Pilbara Conglomerate gold

Pb_Haze wrote:There are no sacred sites or heritage areas in the area.
So far as I can see the sampling has only been done on a small area of Artemis live lease where the host rock is close to the surface. The rest of the gold strike, 3-4km long is on a pending lease awaiting approval.

My understanding is that the Ngarluma people occupied that region for quite some time??

Hi Pb_Haze,
If that lease along strike is pending approval, then it is open to anyone to get out there prospecting, as it is an application. Given that's the case, I would have expected to hear reports of discoveries coming in by at least a few of the hundreds of people who have already gone there detecting, in search of fame and fortune! One thing for sure - you don't wait for a lease to be approved beforte you start your prospecting. Otherwise, nothing would ever get found!

G'Day again, you are both right for sure.

The main point I was trying to make is:
Detector discovery  - yes.
Bonanza find for those involved - yes.
World’s Largest gold deposit – No.
Economic mine in the making – maybe.
Company maker – maybe?
Opportunity to make money trading shares – Yes
Opportunity to lose money trading shares – Yes
Interesting - Yes, very
Potential size – Huge – or alternatively nothing more than discrete concentrations along the conglomerate – a detecting prospector’s paradise!

Again, something substantial for the individual equipped with a metal detector is a far cry from what is considered substantial for a company, even as small as Artemis, and is inconsequential for any gold-producing small to mid-tier company

No question, you can make a lot of money by investing in the a stock at the right time, but for all the wrong reasons, just as you can lose a lot of money investing in the right stock for the right reasons, at the wrong time.
A few spectacular examples in the gold sector come to mind: the Bre-X scam in Indonesia at Busang, in the late 1990's. All fabricated, by salting samples, and it just grew and grew in the scale of the salting, largely because the fever surrounding such an amazing and exciting discovery just let most people throw rationalism and caution to the wind - even consultants working on the project got caught out. Everyone just believed it. It just got too big - corruption in Indonesia came into it, many snouts all vying to get into the trough. When finally some "due diligence" was applied, and some independent holes were drilled, twinning existing holes...there was nothing there.

From the trade point of view, the shares rocketed up in value hundreds of times from a low of a few cents to a high of $250 or something like that. A retirement maker if you bought in at the low, and sold out anywhere along the way. I know of one Canadian geologist, who bought a few thousand dollars worth of these shares very low and sold out for enough profit which he invested in an entire block of apartments and lived off the income.

Money here is made and lost on "speculation" as opposed to "investment". That is a key difference in with Buffet's philosophy. However one thing that he says that applies universally is: Buy low, Sell high. Whether that's day trading, week trading, months, years. It doesn't matter. Are these shares high now? Who knows (I wish I did!)

As for Kalgoorlie, the Golden Mile, like most other fields, were found by prospectors out there to strike it rich. Paddy Hannan found the first gold, but he didn’t get exceedingly from it. And also, far more patches of gold found by old timers and by modern-day prospectors amounted to little more than surficial concentrations of alluvial gold, and the sources of these were never found, or where so poor grade they could not be mined economically. The thousands of shafts dug in every gold field attests to this. That’s why alluvial rushes the world over produced astounding amounts of gold in the first few years, by when you’ve mined through the soil and gravels, and hit the bedrock, it just stops overnight - in far more cases that not, it is then done and dusted. In the peak year of Victorian gold production there was around 62,000 oz of gold behind deposited to the banks of Melbourne every week!! Pretty much all that was derived from surficial gold. A few years later, the amount won had dwindled to a few hundred ounces per week. Around 45 million ounces of surficial gold was won in California, mostly in the years 1848 - 1855. By 1855, the surface deposits of easily won gold were essentially mined out.

With a detector, your best chance of finding great and memorable discoveries, of striking it rich, is being the first one in a new area with a metal detector where there is coarse nuggety gold. The guy who found Purdy's was one of the luckiest ones. My best find was a patch of 12 oz in 8 hours. 25 pieces. I got permission to scrape it, did that and found 1 more piece - a 1.7g nugget. There was nothing under it, no source could be found. That's the story with most patches.

