Caveat emptor when it comes to Rise Gold.
Rise Gold Corp. (OTC:RYES) is allegedly going to reopen the Idaho-Maryland gold mine in Grass Valley CA. The mine has been out of production since 1956 and is flooded. The 3 surface pads RYES owns as part of the underground claim are all in what is now a residential area. Anybody that restarts this mine is going to get a demand from the State of California to clean up the tailings piles left over from the 1950s.
Before RYES came along, Emgold Mining Corporation (OTC:EGMCF) was going to reopen the mine. They spend several years trying to get permitted and failed. Their plan to deal with the tailings was make clay tiles from them but they did not bother to mention that the tailings had all been run through a cyanide process gold extraction plant. When EGMCF did not get permitted they abandonded the project in 2016, at which point RYES picked it up.
RYES has only about C$250K in the bank and all of 2 employees but we are somehow supposed to believe that they are going to obtain all the permits they need, clean up the tailings piles, build a water treatment plant to they can drain the mine, drain said mine, re-timber some or all of the 75 miles of underground tunnels, install new winding equipment, air compressors, tools, lighting and ventilation equipment, and post the required reclamation bond which is likely to be at least US$100 million. Also, the good core samples they are advertising come from about a 5,000 foot depth when the mine is only about 3,400 feet deep so quite a bit of new tunneling will have to be done to get to the ore. All this in the face of teething opposition from the residents of Grass Valley who do not want the mine reopened.
Also, the mine next door, the Empire Star, is now a state park but the minerals are owned by Newmont. Newmont is not interested developing those mineral rights anytime soon and Newmont has the deep pockets to do so. If the Idaho-Maryland mine was is such a good deal then a major miner should be snapping it up. Nobody is. RYES did manage to sucker a couple of million dollars of new investor money last year though. Looking at RYES' financial statements I would like to know what kind of creative accounting turned the Idaho Maryland into a C$14 million asset in only about 3 years when RYSE is basically broke. All they have done so far is take core samples and the cost of that does not run anywhere near C$14 million.
Conclusion: caveat emptor when dealing with RYES stock. You can expect further dilution of your equity because the company has to sell stock to pay its bills. Plus, they will never get permitted to reopen the Idaho-Maryland mine.
