AXG - Antipodes Gold [formerly GEL - Glass Earth]

[elZorro]

Two NZ mining sector lobbyists have combined: Straterra is the more recent entity but was more active. Glass Earth's Wellington office is one of a cluster of similar companies like Chatham Rock Phosphate, set up around Straterra's offices.

NZMIA merges with Straterra

Simon Hartley — 3 July 2013
The original industry voice for the New Zealand minerals sector the New Zealand Minerals Industry Association (NZMIA) has merged with the more active industry organisation Straterra.
The NZMIA was established in 1981 during a brief gold boom and later increased its size by bringing in the quarrying industry. It was originally known as the New Zealand Mineral Exploration Association
When Straterra was launched in 2008 at the annual AusIMM New Zealand Mining Conference in Wellington it prompted many in the resource sector to question the need for two agencies delivering similar messages.
Straterra'a inaugural members included mining heavyweights such as OceanaGold Corporation, State owned enterprise Solid Energy, the NZ Coal Association, Newmont Waihi Gold, Minerals West Coast and L&M Group.
The NZMIA council had included representatives from Heritage Gold NZ Ltd (now New Talisman Gold Mines Ltd), Holcim (NZ) Ltd, Winstone Aggregates, New Zealand Steel Ltd and Newmont Waihi Gold.
Straterra's membership now represents 90%, by value, of the country's mineral production, including a large share of exploration, but not representing, oil, gas and geothermal interests.
Straterra chief executive Chris Baker said the merger was an important step to consolidating the mineral industry sector into one voice to achieve more effective sector representation.
In recent years has grown in membership and also linked with the Austmine industry organisation to help operate Austmine NZ.
The veteran chief executive of NZMIA has been Douglas Gordon.
“NZMIA holds much history and knowledge, and we welcome NZMIA members into Straterra. Mining faces many challenges in New Zealand,” Chris Baker said.
It is important that we manage our scarce resources efficiently, and present our industry professionally. This agreement helps us do that,” he added.
*Simon Hartley is senior business reporter and assistant chief reporter for the Otago Daily Times.
-additional reporting by Ross Louthean.

[elZorro]

From NZResources today: there has been a small protest at the latest WKP drill site.

Watchdog blockade at Coromandel drill rig ends

Ross Louthean — 8 July 2013
Anti-mining activists withdrew over the weekend from a drilling site on the Coromandel Peninsula after occupying the site over 30 hours.
One News reported that Coromandel Watchdog activists – a hard-line group constantly wooing the media to high-drama protests against exploration and mining - had camped out on the Newmont Waihi Gold drilling rig in Parakiwai Valley, near Whangamata, preventing it from operating.
Watchdog spokeswoman Renee Annan said the group had withdrawn “after achieving its goal of shutting down operations for more than 30 hours.”
“We have achieved our purpose, which was to highlight that this area should never be mined. She claimed on television that while there would probably be underground mining planned it would still produce “toxic waste” without quantifying just what this would be – something the mining regulators would not accept.
The area concerned is not protected by Schedule Four in the Crown Minerals Act, something Ms Annan called "an accident of history".
Given the opportunity Coromandel Watchdog and other groups regular campaigns against exploration and mining - which have provided prosperity around Waihi as a contrast from other parts of the Coromandel – would want the whole of New Zealand declared under Schedule Four.
Source: tvnz.co.nz

Further South, I'm wondering what is going on down at Drybread, in a 24/7 operation now.

In the photos of the placer setup, two Knudsen bowls are shown. The recovered gold is about 50-200um wide on average, so some fine gold is lost from the first bowl, and needs a second pass.

http://www.mine.mn/Robin_Grayson_gol...y_method15.pdf

[elZorro]

Moosie, they are not trespassing, Parakiwai is DOC land, there is open track access. About 30 protesters went in according to the Watchdog site, some found the access not too easy to walk. They implied that the bush is virgin native forest, whereas I suspect it is regenerating after logging from generations ago. They also implied the rare Archey's frog is nearby, when it is not known to reside within tens of kilometres. They cleverly mention protecting the habitat for Archey's Frog - well it's not quite the same thing.

But Newmont/GEL could have put some money into rare native frog research, and headed off that debate.


http://watchdog.org.nz/

[elZorro]

The Greens have had a go at the Broken Hills Gold Mine too, on TV news last night. However, their research can easily be shown to be lacking here, on a quick inspection of the facts.

