Successful Exploration Requires Skill and Luck

Successful exploration is an art in which various scientific, engineering and related disciplines are applied. I prefer to think of the “art” of exploration as placing oneself in the position to become lucky. The major reason one hires explorationists is to skew the relevant probabilities of finding ore in your favor, thus greatly improving your chances of success.

The sole objective of exploration, finding ore deposits, constantly must be foremost in the mind of the explorationist. It is the responsibility of the exploration management to provide the leadership for that objective to be obtained.

In founding a successful mining company, the objective of the company must be stated clearly and understood, and the basic exploration tools must be provided. The basic tools on which a successful exploration effort must be based are: — Adequate and consistent funding over a reasonable period of time. — Competent personnel. — Acquisition of excellent prospects. — Allocation of a large portion of the budget to drilling. — Dedication of the group to finding ore. — Excellent communications within the organization. — The ability of management to make decisions with a minimum of delay. — Flexibility in organizational structure and in budget allocation.

To find large, productive orebodies one must look in “elephant” country, that is in geologic areas where large, profitable orebodies have been found before. A good objective is to look for orebodies that can stand mismanagement. If you are successful, you won’t lose any money if the property is mismanaged and, if the engineers do their job, the company will be well rewarded. Geologists can make a critical contribution to the success of a mine by being directly involved during the development stage.

If the goal is to discover ore deposits success will depend on the judicious selection of high-quality prospects. Because all factors involved in the probability of success of a single trial are independent, the better defined the target, the higher the probability of success. Three factors control the attractiveness of a property: — Presence of mineralization in the area. — Ability to find the orebody if it is present. — Size and grade potential to be economic * * * and luck.

An explorationist must know what he is looking for, must have firmly in mind the three factors that control the attractiveness of a property, and must examine each prospect without a lot of preconceived ideas. To sum it all up, a successful explorationist must have a clear-thinking head on his shoulders and be willing to use it.

The most important and rarest characteristic of an explorationist is the ability to recognize a potential ore deposit.

After a prospect is acquired, the target or targets should be delineated and drilled quickly and efficiently. In evaluating targets it is important that the explorationist recognize the significance of what has been found. Gold mineralization is not recognized easily. It is also axiomatic that gold prospects require a number of holes, not simply one or two, to evaluate them properly. If the prospect does not measure up, it should be dropped promptly.

In making a decision to drop a project, the “weakest link” scenario in invaluable. Project evaluation is simply an evaluation of successive links of a chain of requirements that must be satisfied if the project is to develop into a mine. As soon as any link is found to be too weak for the objective to be met, the evaluation is over. If you do not adhere to this principle it will lead to failure in accordance with the “law of gambler’s ruin”. This elementary principle simply emphasizes the serious chance of going broke spending your money on losers before an ore deposit is found.

Successful exploration is dependent on getting into a position to be lucky. This requires adequate funding, a competent, dedicated staff, clearly outlined objectives, rapid decision making and above all leadership and a lot of common sense.

The longer I am in this fascinating, gambling business called exploration, the more I realize it is the simple things in exploration — as in life — that work. Few geologists ever are involved in finding an ore deposit. The idea that if you are involved in finding one, you have met your lifetime quota is absolutely wrong. The more ore deposits you are involved in finding, the better you get at it.

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