On this link, find the op-ed written by Brent Cook in the latest edition of the Society of Economic Geologists Newsletter, in which he addresses an audience of people in love with rocks that don't always understand the financial side of junior exploration. A really excellent piece of insight into the world of the geologist and explorer, no kidding. Here's an excerpt from the piece to whet your appetite:
We, as a profession, are wasting substantial sums of money on bureaucratic activities (Sillitoe, SEG Newsletter, October 2010) that have little if anything to do with discovery, and drilling properties that don’t warrant drilling. Think about it; how many dog properties have you walked over that someone is promoting —trying to raise money to drill test— and the money actually comes through? That’s another way of saying money is too easy to come by ($5.2 billion was raised on the Toronto Venture exchange for mining equities last year alone), as opposed to the more commonly pitched “not enough is being spent on exploration.” The reality is that the available money is not being spent efficiently on work that leads to a discovery: field work and intelligent drilling.
All too often, an exploration geologist seems to see his or her job as one of finding a drill target. It isn’t. The job is, or at least should be, delineating a drill target that honestly offers a viable shot at a game-changing discovery—a find that takes a junior stock from $0.25 to $2.50 or $25, or truly adds to the bottom line of a mining company. The common shortsighted junior explorer’s business plan of raising money and drilling every anomaly commonly ignores the characteristics and probable economics of the mineral system being tested.
Read it all here.
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