NZResources:

Small gold mine under fire from Green Party

Ross Louthean — 10 July 2013
The Green Party’s strong opposition to exploration and mining has seen it lay claims of the Government being misleading over granting extra ground to a small gold mine on the Coromandel.
Party co-leader Russell Norman told One News that the Government had broken its promise of leaving Schedule 4 land untouched and that this was a broken promise.
However the Broken Hills gold mine, a boutique operation that is a century old had been compelled by the Government to develop a second egress for its operations for safety purposes and this has meant providing an access through enveloping Schedule Four land.
A 25 year mining permit was awarded to Broken Hills Gold Mining which has been operating for 13 years and the requirement for a second egress meant it needed a full mining permit on adjacent land, some of which is Schedule Four.
Well known geoscientist Stuart Rabone who operates the mine which has been an attraction for tourists said this process was the only “practicable area where we can make a second egress that is required for safety of people in the mine.”
He told One News the company has caused no problems to anyone and that the firm has an "accident free record.”
The permit extends the amount of land it can mine from five hectares to 23 ha, with around five ha of that Schedule Four land, according to the Green Party.
Energy and Resources Minister Simon Bridges maintains awarding the permit has not broken the Government's promise.
“The only work that can be on Schedule Four is for health and safety purposes, there will be no mining on Schedule Four," he said.
“Effectively what was important to me was a continuation of a traditional mine.”
What is forgotten when mine safety is an issue is the fact that underground mines should provide adequate access and departure zones and the Broken Hill mine is now complying with the new safety regime sparked by the Pike River coal mine.
It should be remembered the restricted area allowed by the Department of Conservation for the Pike River mine restricted the footprint for mine development.
If Pike River mine is ever to be re-accessed – if only to recover the remains of the 29 men who died there – then the idea of being precious about land access may need to change.
Sources: tvnz.co.nz and nzresources.com files

[elZorro]

I suspect that Glass Earth has news on several fronts, but the dropping of the gold price in previous weeks has dampened junior explorer sentiment in the meantime. It's been a while since we had any news, 4-5 weeks, and that news was only to say that they have a new PR person, Anne Robert.

The ASX Gold thread has some interesting posts on why the gold price might have dropped. Anyone looking at the US PoG chart can see that large forces are at play, and I really mean play, when it comes to shorting. The most telling timelines show that when a country asks for its gold holdings back, when they are supposedly held on US soil, that spurs a frenzy of shorting of gold, started by the banks and their brokers, suggesting that gold is on the way down, and to expect far lower prices for gold. The large US banks are quite capable of leading the gold shorts, enough to trip stop-loss activity by smaller traders. http://www.mauldineconomics.com/ttmygh/what-if

Those of us investing in explorers and gold producers know the huge cost of extracting gold in the volumes that have been required in the last few years, as the easy resources get mined out. And the costs of finding them in the first place, as GEL is discovering. Approx C$45mill so far, and that really is a small amount internationally.

So here is Glass Earth, in possession by now, of an estimate for all or part of the resources at WKP, a large permissive system within 10km of the Martha Hill mine. Maybe no immediate action will take place with gold at $1250 an ounce. But based on history, gold will get back up near $2000 an ounce in the future, and will exceed that. It's a matter of seeing if inflation will outpace the price rise.

Meanwhile Germany is asking for part of its gold holdings back from the US. The US have promised to deliver the 300 tonnes within 7 years. 300 tonnes is over 10.7 Moz of gold, or all of the historical production ever taken from the internationally significant Martha Hill mine and environs.

[elZorro]

I've noticed the Waihi Gold exploration permit near Onemana/Whangamata. A bigger company might be able to do something with the area over time, Heritage Gold had some good intercepts here.

Newmont to persist with White Bluffs quest

Ross Louthean — 22 July 2013
Newmont Waihi Gold says it plans to continue gold exploration on the epithermal gold-silver prospect it calls White Bluffs near the head of the Whangamata Harbour, north of Waihi.
The prospect was originally a discovery by Heritage Gold (now New Talisman Gold Mines) and then known as Onemana, after the small village near the harbour.
Heritage eventually dropped the prospect and one factor was a legal challenge from a group that held pine forest plantations in the area. Drilling several years ago by Heritage produced some significant gold-silver assays.
Newmont Waihi Gold, a subsidiary of Denver-based Newmont Mining Corporation - one of the world’s largest gold miners – was granted an exploration permit over White Bluffs in 2008, and has applied to extend the lease for another five years.
Meanwhile, the Waikato Times has reported that Newmont Waihi Gold’s approval to mine the correnso discovery near the Martha open cut has been challenged by anti-miners – no surprise for the company.
The newspaper said court-assisted mediation begins today and will end on Friday. Depending on the outcome, there may be a court hearing later this year.
Sources: stuff.co.nz/Waikato-times and nzresources.com data base

[elZorro]

In late 2012, Glass Earth reported that placer mining output was lower over the three months of winter in Otago. By September, output was to move back up to planned levels. We're about in the middle of that block of time for 2013, so an update on progress down there would be useful.

There is still no WKP estimate being reported anywhere, the only positive being that US$ Gold is trending upwards, as theoretical holders ask for their physical gold from the banks in increasing numbers. But if the WKP report is ready, shareholders should be looking at it.

So far, I have not noticed any output at all from the new PR person, Anne Robert. At least CHFIR would email on a list every so often. We were to have updated web pages too. Now it looks like some of the existing photos are not of GEL's gear, that gear belongs to someone else. Why are many of the trucks and diggers emblazoned with hire centre names, when in theory Glass Earth Mining owns them? In any possible downtime, the gear that the company does own should be emblazoned with new paint and a logo stuck on them, so we know for sure.

And I repeat, when are shareholders going to be invited over for a look around the Drybread area? What's the big secret?

