If Silver Standard only looks at the large tonnage low grade reserves then I agree with you. The most recent PEA for Snowfield showed an IRR of less than 10%.

The Sulphurets-Bruceside study of 2001 envisaged a 350 TPD underground operation with resources of about 1 million tons of .357 opt. This study was done at $400 Au and $5.00 Ag. Interestingly the reserve calculations done at this time did not cut the assay values of greater than 1 opt to 1 opt due to the consistency of the high grade veins. At that time the Galena Hill Zone was considered uneconomic as there was insufficient exploration.

A low tonnage high grade project would certainly be within the reach of SSO and with the shallow high grade values at Galena Hill less than 500 meters from the West Zone I cannot see how taking out a couple of million tons of high value would really change the economics of the monster low grade-large tonnage project. If the assay values at Galena Hill were included at the uncut values rather than being reduced to 1 opt the grades would be much different. The understandable conservatism of the SSO staff is there due to the lack of development at Galena Hill-it costs lots to get a geologist to gain the confidence necessary to use 100 opt assays in reserve calculations let alone 300 opt