Thanks for your comments too, goldtalkleonora

GoldnQuartz wrote:
The only common trait this shares with the Wits deposit, is that it is in an old conglomerate. However, the type of conglomerate is completely different. This is more a type of conglomerate found in river systems, with multiple rock types, such as those in California, Alaska, Russian far east (Kolyma), and most of the other great alluvial rushes the wold has seen. THe Wits conglomerates are very mature quartz pebble-dominant conglomerates.

Hi GoldnQuartz,
Thanks for taking the the time to post your informative thoughts. I'm interested to hear what you think about the genesis of the gold from "The Wits"? The link below mentions "Another important difference is that only about 40% of the gold in the Witwatersrand is coarse nuggets. The remainder is fine grained gold mostly associated with so-called “carbon leaders”, interpreted as possible algal mats"
"Impact only became aware of the Artemis Resources Ltd (ASX:ARV) / Novo Resources Corp discoveries mid-year but quickly recognised the potential significance of the discovery because of the nature of the nuggets. It is not only the shape of the nuggets that was significant but also the edges of them with some clearly having toroidal forms, typical of nuggets in the Witswatersrand."

http://impactminerals.com.au/impact/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Proactive-Investors-231017_Impact%C2%B9s-Dr-Mike-Jones-details-technical-review-of-Pilbara-conglomerate-hosted-gold-in-Proactive-QA-Sessions.pdf

In another article on the topic, the MD of Impact Minerals Dr Mike Jones mentions "Some spoilsports claim there’s unlikely to be enough source material to emulate a Witwatersrand. Jones  contends the Pilbara nuggets weren’t exactly nuggets in the first place, having been chemically leached from a source vein and turned into nuggets by complex geological forces. The gold  could have been transported into the basin by hot geothermal fluids and dumped into algal “mats”, where they were reworked as nuggets"
http://impactminerals.com.au/impact/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/The-Australian-7.11.17-A-Pilbara-Gold-Rush-Guide.pdf

And the last link is a video aimed at investors, it does appear that the good Dr Jones does know a little about it having done his Phd on this type of gold deposit (3:45 mark in the video).

Do you think the Pilbara could be a little more like the "Wits" than first thought?
Cheers
Curley
For the record, I do have shares in IPT but i've had them for a long time, well before the Pilbara "gold rush" was started

G'day Curly,

Very interesting stuff. Thanks for sending those links through. I agree completely with what Dr Jones says. He's pretty frank about it and explains in more detail than I alluded to regarding the difficulty of determining the grade - the nugget effect.

As to the origin of gold in the Wits, there are a hell of lot of conflicting opinions out there. Another characteristic of the Wits not so mentioned, is that the gold lodes also contain appreciable amounts of uranium, and pyrite, as well as the enigmatic 'carbon leader' the Dr Jones refers to. The carbon leader might be only a couple of mm thick - it isn't always present, but when it is the grades can be phenomenal. Where the U comes from can also explained somewhat by the models involving the algal mats, and oxidation-reduction reactions that are woven into the algal mat story.

Some of the Wits had visible nuggety gold, but the few pieces of coarse gold I've seen in Wits ore samples could have been remobilised into fractures that formed long after the initial gold was introduced - these rocks are old - some of the oldest on earth, and as such they have "been trough a lot of sh*t" in their geological lifetime. That age has also contributed to why its been hard, nigh impossible, to find another Wits. Because they are so old, they have required very special conditions to remain on the earths surface to this day (their own amount of luck as well!) There are very few areas in the world where rocks this old are preserved. They are preserved in what are called Cratons. The Pilbara Craton (this area), The Yilgarn Craton (Kalgoorlie and all eastern goldfields), the other areas mentioned in Brazil, India, the USA, Russia - and of course South Africa and other parts of Africa too. Overall though, there isn't a lot left, considering rocks of these ages would have covered all the earth's surface at some time, and that's because its all been recycled. Any gold deposits they contained were consumed and probably contributed to many of the younger deposits of gold - in other forms, that we see today.

