Dr. Tim Coughlin (Lydian photo)

Dr. Tim Coughlin (Lydian photo)

In Part II of Brent Cook's Exploration Panel at the recent Sprott Conference in Vancouver, geologist Dr. Tim Coughlin says investors are getting ripped off by companies who delay metallurgical tests.

Metallurgy is key. I'm not referring to Amulsar, because the metallurgy there is fantastic. With another discovery I was involved with while I was with Anglo in Pero, one called Lariscatada, there are a lots of things you learn, and I'm just picking one. I think investors should be calling for companies to do metallurgical testing a lot earlier than they do. I see resource statements coming out and subsequently followed up by terrible metallurgy which I think is borderline criminal. You need to know that some intersections will look fantastic, the resource will look fantastic, but you have to know that you can recover that gold. If its 50% recovery then half the resource is gone, and presumably a lot more capex in recovering that 50%. We now do this systematically. The company that I'm now running one particular project we were drilling in Southeast Turkey we hit sulphides, we got 10 meters of 6.4 grams in one drill hole. We sent all of that core off immediately for metallurgy, because it was sulphides. And that was our walk away criteria, if we couldn't recover, we'd walk away and find another project. I think that should be done really early, I think its really important in terms your decision making process, as an investor and as a company.

Dr. Coughlin also says he pays close attention to the second drill programs at new discoveries.

"Put it this way, the soil geochemistry, the geophysics, all that sort of information, is usually there before that first drilling program goes in. That data doesn't change, that stays there for the rest of the life of that project, right through all the other drilling programs. So you would expect that drilling round, normally, to be sided on the best locations and to pull up some good holes. You should expect encouraging results in the first drilling program. It's the second one for me that's important in terms of results, and whether you think this could be a project or not.

Part 1 - Second drill program - begins at 11:30

Part 2 - Metalurgy is key - begins at 9:30

Source: Gold Exploration Panel Part 2 and 3 (Youtube)