Mining Analyst

This morning Novo has issued a news release to update the exploration at the Purdy's Reward joint venture with Artemis. As revealed and discussed in the geological compendium blog entry I posted several days ago (and which I kept updating with historical commentary), the conglomerate-hosted gold in the Pilbara probably doesn't have a separate fine fraction that would make it easy to explore or provide a good grade estimation for development and mining purposes. A fine fraction would be more disseminated than the nuggety high grade gold they have found so far by metal detector and trenching. Fine gold would therefore be an attractive feature to what is otherwise an extremely skewed hit-and-miss type gold deposit (typical of placers worldwide). Alas, electron microscope work has revealed fine gold to be: halos of particles within a few millimeters of much coarser gold nuggets. Novo believes such fine-grained gold was remobilized and re-precipitated following burial and lithif...

Novo Resources and its supporters are claiming that the Pilbara conglomerates in Western Australia may host the largest gold deposit in the world, even bigger than the Witswatersrand. As a result, a new gold rush is taking place that is every bit as fervent, if not desperate, as the 1849 California Gold Rush. The "17ers" might end up being badly disappointed, however, just like many of the 49ers were. The reason is simple. Geology 101. The following is an assemblage of points being made by an alleged geologist " Blythefan " (who supposedly lives and works in Western Australia) on the Australian bulletin board "Hotcopper". I am only including selected and relevant quotes and quips. My own comments are appended at the end of each paragraph or section. While everything stated here is highly speculative theorizing, it's enough to give major pause. This post will continue to be updated as long as relevant geological points are being raised in this particul...

In the past 3 months, we've had not one, not two, not three, but at least four supposedly world-class discoveries by junior exploration. What are the odds any of these, or more than one, actually works out, and what are the implications for the rest of the junior exploration market? The odds are not good. Even questionable "world-class" discoveries are exceedingly rare and many of them are made by the mining companies themselves (not explorers). Junior explorers do make such discoveries sometimes but even more rarely. Think Voisey's Bay, Pierina, Ekati, Fruta del Norte, Cerro Negro, Brucejack, etc. Out of those not every one is even world class although each has achieved valuation in the billion dollar range along the way.

Quinton Hennigh has apparently recognized the next Witwatersrand according to Bob Moriarty and John Kaiser . The "discovery of the 21st century" is being advanced by the Canadian junior  Novo Resources and a growing bandwagon of Australian explorers, Artemis Resources the foremost and original pioneer among them (Artemis holds the ground where outcropping conglomerate beds were prospected with metal detectors leading to the recognition that gold nuggets blanket a significant area). There are a few reasons for thinking the Pilbara Basin in Western Australia near Karratha could turn into a major gold camp, perhaps even on the scale of South Africa's Witwatersrand (which has mined roughly a quarter of the world's gold amounting to some 1.5 billion ounces). One of the reasons is the presence of gold-bearing conglomerates across a wide area overlying Archean basement rocks.