The BMV engineers are simply drawing on their experience of opening up similar mines to make an educated guess about progressing to Feasibility Study and ultimately production. There's nothing definitive at all in their current assessment - and the market values it accordingly at ~$0.01, LOL. I'd rather bet that their guesswork is pretty close to the mark, than being way off.
Even though I think Gubong will eventually be a multi million ounce producer and possibly even SAU's premier/flagship asset for decades - please don't expect the initial BMV BFS to initially reflect this.
I will be very happy if the study gets at least 30000 ounces Au of Proven Reserves with a Metallurgical Recovery rate >85%. This would take a little under 400,000 metric tonnes of ore at ~3 g/t Au. Hopefully there is enough broken remnant ore remaining to achieve this. This volume of ore would fill 80 Olympic swimming pools. I think it's important to be able to visualise this because, it's really not that much ore to be found over a hundred or so Km of mining tunnels. Especially considering when ore with grades of <5 g/t may have been uneconomic to transport to the surface in the 1960s (lots of mullock heaps down there).
In addition, there could be plenty of easily mineable ore in situ. However, I reckon this might be targeted after most of the real easy ore is swept up. It still is a little more capital intensive to remove this in-situ rock out of the mine compared to loose lying ore (in-situ ore like this, might be categorised as a Probable Reserve in the initial BMV JORC).
Taechang's loose ore could be a further source to feed the Gubong mill. Probably being a higher grade than Gubong, could also serve well for blending high and lower grades and less of it needed to truck over distance to Gubong (rather than vice versa).
The tailings storage facility could be an eye popper IMO. I'm going to completely ignore the historic production figure of 400000 ounces and have my own little guess that Gubong produced 5Million ounces. If the old timers achieved an %80 recovery rate that could mean a Million Ounces remain in that facility. And if Vein 6 was 8 g/t, it could mean a grade of 1.6 g/t. The tailings area, whatever the numbers, could easily be made into reserves. Being the lowest grade and poorest metallurgical recovery material to mill, I think it will be used to blend with high grade ore though (much later into the mining process).
I would be amazed if KORES managed to get some underground drill rigs positioned along the Vein 6 wall face and drill plenty thousands of meters and delineate a few hundred thousand ounces of Au - all within the year that BMV and SAU set out. I think this will eventually happen over a number of years and resources and reserves will steadily grow over this time. It's clearly not happening immediately though. Lots of time and money are required for this. More money and time will be needed ramping up the mines to conventional mines, with stoping, explosives, more machinery etc. Rome wasn't built in a day, as they say.
Investors may be a little annoyed if they thought that the feasibility study was based on neglected or "rubbish" ore and we gave %50 mine stakes away for this. I reckon it's the best deal ever for SAU. There is so little risk in this sort of strategy. We are avoiding huge bank loans, massive share dilution from cap raisings or takeover bids by majors, effecting only piddly little 3-5 baggers for our investment. We'll be starting off very small - that's OK, because we are small. But not for too long!!!
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