[elZorro]

After enquiring about GRU#3 on behalf of shareholders, Head Office has kindly supplied a work in progress video of the latest plant being used. This GRU is composed of two sections - a trommel, and on the right is the cyclone and jigs setup in a big frame. It's quite a beast. Thanks Andrew.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y21I_emUupY

Towards the end of the video the gold flakes are washed out of some riffle mat at the rear of the jig output, this lines up with a photo that was posted on the webpage. This then flows into a series pair of Knudsen bowls where it will be trapped. As the plant had been turned off to do the cleanup, somehow the Knudsen bowls would have been worked on next.

The video is dated mid June 2013. In the background are shown at least 2 bulldozers (GEL owns one) and a couple of dump trucks that don't look like the ones GEL has on their website. They seem to be from Heavy Trax Hire. Two smaller diggers are working near the GRU, they would be GEL's I think. The bigger excavator loading the wash onto the dump trucks is hired.

The loading of the dump truck with wash looked a little slap-happy, but I'm no expert! No video of the cross-pit conveyor in action.

[elZorro]

Thanks for that Yankiwi, so it's out at last. An NI 43-101 standard estimate on WKP.

http://www.marketwire.com/press-rele...el-1816770.htm

It's for 260,000oz of gold, which at first looks disappointing when potential figures of around 3-5Moz were mentioned for the WKP area. But in the geological notes there are valid points restricting the report's scope to add in much other gold.

Diamond drilling has outlined vein mineralization that demonstrates three-dimensional continuity, thickness, and grades that can potentially be extracted economically.

The style and distribution of mineralization could be amenable to open pit mining methods, however, based on the project's location in a Department of Conservation (DoC) administered Forest Park, RPA concurs with Newmont's opinion that underground mining is the only realistic mining method to be considered. RPA therefore modelled and reported underground Mineral Resources only.

The Mineral Resources are contained within discrete vein structures within five mineralized vein domains. Given the broad spaced drilling and style of mineralization, all Mineral Resources were classified as Inferred. Although wireframe models and block grades have been interpreted to distances of 200 m, only blocks within 40 m of a drill hole were reported. There are no Mineral Reserves estimated on the Property.

There have only ever been 38 holes drilled over a large area, and so 260,000oz of gold is inferred to lie within 40 metres of some of these holes. These spots are presumably contiguous enough for someone to go underground for, but the dots between each block have not been drawn up.

Until the JV has done a lot more infill drilling, it won't get past the inferred estimate level. So a lot of money to be spent at WKP yet, before it might trigger a mining feasibility response from Newmont (3Moz?).

[elZorro]

I have looked on www.sedar.com and there, under Glass earth public company reports, you'll see the full report on WKP dated 1 August 2013. It's down the bottom of the list of recent documents.

This is much more detailed, shows how the data was tested and then put into a modelling package(s). The grade cutoff was chosen using US$1500 an ounce, which was more current in June 2013, when most of the work was done. I don't see that as a big issue, I think gold will go back up, like it always does.

These are not Reserves, they are not ready to mine, no mining feasibility has been done, so technically they are called Resources. 'Inferred' is the lowest step on that rung, and the reason for that is the drill spacings are very wide, approx 200mtrs I think, where they are clustered. Otherwise, there's nothing except educated guesses based on the instrument surveys, for large areas of the permit.

The table below shows how blocks that could be counted in the reserves list were modelled, for just one cross-section. Heaps of these were amalgamated by the package. Note all the blocks are close to drills. The minor gold held in the fractured Rhyolite between the drill holes is not shown, because the grade is below the cutoff for underground drilling. These areas would be more interesting for pit mining, but that is not the intention.

The T-Stream intercept looks the warmest in colour, that is the highest grade area on this cross-section. Of course not all the vein predicted paths are highlighted in gold grades, because they haven't been drilled enough yet. Infill drilling is done closer to a mining event. By use of stats and noting outliers, the maximum grade of any block was pulled back to 30g/tonne ceiling. This is still a big grade, but one or two intercepts at WKP on drill logs were near 80g/tonne.

With just 38 drills so far to report on, many of them historic and above lower grade areas, it's perhaps heartening that a few more drills into the right sort of spots would allow a bigger resource to be calculated next time, perhaps double the current total. This would be the 4500mtrs of drilling proposed. At the moment the drilling programme is completing work that was meant to be done in the 2012 programme, plus a small bit more. For the last year or so, the drill cores have been prepared for assays at SGS Westport, and then sent to an SGS facility in Australia, where they can do 50 crucible sample fire assays at once. The Waihi branch of SGS must be busy doing Newmont's grade control assays. Whatever the reason, it's a bit weird we don't have the capacity to do faster assays here in NZ.

The report also makes it clear that the main reason for reporting on WKP with an NI 43-101 resource result is not to give shareholders warm fuzzies. Without such a valid resource estimate, the JV's case to extend the exploration permit with NZPAM for another 5 years would be weak, and perhaps turned down.

So Newmont and Glass Earth certainly want to do some more exploration at WKP, and they don't want the area being handed over to anyone else. They have recovered most of the original permit area, including the surroundings of Golden Cross Mine, and Komata.