So, I was playing around with some numbers for the Champagne zone...
posted on
Oct 17, 2011 12:37AM
And I must say, we should think about a small mining project...
First, I figured out the area of material that makes up 290,000 tons... I made up a fictional area consisting of 100 meters X 50 meters X 17 meters and multiplied that by 3.5 tons per cubic meter... I got 297,000 tons. That is NOT a very big area, not big at all!!!
Next, I did all the conversions of the "non-compliant" historical drill results by multiplying the grams per ton for the gold and silver, dividing by 33 grams per ounce and multiplying that by a slightly lower price for today's market price... I then multiplied the tons times the percentages of copper, zinc and lead, multiplied those numbers by 2000 pounds per ton and then multiplied that by the same slightly lower prices of those commodities of today's market prices and I came up with a total of $64,000,000. Now, a small lens like that could be mined quite quickly, like in a year or two after getting started, shipped to a smelter on the train tracks that are being fixed up this year and BAM, you might get $30-40 million profit after labour and some equipment costs...
I think you could do a LOT of exploratory drilling with $30-40 million bucks... I know it's a little more complicated than that, but my point is, that is a very small chunk of rock to process for a nice sized cheque... With rail and road access already in place, I can't see this being an overly complicated endeavor...
Of course, I am not sure how deep this lens is... It looks to be within the first 50 or so meters when I try to figure out the tables... I'm sure it's a lot more complicated than just "blasting a hole in the ground" and scooping up the rock to smelt it, but how complicated can it be? Don't you just get to the lenses and blast out the lens or lenses and scoop THAT into the trucks and dump that into the rail cars and crush and smelt that stuff???
I know I am making things very simple but I don't like complicating things. Most everybody understands simple... I know I do...
Just thinking out loud on a Sunday evening. G'night, all.
Herb