Pretium - at last....

Brucejack's Q2 production figures were released today (link), and from the nearly >C$2.50 share price increase over the last month (including 13% today) you can tell that the market was happy, as  for the first time, the mine has expectations!

At last the head grade is approaching the reserve grade!

Let us break down the figures.

Au production

Blue = actual; red = planned (PEA); Green - difference

They were slightly under (3,300 ounces) from the Planned production figure outlined in the PEA, but a 3% difference isn't a huge amount for a nuggety gold deposit.

Au Head-grades

A huge change

Slightly under (14.9 vs 15.4), but a huge turnaround from the previous quarter.

Recovery

Still great!

Mill Throughput - quarterly

Slight dip, probably due to a planned shutdown for maintenance (probably 3 days in total).

Mill throughput - daily

We can see a dip in Q2, the mill was operating ~100 tonnes below capacity (2604 tpd vs 2700 tpd).


Now the hard part - they have to maintain it, as they can't use the 'ramping-up' excuse anymore if they don't meet their projected production figures.

Altar - It's all about that As

Altar project, has a problem...

Come on babe, I'm about to put it down
And all that As
Go ahead and lock the door, you're about to work it out
And all that As
Won't you lead me to your whoopee spot?
Oh it don't make no sense all of that As you got
'Cause I done called it too that you see booty flu
With all that As

Oh baby all that As

Whip your hair in those stiletto heels
And all that As
I'm about to dress you up in hundred dollar bills
And all that As
Driving me crazy baby don't you pump the brakes
You better call the cops, I'm about to steal the cakes
On all the evidence they got my fingerprints
On all that As

Oh baby all that As

Or visually,

Source: 2013 technical report - Stillwater mining

This shows that there is an ~inverse ratio between As and Cu. So, high-As in the low grade (<0.4% Cu) and lowish As in the high-grade (.0.5%) core. However, we still see that concentrates produced by Altar will probably contain at least 1% As.

Why is this a problem? Penalties - here is a nice article for a few years back from International Mining (link). Highlights:

• China Imposes a limit of 0.5% As on imported base metal concentrates
• Few smelters will treat >1% As and will charge a penalty to do so (link)

It's all about that As

Siesta time GMV?

Darn, those technical reports must be hard, look at poor GMV Minerals, requiring an additional 2-3 weeks to file a technical report (link).

Shame that was >2 months ago.....

Nuggety Gold deposits

As we are drawing to the end of Q2 (or H1) for 2018 and we are all looking forward to Pretium's Q2 production figures from Brucejack, I've decided to do some edumacation.

Here is a nice article on evaluating high-nugget effect gold deposits like Brucejack, Pilbara etc. It is packed full of geo-porn (too explicit to reproduce here), so open the Kleenex, get something to lubricate your parts and have a gander.

Here is the link

Defiance Anomalies

Well feck my arse, Defiance have found some geofizz anomalies at San Acacio (link). Would these be the same as the huge silver anomalies that were announced in March?

You know, the ones where you still, after >7 months, haven't managed to release any results. I ahve to say, your property must be amazing, that none,not a single one of the holes drilled as part of your 5000m program that commenced in November of last year, hit a single interval that contained a moderate amount of silver. How shite is San Acacio?

Will we ever see these results, or was this a quick PR to hide Roger's resignation that was kindly squeezed in at the bottom of the PR?

Unfortunately, I'm not an expert on the AERI geophysical method, Defiance states:

Geophysicists, joining an dole line somewhere near you.

the exploration Silver Bullet, a a perfect, all singing and all dancing geophysical technique. However, I'm a bit skeptical, probably due to my lack of knowledge in the method, and I haven;t been able to fund much online, nothing about its "proof-of-concept testing resulting in multiple new discoveries in North America". So if anyone has some info, I would love to have a look.


Let's have a look at this anomaly..

I like the fact that only a small part of the survey area covers the resource

This survey area is different to the other, a dodgy drawing.

I love the way that you can't really relate the geofizz plan maps or sections to anything else. We can see that the Copper zone anomaly is 200-300m wide.

Defiance tell us that the anomaly compares favorable with geophysical images from the Cozamin Mine operated by Crapstone, so why don;t we compare the anomaly to a long section from Cozamin.

that massive triangle to the left.

huge isn't it....

Maple Syrup....

mmmMMMMMMmmmmm

uh.....uh....uh.....again...again....mooooree....come on, don't stop...oh....oh...YES... YES...YES...uuuuhhhhh...uuuhhh...ohhhhh...aaaarrghhh

I just love spreading maple syrup on my toast, smearing it to cover all corners so that with every bite I get that sweet golden taste between my lips.

but the other thing that is great to smear are gold assays....

it only took the gold from one Junior Exploco PR to kill this woman....

Maple gold recently reported some excellent results from Douay (link), but again we see that the BS-is strong with this one....

Wow, massive gold zones....

thick intercepts.....

Here is a leapfrog view on the holes in this PR (link), I'm hoping to have time to compile more data from it...


Here are the back calculated grades, removing the impact of the high-grade intervals.

aaaaand now they're gone

As we can see that most of the gold is found in a narrow high-grade zone and the majority (a small 137.2m) grades a lot less than 1 g/t Au.....

and here it is visually....

lots of nothing...

So all the gold disappears,  imagine what would happen if a handsome, chiseled, well-groomed newsletter writer had expressed some concerns with these results.......

Aguinaga - initial results.

DISCLOSURE - I SILL OWN SHARES IN SOLGOLD

I apologize, in my last post on Aguinaga I made a prediction that the initial drilling would intersect:

Unfortunately, I don't think the results will be very special, I'm guessing that they come in around the 0.4-0.6% CuEq level.

and

The core photos from hole 01 look a bit anemic. They look similar to the low grade holes at Alpala, that typically ran around 0.5% CuEq (typically 0.3% Cu and 0.1-0.2 g/t Au)

This is what we got:



I'm sorry to inform you that I was correct, and I'm as concerned as you all are about this accidental correctness. I promise that it won't happen again.

I was disappointed that they didn't break down the results, or tell us how much the CuEq value came from copper and gold.

However, in the March PR (link) we were told:



So what happened to the other 100+m of strong mineralization? Is Aguinaga suffering from Cordoba syndrome - the copper mineralization was in the other half of the core that didn't get sent to the lab.

I've updated the Leapfrog View for Aguinaga (link). I've had to estimate the down-hole depth to mineralization as the "from" and "to" information wasn't included in the PR.

A quick exploration comment, the footprint of the Aguinaga porphyry looks relatively small, I'm concerned that a few of the proposed holes (including hole 3 and 4 that are currently underway) may miss it.

Will all the holes hit the target?

TL:DR version - Aguinaga isn't looking very special and the lack of disclosure on the results is really irritating. I would like to see a proper table showing a proper break-down of results.