Hi Yatchy, Here is a googled description of Pit Shell: The pit...

Hi Yatchy,

Here is a googled description of Pit Shell:

The pit shell is the defined area where the mining is to take place. Imagine an irregular shape, and put it into the earth crust. The inside is the mining area, the outline is the shell. They establish the quality, position etc of the ore, and decide, how far the operation should proceed in any direction to make it worthwhile.
Nowadays it is a very sophisticated excercise, and here is a website to explain a "pit shell optimisation" computer program. http://www.proz.com/kudoz/983432?bs=1#marker_submit

Hope that answers you better than I can as a non resource geo/engineer.

At the current stage of exploration at Bibra the pit shell is a theoretical outline for a an open pit if the POG were $A1600. This was designed by IGO after they developed enough information to calculate an inferred resource.

CMM's recent drilling has extended the resource beyond the pit shell by up to 200m down dip. There are also interesting "new" stacked lenses that are likely to result in changes to the existing "pit shell".

On a practical level the pit shell is shown as "jagged" annotated lines on all 3 figures I used.

The plan view in Figure 2 (and in the inset on that figure) shows a "stepped" white line which would represent the surface margin of a pit if they mined to that plan.

In Figures 3 and 4 are sections where the jagged line represents the theoretical pit wall or floor.

Will Bibra be mined? IMO a fair chance. Roger1's SP analysis 18007711 looks promising given an increase in resource appears likely.