Full Metal Minerals Engages SRK Consulting to Complete Initial Resource Estimate for Pyramid Porphyry Project, Alaska

This looks to be a fairly decent size system and clearly Antofagasta, the big Chilean copper miner that has partnered with Full Metal on the Pyramid property, is not looking for something that is merely a modest project. The trick here will be the distribution of the mineralization vis-a-vis surface topography given the mountainous area. If the better grades all lie under the valley floor then it might not matter the the mineralization starts relatively close to surface — the project will need to get very big in order to justify literally moving the hills that appear to lie along the flanks of this system. The kind of topography that we don’t want to see is Peregrine Metals’ (now lucky Stillwater Mining’s) Altar deposit in Argentina:

This is quite a block model, with a real “A for effort” attempt to include the high grade copper porphyry mineralization at depth. The result is a pit that bottoms at least 800 meters below the valley floor, is quite a bit wider AND longer than 2 kilometers at the rim, and has a high wall to the north that easily exceeds 1 kilometer in height. Please note that I am using a graphic from the Altar 2010 43-101 since the PEA that was due out in late 2011 is still MIA.

One day we’ll have a look at McEwen Mining’s (previously Minera Andes’) Los Azules cross sections to see what a good topographical layout looks like. In that deposit, the higher grades are right in the upper flanks of the deposit and the open pit, while still massive, would be manageable with a strip ratio around 1.5 to 1 (basically 1.5 billion tonnes of waste rock compared to 1 billion tonnes of ore). Still the capital cost tops $3 billion because of the sheer size of an economic operation and the remoteness of the project. If Los Azules had an enterprising executive like Mr. Eric Friedland, brother of Bob, the project would probably have been acquired already for a pretty penny and be well on its way to development as a major copper mine. Wait a second — Los Azules does have an enterprising executive by the name of Rob McEwen — so what’s the hold-up? Could it be this gnat flying around and annoying everybody?

Oh screw it, here is a cross section of Los Azules that should require no words to explain why the deposit layout is so much better than Altar:

The above is from the 2010 PEA for Los Azules. Capiche? Do you see why Stillwater buying Peregrine Metals and Altar for several hundred million dollars was such a bad deal while this Los Azules monster nearby was probably available for the same price if not much less? Do you now understand why and what Full Metal Minerals needs to do at its Pyramid project to have a good shot at developing a copper mine there absent hiring Eric Friedland to hock the thing to the nearest idiot? If no capiche, drop a line in the comments and I’ll try to explain in greater detail.