As for the algal mats idea, it certainly is a good compelling idea. Other ideas, in conjunction with the early life propose that as oxygen was released from these fledgling algal colonies, stromatolites, etc, it created, very slowly, changing conditions in terms of oxidation and reduction. You have to bear in mind that at this point in time, there was very much less oxygen in the atmosphere, such that we, nor any any other air-breathing mammal could have survived. If you were transported back in time 3 billion years into the environment where this gold formed, you'd die of asphyxiation standing there. It was a hostile, hot, rapidly changing environment. Physical processes operated just as they do today - gravity worked, and rivers flowed down hill, it rained. Rain carved streams but there was no vegetation. The surface was rocky and barren, and erosion rates were huge. The earth's interior was far hotter than today, volcanism was prolific.

I can't see why these ideas are wrong, and so it is certainly a very exciting discovery. I only wish I'd back my hunches when the shares were rock bottom. In fact it took six months from the time I was initially looking to buy Artemis (Jan this year), and subsequently Novo when they got in on it. I was a fool. Watching those presentations makes me realise I did even worse - I could have gone and pegged much of that ground myself, as much of it was all open. I really am a fool sometimes. (And hindsight is a b*tch)

I'd hold those IPT shares. I reckon there's a lot of legs left in them! This is going to take several years - at least 4-5 as Dr Jones suggests, to even start to get a handle on how big the basin is, and there will lots of high and low points along the way too.

Cheers, G&Q

Hi Goldnquartz, thanks for posting your thoughts. Very informative and full of valid points.
You probably haven't heard much of prospectors finds from Purdys as it was fairly well picked out by December last year. Purdys was not the only patch found either. The 47km patch (about 15km from Purdys) was found around the same time by a little old lady who managed 200+ ounces before word got out locally. This turned into a stampede with every man and his dog from Karratha and surrounding areas converging on it. Plenty of scuffles and fist fights came with well over 1000 ounces recovered by prospectors.

Hi also Adrian, I stand corrected. Heritage yes, sacred site no.

Pilbarachad,

A bit slow in replying. What grades, size would you need to justify the current growth trends? Presumably you mean in the share price. That can be a difficult question to answer, one which analysts spent a lot time tryiong to work out. But basically what you need to do is work out what the value of the company is. get into their financials, work out total number of shares and multiply it by current market price. That'll give you the market cap (you can already find that on ASX and other trading websites. IN it's most simplistic form, you can take that value, assume they have no other tangible assets, and then divide that by the gold price per ounce, and you'll get a number, which is how many ounces of gold their current share price is worth.
Any then go and look at what assets they've got - this is where it becomes difficult - whats it worth if they sell it now, whats it worth is what someone is willing to pay. Who knows.

Also then there is upside, what are they really likely to find, well, that's anyone's guess. All I can say from my observations is, they've run up a long, long way on very little - nothing more than a few thousand ounces found largely by prospectors (whom I might add, have quickly been forgotten by most of the spruikers, who are already claiming the discovery (Artemis and Novo) as their own.

Lets not forget, this area has been explored for Iron, Nickel, gold, diamonds, copper, and other things for at least 40 years, and none of them - not one of these 'modern explorers' found this gold sitting on the surface. What it took, was a bloke out there, saw something unusual, and he walked over it with a detector.

Fantastic story really.

Just a quick note, I am unable to send private messages as yet. When I have made the required number of posts I will reply asap

Pb_Haze wrote:Just a quick note, I am unable to send private messages as yet. When I have made the required number of posts I will reply asap

You have 5 posts, your all good to go

GoldnQuartz wrote:Pilbarachad,

A bit slow in replying. What grades, size would you need to justify the current growth trends? Presumably you mean in the share price. That can be a difficult question to answer, one which analysts spent a lot time tryiong to work out. But basically what you need to do is work out what the value of the company is. get into their financials, work out total number of shares and multiply it by current market price. That'll give you the market cap (you can already find that on ASX and other trading websites. IN it's most simplistic form, you can take that value, assume they have no other tangible assets, and then divide that by the gold price per ounce, and you'll get a number, which is how many ounces of gold their current share price is worth.
Any then go and look at what assets they've got - this is where it becomes difficult - whats it worth if they sell it now, whats it worth is what someone is willing to pay. Who knows.

