@SpoonK
Bear in mind technology had ten years to be developed to refine discovery techniques between the initial Telfer '91 and the 2002 update tripling its size.
Newcrest may well be getting a similar uplift in reserves at Red Chris at the moment , by exploring further, in and around the existing pit.
HAV may need another decade before new gee-whiz technological advances find ore bodies previously missed - or more probably in HAV's case it will be mining advances that allow them to go further and deeper down to extract ore.
I think they can't do both initially in the same decline tunnel. If Byrne get told to keep cutting then they could get the physical spacing between mining and exploration teams. When SB says "as soon as possible" he means within 2 years of the start of the decline, and not the 10 years of a normal mining project. He doesn't mean 2 days or 2 weeks or even 2 months - which is going to disappoint a lot of people on here who don't have the patience and probably don't realise this.
In saying that I too decided during the week to not be patient and bought a non-GGP share after three GGP top ups since we recently dipped into the 17p and then 16p territory. The recent SP weakness had meant that overall the percentage of my portfolio that is GGP had reduced - this is how I justified to myself the topping up with even more GGP, and of course the number crunchers on this board. PIs are holding a considerable chunk of this company.... it will be interesting to see how firmly under bums those hands are when the institutions want in.
Are we not losing focus on what the decline is initially all about? It is still an exploration decline. They will reach the top of the ore body before October 2022 and then start all the infill drilling in earnest.
Only when that has completed, and all the known areas that they've seen from cores that have been drilled from the surface are added into the MRE, that is when mining will really start. Hence SB's 2-3 years makes sense, at least to me.
Also note that in a normal scenario (I think it was Red Chris) the same MRE and PFS to actual mining was put at 5-6 years in Newcrest's midweek publication. And that time frame would normally be even longer for a greenfield site, Red Chris has the advantage of being beside a working pit and all its associated infrastructure. Comparing those two timelines shows how keen Newcrest are to feed Telfer and how much fastracking they are doing at HAV.
And I'm thing they will infill drill to the detail required for adding to the MRE only to a certain depth, perhaps targeting only the first 800m top section of the ore body first, knowing there is more ore below. Once mining they will juggle how to safely do stoping and additional deeper exploration drilling in parallel. So they will see what else is below the known ore body and prove up what is 2,000m below the top of the ore body, or 2,400m below surface level, or to whatever depth mines can operate in 2025.
....Saturday morning musings of a non-mining expert with zero mining experience.
Much curiosity with a black blob at the bridge through the dunes to the decline.....
And two similar blobs at GGPs old camp.
They may have started Bamps' beloved air vent ground works, north east of the decline a group of three now slightly odd dark rectangles.
Need a bigger screen to look at drilling activities in and around HAV and Blackhills....
Please show the workings in your calculation that gets the SP to 60p
Hmm, the proof will be in the auction rooms to see who pays to have a go at cutting the black sulphide intrusions out to leave a literal and metaphorical gem(s).
Nice income, but not the rock we all dream of to "do a Petra" on Blue Rock.
..... you have all read about the spotted black sulphide intrusions also mentioned in the RNS?
Think of this as probably multiple smaller stones rather than one huge walloper....
Waiting still for the next one.....
How gutting the words "spotted black sulphide intrusions" could be..... Otherwise that really would've been a rock!
So the value may just be from multiple wee rocks after a bit of slicing and dicing of that beast....
Maybe next time.....
Lovely daylight and radar images available today. They've got a smiley face made south of HAV's dune, activity north end west side of the dune cut, busy throughout the north east of HAV and have amassed who knows what in HAV's central compound. But it's big and clunky with the radar signal.
Small screen caveat.....
Haven't looked over Blackhills yet....
@Bamps
The vent shafts happen to be "south of everyone's favourite sand-dune" then too.....
Nothing happening there that doesn't look like drilling to my non-mining eye.
Question for the knowledgeable - they do a wee pilot hole, then pull the larger diameter drill up from below? If that is true then the spoil would be shipped out from below too? So any hint of a shaft would be the surface infrastructure to protect the opening to make sure it doesn't clog up? And that would only be after completion?
I think that may be trickier to spot - although I note you can subscribe to High Resolution images on Sentinel now. I may buy a very very large satellite picture of a clear day in mid-2020 to print out and adorn the hallway wall. Nice deep shade of rich red should make it cosy of an evening, and the stripey dunes would make it look like wallpaper.
@Bamps
The decline, spoil heap, odds and sods round and about all do generally change at every new image..... But I have no idea how to interpret the changes.
I'm also not convinced I even know where the vent shafts actually are..... Although previous discussion here would suggest a fairly chunky bit of surface structure.
Just caught up with a daylight image from the 8th. Nothing new at Blackhills, I wonder if they are done for now?
And not too many HAV changes either. One brand new central spot, nothing south of everyone's favourite sand-dune which is quite unusual and nothing that I can see in terms of far flung activity round and about.
The puddles and ponds are drying up now so perhaps ground conditions will improve for all.
Usual small screen caveat for all of those observations....
21 carats, slightly more than half of that 39 carat you were wishing for.....
Keep wishing....
@Bamps,
One of the big curiosities about Artemis' Dec 2019 pdf (which you kindly linked to) is that, of every bit of Star Trekkie potential targets it flags, not one of them has actually been drilled by Artemis yet. When they went out with rigs they went directly due east from HAV and drilled I think two or three holes to a decent depth (circa 1,200m from memory) - and discovered hee haw gold from their cores - which to my untrained eye looked like potential kitchen worktop designs.
I do recall Artemis mused that some of their more northern targets were probably going to be unreachable with a rig due to no path through all the sand dunes for big vehicles. I also wonder if they got suckered in to near-ology with HAV next door and forgot about fundamentals of what the survey data showed.
I also presume they are still awaiting Martu approval to go to the close targets north of HAV - that was the latest a few weeks ago and I hadn't heard any updates - although I have been a bit busy recently so haven't been on Sentinel or this board much.
My Rio theory was that they did drill, but there is minimal cover to drill through so they came and went, possibly with a bit of quick and ugly RC drilling, and got the job done quick to the required depth, bagged the chippings and skee-daddled.
Or it has remained so wet (check out all the puddles drying out and refilling) that they haven't rocked up yet as they don't want to get their boots muddy.
Went back to compare / contrast the most recent daylight images on a decent sized screen last night. There was a curiosity of a new drill location at the north end of the dune bridge at HAV. Sadly nothing else further out and about to stir excitement. No doubt ProfQ or PaddyG already flagged this at the time and I am way behind the curve.
I'm always impressed that there has barely been a break in drilling south of the dune. "Gold in every hole" is indeed an excellent quote and the handy Red Chris comparison available in every NC update just spells out why HAV is special.
Question for those who know - has a mining company in recent times ever built an exploration decline and then not bothered mining?
I need some light and entertaining background reading for the evenings now that the weather has broken and summer has ended in my part of the world, hence I thought I'd ask.....
My vote is for page 22. Good old classic HAD005 still in the top ten, indeed in second place of all time best core results.
Someone said on this board at the time that result was published - "that's it right there in HAD5, this will be a mine".
Can't remember who it was but it was enough for me to stay and keep the faith.