Medinah Minerals (MDMN)

[RD759]

One thing worth bearing in mind, with this focus on drilling, is that drilling is never the first line of attack in an exploration programme. Drilling is expensive; the last time I worked in Chile we were paying a little over $100 per metre (on a recent job in Europe we were paying $300 per metre) plus rig mobilisation and sundry costs. To drill effectively you need to identify anomalous targets first and design a staged programme around them.

Detailed outcrop mapping (to create a geological drape over a digital terrain model) followed by geochemical sampling and geophysical exploration is required first to identify these anomalies. With something as large as ADL this is likely to take some considerable time to get the blanket coverage (though breaking the plateau down into sequential tiles could see localised drilling take place sooner) you would need in order to rank your anomalies into some form of drilling order in terms of size/grade, etc.

Once a JV is in place and the money is in the bank, don't expect the drills to turn any time soon; there's much work to do before then to create a cost-effective exploration programme.