Also then there is upside, what are they really likely to find, well, that's anyone's guess.  All I can say from my observations is, they've run up a long, long way on very little - nothing more than a few thousand ounces found largely by prospectors (whom I might add, have quickly been forgotten by most of the spruikers, who are already claiming the discovery (Artemis and Novo) as their own.

Lets not forget, this area has been explored for Iron, Nickel, gold, diamonds, copper, and other things for at least 40 years, and none of them - not one of these 'modern explorers' found this gold sitting on the surface. What it took, was a bloke out there, saw something unusual, and he walked over it with a detector.

Fantastic story really.

Thanks for the response gnq. Its funny what you say about the area being previously prospected for decades and completely missed, i know the bloke who actually found it, if you look on tengraph/geoview you will see a deposit called sullams that was drilled back in the late 70s, he just drove in to check it out and pulled out the detector as an after thought. He worked the spot by himself for 12 months before the chopper pilot saw his camp, sussed it out and pegged it. Not too far away (on novos pending lease) i walked over a pretty decent patch right on an old track and only about 1km away from another area that had been drilled and explored extensively. You just gotta be the first one to put your detector in the right spot.

GoldnQuartz wrote:Pilbarachad,

A bit slow in replying. What grades, size would you need to justify the current growth trends? Presumably you mean in the share price. That can be a difficult question to answer, one which analysts spent a lot time tryiong to work out. But basically what you need to do is work out what the value of the company is. get into their financials, work out total number of shares and multiply it by current market price. That'll give you the market cap (you can already find that on ASX and other trading websites. IN it's most simplistic form, you can take that value, assume they have no other tangible assets, and then divide that by the gold price per ounce, and you'll get a number, which is how many ounces of gold their current share price is worth.
Any then go and look at what assets they've got - this is where it becomes difficult - whats it worth if they sell it now, whats it worth is what someone is willing to pay. Who knows.

Also then there is upside, what are they really likely to find, well, that's anyone's guess.  All I can say from my observations is, they've run up a long, long way on very little - nothing more than a few thousand ounces found largely by prospectors (whom I might add, have quickly been forgotten by most of the spruikers, who are already claiming the discovery (Artemis and Novo) as their own.

Lets not forget, this area has been explored for Iron, Nickel, gold, diamonds, copper, and other things for at least 40 years, and none of them - not one of these 'modern explorers' found this gold sitting on the surface. What it took, was a bloke out there, saw something unusual, and he walked over it with a detector.

Fantastic story really.

Another 'old saying'.....Prospectors find the gold......geologists then tell you why it's there.

Thanks for posting your thoughts G & Q. You do seem to know your stuff.
Cheers
Curley
ps, nice gold from California btw

Hey Pilbarachad, somewhat true but geophysicists are even worse. Geophysicists always explain the geophysical anomaly after the deposits have been found by prospecting or drilling - "oh yeah, you can clearly see it right there in this image". Then you reply, "handy you didn't identify it before we drilled the discovery hole!"

I just tried to do a very quick numbers in answer to your question about what dimensions it would take, to justify the share price. As I mentioned its very difficult, because its a constnatly changing playing field, and you have to factor in upside, downside etc, but very simplistically, a million ounce to 1.1 million ounce deposit, at about 5 g/t Au would be about what is needed to justify the price based on tangible assets. From what I know those conglomerates are relatively flat-lying. If you assumed the gold is all relatively shallow, and could be mined out of a shallow open pit, you wound need a block of continuous ore about 1 km x 0.5 km, and 25m deep. Normally there is waste mixed in with the ore, and so there is dilution, and you have to mine (strip) the waste. A very low stripping ration would be 3:1 waste to ore, so triple those dimensions, and a block would be 1km x 0.5km x 75m thickness (say depth).

