Ordinarily drill results are used to determine mineral resources and eventually reserves but the drill results aren't good enough. Apparently Pretium were putting out NR showing spectacular gold numbers, but Strathcona says they were very narrow veins of gold that doesn't add up to a lot in the end. Pretium is saying that the crosscut sample of the contained gold is 94% lower than the amount of gold found when milled. So Pretium wanted Strathcona to wait for the milled bulk sample to be processed, but they said that they weren't seeing it from the preliminary assays.

Strathcona is saying that Pretium was putting out erroneous news releases and that's why they withdrew because they didn't want to be part of the Qualified Persons on those NR. In the NR, Pretium was speculating about "probable" mineral reserves and future gold production entirely based on expected (but not proven) results.

This sums up what Strathcona was objecting to in the NR: At one point, these assertions, conclusions and recommendations [in the Pretium NR] were made on the basis of approximately 20 per cent of the underground drilling results, no assay results from the sample tower and no results from production.