$Fil Filo Review/Thread No.1
1/ 1 needs to spend time on the data, reading background reports, looking at plans etc. & I have been doing this while waiting for a couple of answers from the Co. on its dataset available on the website. Nothing major, just a couple of questions on Image
2/the differences between the RC & DDH drill survey data. If I have wonkey survey data, or bring the data in wrong, I'll get wrong sample positions, which would lead to wrong models &designs➡️different economic outcomes &then we know it could all end in tears➡️ not good.😁
3/ So while we wait its a good time to review the PFS report by Ausenco. Very nicely presented, clear & professional it answered some of my initial doubts about water & land/sovereign risk. Need to spend more time on the Chilean vs Argentinian laws & its impact on a mine ImageImageImage
4/ straddling an international boundary. Well worth a read yourselves.👌 I also had a look at it on google earth (something I always do). In this case it was hard to find, using the GE photo in the technical report circa 2017. You can see the drill roads & also realize how high Image
5/ this project is. The tops of those hills are 5,600m or 18,000'👀Mining is really challenging at anything over 4,800m but nevertheless still doable, but its animal. There is also the worry about permanent glaciers (of Barrick lore), which seem absent in this NW view below. Image
6/ Access is going to be something else, the closest being a 50km gravel road pass up the mountain after a 2 hr drive along a tarred road from Copiapo. its 245km from port in Chile, which seems the logical place to ship cathode/conc. Image
7/ Looking at the site from the south, it really is quite isolated. In this 2x vertical exaggeration view, you can see the resource sits atop a mountain, with limited flat space around it for plant & dumps. I also imagine workers will live @ a lower elevation & be bussed in. Image
8/ I want to look at the existing plan to build a mine on the oxides & only then review the impact on the relatively recent big results on the deeper sulphides. This project will always be an oxide project first, so key is the success of that B4 we look at the deep hole Upside.
9/ But while you wait for that, I refer to you the $Fil presentation which puts in a "potential" category with lots of get-out-of-jail warnings containing avg. 119Mt of contained fine copper, worth just enough to pay off 1/3 of the US 2021 deficit at today's copper price. 😃😄 Image
10/ 👆That's one ballsy slide!😁
The other side of the coin is that if this mine is to become a reality as pumped (it is being pumped), it would be big enough to put some downward pressure on the copper price, so lets just hold our horses & 1st work through things logically.
11/ Back to the oxides, I managed to suck in the pit design in and drape it on the topo surface. Using this image I should be able to reconstruct the practical pit; then once/if the block model can be done; to compare things & look at a few scenarios. Takes a little time to do.😏 ImageImage

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4 May
1/8 Dimension Stone (DS): Now if there ever was a cut-throat business, it would be this one. Worse than the diamond industry in terms of competitiveness, it seems the Taiwanese & the Italians have pretty much cornered the market. This particular granite mine is in Zimbabwe🇿🇼
2/8 Dimension stone is a really messy mining business with quite a serious environmental footprint. Hard to rehab the holes and tonnes of oversize rubble. Blame the banks & other rich Co's that want beautiful skyscrapers & floors, for example the Scotiabank building in Toronto.
3/8 Only 10-25% of what is mined goes out as sellable product. This is because its only possible to sell big, clean blocks with no faults or joints; natural weaknesses which cause a block to split when it is cut by a diamond saw. Breaks easily. Blocks are huge & generally
Read 9 tweets
26 Jun 20
1/23 #Economics of #OpenPit #Mining & its impact on a Mining Co's success. This brilliant pic of Letseng diamond mine in Lesotho shows the results of sensible & good strategic & tactical mine #planning. Take a careful look and then compare this pic to the next one of
2/23 Guyana Goldfields, which is an example of what NOT to do. At first glance, the two pits don't look too dissimilar, right? But what from these pictures is it that lead to the disaster & ultimate collapse sale of $GUY, while GEM Diamonds is still doing great? Can you tell?
3/23 The answers is in the phasing of the pit & ramp access. GUY's next pushback (yellow) is constantly cutting off access (red) to the cut below from blasting -The only cut which supplies the gold. They have to mine the yellow cut/pushback to expose ore later on but it looks
Read 24 tweets
2 Jun 20
1/7 @BigQuestionsNow A Q about this chart you or someone can help me with: We have high Ag/Au at the top of our mine moving to Zn/Pb/Ag w/ decreasing Ag, no Au at depth. Below that we expect & start 2 c more Cu. But in this graphic there is Cu-Au. Does this model work for us?
2/7 The Zn-Pb-Ag mineralized zones that comprise the El Mochito deposit are classified as distal zinc skarns as defined by Meinert (1992). You'll see the wildcat hole we are planning in the graphic below, probing for a heat source, which has, until now been elusive. The highest
3/7 Cu grades (of 0.7%) in the mine are patchy, never considered economic but can be found close to the collar of this new hole in that thicker manto area. We have high Ag grades in the vertical chimney orebodies, and mostly base metals at the bottom. Geology background below.
Read 7 tweets
23 May 20
1/10 Here's the thing about many MINING TECHNICAL CONSULTANTS: Its not about the software, its about the assumptions used in the JORC or NI 43-101 docs. If you know how, you can make a bad project look quite good and a good project look bad. I call it
2/10 "Sum of the assumptions effect," with either a conservative or optimistic slant. There are literally hundreds of assumptions which can be manipulated to get to the desired objective. For example lets just look at how a resource & reserve changes with relatively small diffs
3/10 The impact is exacerbated when taking these assumptions into an mining, economic schedule and that's assuming we don't vary the financial assumptions much. It's an art & if you're good at it few will notice what is is being done.
Read 14 tweets
22 Mar 20
1/16 So where was I going with #mining block models in my previous thread? I can now show you how we use them to optimise for open pit mining and approximate a good UG mine plan as well. To begin, the decision to go open pit or UG very much depends on the shape & size of the ore
2/16 body, and the decision is usually intuitive. Sometimes a combination of OP & UG methods makes more sense. Consider the following theoretical block model representing a rich, vertical ore body. Assume this is a 2D environment, not a 3D one, with coloured units of value.
3/16 Now with our avatar safely removed w/o any major social justice fallout, we can get on with the open pit mining. 😉 Let's assume that the cost of mining is 1 unit, processing cost 0, what would the value be mining the 1st level by Open Pit methods?
Read 17 tweets
22 Mar 20
1/9 BLOCK MODELLING: Imagine you have a gold ore body that looks like this in section after your geologist has done his interpretation. To keep things simple, let's assume you are very promotional QP who is comfortable with just two drill holes to build your resource 😏
2/9 In the drawing above the line representing the ore body (blue) is the geological INTERPRETATION based on known info. The block model is essentially an integration of slices (or blocks) of that interpretation so we can model all the variable properties that make up that shape.
3/9 A block model is a 3D grid of blocks in space. In our 2D example, every block that has, say >10% ore will be flagged as an ore block. Each block has the same volume, and if we know the density for each, we can calc. the tonnage inside each too.
Read 10 tweets

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