Sandra Escobar - an quick update

You almost want to tell Orex to stop drilling as with each new press release the mineralization is smaller and lower grade!

We got some more news from Sandra Escobar (Orex Minerals), again with some nice juicy intercepts from their 3rd phase of drilling at Sandra Escobar.

Summary

• Results below expectations
• High grade zones appear to be smaller than expected
• Silver mineralisation less extensive
• updated crap resource calculation (TM) is now 37.7 Moz Ag
• Why would they commit an additional $0.75M to drilling before the met studies have been completed?
• Consultants needed more data to confidently model the silver distribution?

I was interested to see why Orex committed to drill an additional 3,600m at Sandra before they got the results from the metallurgical studies, that will cost ~$750K and what happens if you get poor recoveries? You've wasted a chunk of money for nothing. Fortunately, there is an answer in the PR

Holes SA-16-041, 042 and 043 are in-fill drill holes in the Main Zone to tighten section spacing to 50 metres. The in-fill drilling was performed at the request of the mining consultants who are preparing the initial resource estimate.

Does this mean that Orex were told to drill more holes as there were some critical questions to answer before a 43-101 complaint resource could be calculated? Maybe it was:

• With a few more holes the consultants could fiendishly work on their geostats machines and calculate not just inferred, but measured and indicated resources.
• Couldn't confidently model silver grades between holes
• Don't quite understand the controls/distribution of the high grade mineralization.
• More holes = more data = higher confidence.

I actually admire this, how many companies would take the opposite approach and find a consultant to calculate the biggest resource mathematically possible and be done with it (hello First Mexican Gold).

I don't know if these 5 holes are the only in-fill holes planned for the 3rd phase of drilling, and the rest will focus on expanding and exploring areas? A nice summary map would help!

only hole 39 is drilled to extend the silver zone.

Let's look at the results, at first glance they look impressive, but it is important to see how they compare against the results from the adjacent phase 1 and 2 drill holes:

Here is the plan map from the may 31st post


Here is the updated map

They look very similar, but there are some subtle changes (circled in red)

1. The narrow high grade zones are now smaller and discontinuous
2. The 50-100 g/t zone has been expanded by ~ 50m to the East

Nothing special, but what were you expecting from 5 holes?

Let's run through them

Drill-hole 039 - drilled ~100m to the west of holes 16,17 and 27.

A very forgettable hole

8m at ~65 g/t Ag, nothing special here, silver grades drop off steeply and the main zone doesn't link up with the mineralization hit by holes 038 and 037.

• Positive spin - We've got potential for loads of silver zones
• Negative spin - We have lots of little silver zones

Drill-hole 040, 41 and 42

newly released data with red collars

These hoels were ok, they were inline with the earlier drilling, but look at Hole 41

• Hole 41 - 45m long (core length) high grade zone
• Hole 42 - 42m to the SW of hole 41 - just 14m of high grade rock
• Hole 40 -  110m to the SW of hole 41 - 4m of high grade

Ok, we go from lots of high grade to SFA over 100m. I hope that doesn't mean the high grade zones are localized to a few small areas. It looks like understanding the controls on the high grade mineralization will be key to creating an accurate resource for Sandra.

The other bad news is the mineralization is going deeper as you move to the SW.

Hole 43

Ciao silver 

Oh dear, a poor hole, I was expecting to get similar results to the holes drilled around it, we got SFA, a 12m silver skid mark and not much else.

We can be fancy, lets look in 3D!


The holes around (they are 50m away) are good, and you would expect that a hole in the middle would give you similar results, but hole 43 contained a lot less silver. This could mean that the majority of Sandra is 30-50 g/t Ag with a few discrete zones of high grade. I'm hoping that this hole is an anomaly and that there is a fault nearby and fluids have removed some of the silver.

It will be interesting to see if any of the phase 3 holes are planned to drill around holes 01 and 02, the 'best' holes, or will they be left alone, undisturbed so that you won't risk reducing the big high grade zone into a series of smaller lenses?

My TAG official crap resource calculation (TM) has been updated and we now have:

• 37.7 Moz Ag (8.2MT @ ~140 g/t Ag

I'm using a 30 g/t Ag cut-off, OREX may use 20 g/t in the official (and hopefully not crap) calculation.

You can get the updated Leapfrog viewer file here (link) and look at the data.