the latter being the leading producer of crude ore (ref USGS).

The signing of two MOU’s, both with buyers and processors of raw perlite, totalling minimum offtake tonnages in excess of that targeted for the start-up of perlite production (including the NewPerl Project in one MOU), is a significant endorsement of the potential for successful development of the perlite component of the CS Project.
With regard to the Pozzolan component and potential Resource the future is less clear. Natural source material with pozzolanic properties occurs in great variety and quantity in many parts of the SW US states. A single example will serve to underline the competition which Sunrise faces in turning this aspect of the CS Project into a viable economic concern.
Geofortis Pozzolan, a subsidiary of the privately owned, Moraga, California-based Geofortis holding company, has an 18 acre $20M pozzolan processing plant currently under construction at Reno in Nevada. This will process Lassenite, a naturally occurring volcanic ash/diatomite composite, sourced from its wholly owned 150Mt mine just over the border in California, and most importantly 20 minutes by rail and road from the Reno Plant. The processing plant will produce 600,000 tons of pozzolanic products per year for the California, Utah and Nevada markets. Geofortis also has an undisclosed 2500 acre pozzolanic tephra and tuff prospect in Utah destined for cementitious material production when market conditions are favourable. Compare that 600,000 ton per annum production figure with the CS Project 2017 Concept Study Report which predicted a potential market for pozzolan in Nevada in the vicinity of 250,000 tons per year (page 16), and which estimated a demand from Nevada, California and Utah for up to 110,000 tons per year from the SC deposit in the then current market (page 19).

To be continued

Continuation:
With regard to the Pozzolanic source-rock tonnage estimation within the Main Zone, the Phase 2 drilling appears to indicate that the northern (18-C31 with 27.4m to bottom-hole) and eastern (18-C17 with 13.7m to bottom-hole and 18-C16 with 35.1m to bottom-hole) areas have previously unrecognised significant deposits. If the three holes are representative of the three 300m grid squares they occupy this suggests a source-rock quantity of c17.145Mt. This together with as yet unquantifiable deposits presumed to be beneath the perlite and eastwards to the county road, supports retention of the earlier estimation of around 28Mt of pozzolanic source-rock for the Main Zone. The additional northern and eastern deposits compensate for the redrawing of the southern boundary of the Main Zone which removes from consideration a previously presumed extension of deposits southward along a strike of over 600m.

Tuff Zone.
The Phase 2 drilling included two clusters 600m apart. Data from the drill-holes plus the confirmation in the July 4th 2018 RNS of a 750m strike length of HQNP (High Quality Natural Pozzolan) allows a calculation of c8.84Mt for the NE cluster and 4.45Mt for the SW cluster within separate 300m grid squares, the total of 13.29Mt probably being conservative since overburden to the east may obscure further strike extension in that direction. All of the westerly strike extension of the Zone beyond the SW cluster has been excluded from the estimation due to the acknowledged deterioration in pozzolanic properties in that direction, hence much of the reduction from 40Mt as estimated in Nov 2017.

NE Zone
The single Phase 2 drill-hole in the NE Zone, 18-C32 intersected 38.1m of pozzolanic tephra in a 45.7m depth hole. In the absence of more representative data I retain the estimation of c5.25Mt of source rock based on a notional 5m thickness over 0.42sq km whilst acknowledging, as in Nov 2017, the reasonable probability of a significant source-rock thickness yet to be proven.

AGEOS/INTHENO

Since Nov 2017, the release of Phase 2 drilling results on Feb 16th 2018 and a CS Project Update released July 4th 2018, combined with the Phase 2 Drilling and Lithology Map on the company website, allows for a refinement of the source-rock tonnage estimates detailed in my Nov 11th 2017 post. Access to all these data sources is necessary to understand the following fully.

The Phase 2 drilling programme included 16 holes in the Main Zone, 8 in the Tuff Zone and 1 in the NE Zone. All data from these drill-holes was integrated into the 300m grid which I had superimposed on the whole CS Project site-map for my original tonnage estimation, and all the assumptions relating to source-rock continuity which had been necessary for the original calculations were reassessed. Without providing all the many pages of re-calculations on which my conclusions are based, the following is a summary of the findings:

Main Zone: Estimated Perlite Resource c3.95Mt ie approx. 4 million tonnes, plus estimated Pozzolanic Source-Rock, unchanged at c28Mt (32Mt – 4Mt) See details below.

Tuff Zone: Estimated Pozzolanic Source-Rock c13.29Mt, ie reduced from c40Mt. See details below.

North-East Zone: Estimated Pozzolanic Source-Rock c5.25Mt ie unchanged but with indications of very substantial increase if the results from hole 18-C32 are replicated throughout the 0.42sq km area. See details below:

Main Zone.
Of the Perlite Resource total, 3.7Mt is derived from the area of the Inset in the top-right corner of the Drilling and Lithology Map on the company website, which includes all but 3 of the Phase 2 drill-holes within the Main Zone. An additional 0.255Mt was calculated for the Perlite area centred on hole 18-C17. Note the additional perlite outcrop areas extending further NE and across the county road into the NE Zone which are as yet unquantified and will presumably add to the Perlite Resource total. An important qualification to these figures is that the term Perlite as used in the published core-log descriptions is based on visual identification of the cores. Although backed up by laboratory based identifications of core samples it is an assumption that the visual assessment of perlite identity and thickness in the cores is correct. This aside, the figure of c4Mt of Perlite within the Main Zone should be a reasonable approximation of the Resource total tonnage.

To be continued

I posted as INTHENO until May this year, when I closed my LSE account in response to their failure to remove 4 bogus postings which had been entered in my name, and to reinstate at least some of my recent posts, all c300 of which had been removed without adequate explanation.
Recent re-posting by Samspade4 on Wed 22nd at 13.03 and 13.05, of a source-rock estimated tonnage for the CS Project, which I originally posted here on Nov 11th 2017, however prompts me to return to this BB at least temporarily. I have no objection to the information being re-posted, however it is incomplete, lacking the following qualifying paragraph:

I leave others to draw whatever conclusion they wish from these figures. At the very least this exercise suggests a substantial increase in source-rock tonnage from that suggested by Beaufort, sufficient to satisfy the volumetric requirements of a viable project. It is the further successful ongoing bulk sample tests and confirmation of marketability of the product, together with a targeted drilling programme, which will be necessary before any estimation of resource can even be considered. Even so many industrial mineral project companies do not proceed to, or release, resource figures, so it remains to be seen if Sunrise do so for this project.

Since November 2017 there has been sufficient progress with the CS Project to update and refine these tonnage estimates and to provide some evidence-based probabilities regarding the further development of the Project. I shall therefore take this opportunity to offer the following observations in a series of related posts.

AGEOS/INTHENO