Keith Barron reports that he was beginning to think geologists are just slicing the baloney thinner when something new comes along….When I started writing “Straight Talk” in 2001 it was because I was increasingly uncomfortable with the half truths and deliberate falsehoods coming out of the mouths of a small number of rogue mining promoters. We were still trying to recover from Bre-X , yet some morons were still back to their old tricks to flimflam the public. Okay, there was an element of blatant self-promotion in my writings too I admit, but a long time ago I relinquished the cudgel to the Angry Geologist and his/her ilk. However, the buzz around the Pilbara gold rush is really bugging me and I think it is time I wade into the fray.
To be entirely transparent, I am a shareholder of Novo Resources, and Quinton Hennigh was recently kind enough to devote two days of his very busy schedule to showing me around the project. I must admit that when I saw the July youtube video of fossickers metal-detecting nuggets within solid rock and then jackhammering them out I thought this is the greatest legerdemain since Blackstone the Magician https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiAGlWyjRq8 .
Had Quinton lost his mind? I knew him to be a top-notch geoscientist who had paid his dues in the industry working for junior and senior companies alike. He had inherited my PhD project, Springpole Lake, in NW Ontario, after I had moved on, and had added a couple of million ounces of gold to it. A few months later I saw the “live feed” that was on-stage at the Denver Gold Show. Truly this was the greatest piece of promotion and showmanship anytime, anywhere since Phineas T. Barnum walked the Earth. Magnificent. I’ve been calling it “geo-porn” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-YK4r6VUoc .
But although the Denver performance (they call it the “Party Trick” Trench) would convince even the most hardened skeptic, the Pilbara play exists almost in a parallel universe, unsung, unpraised and unmentioned by the majority of mining analysts – even though until lately it had a whopping market cap of over $1 billion Canadian. Part of this is due to unwarranted and unsubstantiated statements that the play is, or could be larger than the Witwatersrand Goldfield of South Africa. It seems to me that this passes as a credible statement in Australian mining circles, unless perhaps followed with the declaration, “And the dingo ate my baby!” Outside of Australia though the analyst community instead hears, “We have X billion ounces of gold…..and the Space Aliens put it there.” Those who want to lend credibility to the play are doing themselves no favours by making Bre-Xian statements and goosing the stock price for short term gain. The Novo discovery is hosted by conglomerate, but that’s where the resemblance to the Wits ends.
Back in 1998, I discovered some outcrops of quartz pebble conglomerate in the Gran Sabana National Park of Venezuela. I could pan gold out of the rotted rock. I heard rumours of an artisanal mining operation on top of one of the “tepuis”, or isolated flat-topped mesas in the park and rented a helicopter to investigate. Sure enough, there was conglomerate there too, and I found a nugget that was large enough to be caught in a 2 mm screen. I got the attention of Professor Lawrie Minter, a world-renown expert on the Wits, and of Hugo Dummett from BHP. Unfortunately, another Hugo, this one with the last name Chavez, came to power the end of 1998 and put the kibosh on any exploration plans. (Don’t worry, we didn’t intend to mine the park!) We moved the project over to the adjoining country of Guyana and over the next 2 years spent $15 million USD, largely from the Rembrandt tobacco group, to fund exploration looking for a Wits lookalike in the Roraima Formation. Lawrie gave me a crash course in paleoplacer deposits and set me up with a tour underground at Western Areas in South Africa. We spent a year working together, and got permission from Sam Hinds, the Prime Minister, to prospect in Kaiteur National Park on the Potaro River, and we staked a piece of ground the size of Belgium. Ultimately, and after much good geological work, we failed to find anything economic, but it was a helluva education.
A good read ...see more in article.
See Keith Barron's subsequent article (more).
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