The grades provided are surface samples and are very very few in number. The charts are for actual mined deposit averages over millions of tonnes. So they are not one to one comparisons. This is for broad comparison only. CAUTION IS WARRANTED. YOU CAN NOT DRAW ANY FIRM CONCLUSIONS.
Having said that, as marked on the charts, yes the grades are very impressive, well into the highest 10th percentile. Refer to #1, above.
Having said that, one could say you are more likely to have lower grades at surface than higher grades due to weathering etc. But there could always be some type of mitigating circumstances that we are not aware of as Auryn did not report any details - so I will just refer to #1 again, while saying, yes, the grades are impressive and so it is encouraging data - and Auryn is apparently excited by the results as they are putting quite a bit more effort into exploring this area
Just one more question: Can one translate 860 ppm (parts per million) into a MO grade? In the oil and gas area (with which I have been involved), geochemical testing is indeed very telling in the exploration process (the geos have it down to a science, pun intended), but I’m not sure whether one can extrapolate a MO grade from ppm - maybe they can? I guess if we knew the ppm when they were exploring for nearby MO mines then we would have something to compare against.
Note…probably should note that the grades should be adjusted to be in copper equivalents since other valuable minerals are present etc. (The other copper deposits in your charts probably adjusted already to account for gold/silver.) Also note, whatever they found at surface likely has been leached/weathered so higher grades might be lurking just a little deeper.
What’s interesting here is that for decades the southern terminus of the famous “Early Cretaceous Porphyry Belt” in Chile’s Coastal Range was supposed to be the Colliguay Mine 200 Km north of us. This belt was made up of 90 to 100 million year old rock. A recent PR by AMC said that their head Geo was sending in samples of the Rhenium bearing molybdenite from our Pegaso Nero area to a specialty lab to test its age. Sure enough it’s the same rock age from the same “Veta Negro” rock formation and its 2 subdivisions the Lo Prado and the Ocoite. Now we have confirmation that this belt extends a little further south than we thought. This could result in a bit of a staking war in between us and Colliguay to our NW. Porphyries occur in a linear N to S alignment in the Chilean coastal Range.
Everybody and their brother in the mining industry have been heading to the Chilean Coastal Range recently because of the horrendous POWER and WATER issues in Chile’s Andes and Atacama Desert where over 95% of Chile’s mining industry hangs out. About 3 years ago some group from Peru tied down a huge swath of mining concessions from the border of our Mambo concessions up to the NW towards Colliguay.
On Figure 6.5 at the above link you can see porphyry deposit #8 north of Colliguay. This is the Andacollo Mine which plays a very special role in Medinah’s history. Les/Medinah noticed that 7 European hedge funds put $110 million into refurbishing this mine when it was run by Dayton Mining and Bill McKatyn. Dayton had failed to consolidate the surrounding mining concessions, however. Medinah decided to play opportunist and tied down the properties around the central pit of the mine. The 7 hedge funds, however, didn’t find that maneuver very clever and the bullets have been flying ever since. There was even a midnight bulldozing of Medinah’s office in the area and destruction of all of Medinah’s mining equipment. Tough neighborhood! How Medinah survived that onslaught I have no idea except for a lot of perseverance and the merits of the ADL properties.
In court case files no. 2.119 and 2.120 titled Dayton Vs. Olivos Araya,
Gumercinda and Dayton Vs. Aguero Plemkosic, Maria Andrina (sister in
law), Dayton was granted surface access to certain Olivos properties.
Dayton was prescribed a compensation payment to Olivos of 50 million
pesos for this access.
Chilean courts have stated that Dayton exceeded this access right
granted them when they demolished all of the buildings, plant and
equipment owned, under a legal lease agreement, by Medinah Energy Inc.
This has prompted the filing of criminal charges by Olivos and civil
compensation suits by Medinah Energy Inc. against Dayton.
Dayton’s response.
Medinah Energy announced that the “Chilean courts have stated that Dayton exceeded [its] access right granted them when they demolished all of the buildings, plant and equipment”. In fact the courts have never made any such pronouncement and, as described above, the Court of Andacollo has refused Tornero’s mother’s request that criminal charges be brought against Minera Dayton.
That was almost 17 years ago!!! My goodness that was a long, long time ago.
Medinah is finally getting their web site together enough to provide same day updates.
SHAREHOLDER UPDATE February 03, 2016
Dear Medinah Minerals, Inc. Shareholders:
We are pleased to publish the attached News Item “Preliminary Exploration at Pegaso Nero Target Suggests the Discovery of a Copper Molybdenum Porphyry System within the Altos de Lipangue Project” , prepared and released by AURYN Mining Chile SpA. on February 03, 2016.
Thanks for the charts from Singer. That is probably the single most important study ever done in economic geology because of the huge number of developed Cu porphyries studied. Our 860 ppm moly AT SURFACE is obviously insanely high. We’ll have to see if the presence of Rhenium adds a layer of frosting to this cake. Having 1.2% Cu AT SURFACE is a little insane also. The average Cu grade in a porphyry is 0.44% but that’s usually what is found 2,000 meters below surface.
This entire “Early Cretaceous Porphyry Belt” is famous for supergene enrichment especially of copper. A lot of the copper value comes from the high octane form of copper known as chalcocite. Recall that the copper manto structure found over at the LDM has almost the exact same size and grades of copper and gold found in the mine physically nearest to us i.e. the Lo Aguirre just to our south. This deposit features 3 high octane types of copper i.e. chalcocite, bornite and malachite. The puzzle pieces are really starting to come together from a regional geologic point of view.
You can see in the recent plot map of what AMC recently purchased how they extended the property complex to the west quite a bit. This is where in 1996 Gana et. al. constructed the regional study showing a massive area of hydrothermal alteration. These developments are taking on the look of being perhaps in excess of “district scale”.
As far as the NPV of the deposit, we now have indications of the 2 “book ends” for a very large NPV. Since NPV is often measured in terms of “discounted cash flow” (DCF) and since the earlier the cash starts flowing (from early production opportunities) the better, we also now have better indications of the other main determinant of NPV i.e. mine life or how long the cash will be flowing.
The Cu-Mo types of porphyries(Type 21 A) are the monsters in the porphyry world. Rob at ACA Howe used to stress to me the importance of our mountain being located on one of Chile’s 2 “primary tectonic segment boundaries”. These are areas where the upward flow of underlying magma for one reason or another basically went nuts. The other area in Chile with this phenomenon occurring is at the Candalaria Mine which is a giant IOCG deposit.
For me, the key now is to hone in on the average “run of mine” grades we can expect at the various early production opportunities as well as the permitted levels of tonnage that we can produce per day. I get a sense that AMC has the financial wherewithal to attack these areas with a vengeance and crank out some very serious cash flow. This “Early Cretaceous Porphyry Belt” is famous for having areas of breccias, mantos and veins with very high grade gold like we are seeing at the Caren/Merlin/Fortuna vein system. The Andacollo Mine comes to mind.