Cheers, G&Q

Pb_Haze wrote:There are no sacred sites or heritage areas in the area.
So far as I can see the sampling has only been done on a small area of Artemis live lease where the host rock is close to the surface. The rest of the gold strike, 3-4km long is on a pending lease awaiting approval.

Not yet anyway

I am a bit perplexed as to how these deposits have been ignored for so long. I know Australia is a big country  but people and mining Co have been trooping through that region for decades digging and drilling all over the place. Maybe it was set aside for Ron.

These deposits very likely extend out into the ocean bed.

adrian ss wrote:
I am a bit perplexed as to how these deposits have been ignored for so long. I know Australia is a big country  but people and mining Co have been trooping through that region for decades digging and drilling all over the place. Maybe it was set aside for Ron.

These deposits very likely extend out into the ocean bed.

I can't remember the exact number...but it's along the lines of....a tenement in WA changes hands 6 times before the resource is discovered.
Drill rigs can miss by 'that much'......people stuff up......and the biggest problem in WA mining is that in most cases a 'representative sample' is not taken and so the problem of 'nugget effect' occurs...look it up it's a real thing.

So who is interested in selling their Artemis/ Novo shares.

https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/novo-news-aboriginal-agreement-comet-well.3843641/

They don't extend out under the ocean bed. That sort of comment just perpetuates the wrong idea about all this. It's misguided.

If anything, they extend to the south, underneath the basalt. Have a look at Novo's press release which discusses the drilling, and the figures & photos that go with it. The reasons it hasn't been found are many - some many companies explore and don't find things for so many different reasons - more often than not it is for reasons that are totally outside of your control. Such as: Stock market conditions change, and funds required to continue exploring cannot be raised, which means all work stops. When conditions remain bad for years, companies go broke. They cannot continue to explore. They sell or swap assets, they merge with other companies, boards change, direction and focus change. Nothing is ever seen to completion, because the window of opportunity is very small. In reality having the right patch of ground as the wrong time is worse than having crap ground at the the right time.

https://www.finnewsnetwork.com.au/Presentations/PMIS/2017/ImpactMinerals_IPT/index.html
Another interesting presentation
Cheers
Curley

GoldnQuartz wrote:They don't extend out under the ocean bed. That sort of comment just perpetuates the wrong idea about all this. It's misguided.

If anything, they extend to the south, underneath the basalt. Have a look at Novo's press release which discusses the drilling, and the figures & photos that go with it. The reasons it hasn't been found are many - some many companies explore and don't find things for so many different reasons - more often than not it is for reasons that are totally outside of your control. Such as: Stock market conditions change, and funds required to continue exploring cannot be raised, which means all work stops. When conditions remain bad for years, companies go broke. They cannot continue to explore. They sell or swap assets, they merge with other companies, boards change, direction and focus change. Nothing is ever seen to completion, because the window of opportunity is very small. In reality having the right patch of ground as the wrong time is worse than having crap ground at the the right time.

You are right. I was out of line re the ocean bed. Sorry about that.

My understanding of conglomerate is that it is the weathered residue of host rocks, transported by fluid action then from overlaying pressure and/or chemical reactions cemented into a matrix.
Could this be representative of a shallow conglomerate filled palaeochannel ?
The "gold nugget" content very possibly does not extend beyond it.
In watching that presentation I was reminded of similar sales pitches from the past....quite "gilt" edged
Mike

Some more announcements on the ASX

http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20171127/pdf/43plng8h58f7tl.pdf

http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20171127/pdf/43plm3vgshfphx.pdf

The market didn't like that announcement much, down 25% today!

What they said in the latest announcements without actually saying so, is that in 60 large diameter drill holes, that all intersected the conglomerate, they did not find one single piece of course of coarse gold. That is of great concern.

Of course they use very measured words. If they came out and stated the bleeding obvious, then the share price would likely have tanked about 75%, not 25%. In my books, that is a sell trigger if you had/have the shares.

Not they are resorting to taking a 20,000 tonne sample, which of course they will do on the highest grade area, the two intersecting trenches which I call "the crucifix" in their plan!

RIP Pilbara Witwatersrand!

detectorist dream, company nightmare