Jron, like all accomplished liars, Full of Malarkey arkie, mixes some half truths into his lies. His oft repeated "several decades for mines to come to fruition" comment is half true. The average time for a resource to be drilled out to turn into a mine is probably several decades. That's because the vast majority of resources drilled out are marginal or uneconomic when they are first discovered so many sit for years waiting for prices to rise, infrastructure to improve etc. Robustly economic mines get developed very rapidly because there is very strong economic incentive to do this.
Case in point is Pierina Gold deposit in a semi-remote part of Peru. From the first drill holes to the first gold pour was less than 2 years. It was discovered by a Jr explorer and Barrick did a very lucrative deal for the Jr. in a few months even though the deposit was only partially drilled out when they signed the deal. Mining companies are aggressive and fast when they get on to a good project.
Many open pit gold deposits are economic to mine at 1 g/t gold. Depending on which side of his head chuckiepoos brain ferts are coming from, ecpn has stated that el cap head "ore" is 0.4 to 1.2 opt gold_eq. This is 12 to 36 g/t. The dirt is at a shallow depth. Such a deposit would be extremely robustly ecponomic and the mining industry would be swarming. They still would be if it was even 1/10th the grade ecpn states. Academics would be studying it if it was 1/100 of what ecpn states. Absolutely none of that is happening and ecpn started their hard sell to the mining industry in 2005.
Don't believe the crap that it is complex ore. Complex ores are ores where the PMs are locked in sulfides. el cap iron skarn has little or no sulfides. ecpn management tell tales that the PMs are recoverable by gravity methods. If there were PMs and they were recoverable by gravity then the metallurgy would be simple and sweet. End of story. Confirm with a real metallurgist.
