Before you get that far have a look at the model. A soon as I saw the headline I guessed what was happening.
It certainly looks like they've used implicit modelling (Leapfrog style) for the wireframes, so minimal input from a geologist. Most of the metal will be in those high grade blobs. The dip of the high grade is ~70 degrees to the west
and 45 to the east.
"Nominal downhole cut-off of 0.1 g/t Au has been used to define a broad mineralised envelope, while a cut-off of 0.8 g/t Au is used to define high grade domains."
Again, minimal input from a geologist, and 0.8g/t is not high grade. A top cut of 40 g/t Au has been applied for all domains within a 0.1 g/t Au broad mineralised envelope for a "2g/t" deposit.
So you've got 20, 30, 40g/t samples mixing with samples as low as 0.1g/t. That is likely to lead to a lot of smearing off high grade into lower grade portions of the model.
Finally:
"Audits or reviews
Echo Resources personnel have reviewed the block model relative to the drilling data and considers the estimate to be an accurate reflection of the gold mineralisation at Orelia."
...so internal estimation and internal review and
no external audit.
"Future Work
The updated Resource model will now be passed to an independent mining engineer for pit optimisation and pit design incorporating the consideration of a staged development approach. A number of earthmoving companies have been approached to seek quotes"
So now this model is getting passed to an engineer for mining studies, no questions asked.
All just my opinion of course.
