..."Porphyry systems can have significant amounts of gold, in some instances more gold than copper. They can have billions of tons and still be economic even if it's only 0.5 g/t.[Au]"
This is a bit out of context but ...We have about 0.19 gpt Au which suggests that the gold is 38% of the way to being economic by itself (i.e. 0.19/0.50 gpt=> 38%).
It is more than 20% of the in situ value at current 3 yr prices. Over 7M oz Au M+I.
The trailing 3 yr price of gold is $1459 and still climbing, Ag $28 and climbing, Cu $3.67 and still slowly climbing.
After metal recoveries, I see $10.46/tonne credits from Mo ($14/lb), Au, and Ag alone. I believe the opex cost per tonne from the 2011 RE totaled about $8.60 per tonne. That suggests that our net opex cost to produce lb CU would be about negative $1.86. This seems a little too good. I'm not that confident that this will work out so well but I think there is a good chance of having negative Cu production cost. That label would be priceless for the street appeal for our project.
I imagine those opex costs quoted in the RE were rather wild estimates compared to how finely tuned our BFS opex and capex costs will be.
dyodd