Mining Analyst

One of the biggest traps of investing is the refrain "do your own due diligence" (DYODD). Frankly at its worst this can be a hollow and dangerous encouragement for inexperienced investors to take a cursory peak at the company's own propaganda -- news releases and investor presentations -- before plopping down good money on a bad speculation. Even worse is the false assurance that people can get by hearing it directly from the horse's mouth (talking to company management or its investor relations department). Actual, real due diligence starts by reading the company's financial statements and other regulatory disclosures (insider trading reports, technical reports, etc.). This can be hard and time-consuming. It requires you to know how to interpret financial and technical information. Sometimes though real due diligence is easy enough that just about anybody can do it, if they simply knew how. Since I'm a provocateur but also because I want to see markets be...

I am posting two videos that I used to analyze the footage of the dam collapse of the Vale Córrego do Feijão Dam I in Brumadinho. These videos could help others who are trying to analyze the footage for useful information in assessing the collapse. The first video is a closeup slice sequence of the crest or ridge line (in 5 sections from left side of the dam at top to right side at the bottom) showing the initial moments of the failure. The downward progression of the crest line reveals that initial movement occurred just to the left of the drill rig with secondary movements along the crest to either side.

Below you will find annotated video analysis of the Vale Córrego do Feijão Dam I collapse at the iron ore mine near Brumadinho in Brazil. This is being done in an attempt to learn early lessons and identify takeaways. Close up in slow motion (0.50x and 0.25x speed) reveals initial slide movement, failure sequence and possible trigger. Movement is seen initially at a seepage point in the toe of the dam near a "groin" area (where a starter dyke reinforcement extends outward at the center of the dam .... left side in the video). The movement is possibly a gush of water being ejected at the seepage point due to a change in pore pressure indicating that mobilized shear stress had overcome shear resisting force and initiated sliding along a critical slip surface. Based on this and other indications, the collapse of the dam is possibly yet another case of static liquefaction triggered by progressive deformation and increase in pore pressure, not (necessarily) seismic activity o...

I have been messing around with various drillhole, block and resource models for many years. Recently I revisited Corebox as a possible tool for making fast and easy-to-share models of drilling to show people some of the strange ideas that I am capable of forming as a result of my admittedly non-professional but deeply inquisitive modeling efforts. The first one I have pretty much completed in Corebox is the Williams Zone discovery in 2018 by Golden Ridge Resources (TSX-V: GLDN; OTC: GORIF). It was a real pain to interpolate the grades from the nested intervals. Later I will add notation for the grade bands represented by the intercept colors, and may even adjust them later to see if there is a better way to show what Blady & Co. have and haven't found so far.

An assay is the standard procedure for determining the metal content of a mineral sample. Drill core, RC and channel chips as well as bulk samples are all assayed to determine the metal content, and therefore value, of the rock being evaluated for a mining operation. The problem is that not all assays are created equal. This can be illustrated by the strange example of Prophecy Platinum, no, I meant Wellgreen Platinum, no again, I meant Nickel Creek Platinum ( TSX:NCP ). Whatever they call themselves these days, the company is engaged in the development of the Wellgreen Ni-Cu-PGM deposit in the Yukon. And man, do these guys and gals have a lesson to teach us. It seems few people to this day seem to understand what, why or how the disappointment at Wellgreen happened ... possibly not even some of the people at the company. So I thought maybe it's time to pull back the curtain and look a bit closer.

Garibaldi Resources is drilling a nickel copper magmatic sulfide system at its Nickel Mountain project in the Golden Triangle of British Columbia. I've discussed it in a recent blog post. My position has been that so far they haven't drilled any new areas not already known from exploration conducted between the 1960's and 1990. Yes, they have intercepted massive sulfides over significant intervals that exceed the results of historic drilling. This could be for various reasons including poor drilling with lots of core loss in the historical programs. More likely, they have encountered the thicker sequence of mineralization within the historic zones.

Excelsior Mining is developing the Gunnison copper project in Arizona. It is an In-Situ-Recovery (ISR) project and many people including a significant portion of the industry itself are not familiar, or at least not comfortable, with it. ISR involves drilling wells and injecting a dilute acid to dissolve copper from fractured rocks. The pregnant solution is then recovered and standard solvent extraction and electrowinning is used to produce a copper cathode (sheets of nearly-pure copper that are sold directly to manufacturers and therefore no refining is required). Lack of familiarity by the market is usually an opportunity for astute and fearless investors, and it is the case here.