Mineral Property Evaluation: Handbook for Feasibility Studies and Due Diligence

Less than 30% of the projects that are developed in the minerals industry yield the return on investment that was projected from the project feasibility studies. The tools described in this handbook will greatly improve the probability of meeting your projections and minimizing project execution capital cost blowout that has become so prevalent in this industry in recent years.

Mineral Property Evaluation provides guidelines to follow in performing mineral property feasibility and evaluation studies and due diligence, and in preparing proper documents for bankable presentations. It highlights the need for a consistent, systematic methodology in performing evaluation and feasibility work.

The objective of a feasibility and evaluation study should be to assess the value of the undeveloped or developed mineral property and to convey these findings to the company that is considering applying technical and physical changes to bring the property into production of a mineral product. The analysis needs to determine the net present worth returned to the company for investing in these changes and to reach that decision point as early as possible and with the least amount of money spent on the evaluation study.

All resources are not reserves, nor are all minerals an ore. The successful conclusion of any property evaluation depends on the development, work, and conclusions of the project team.

The handbook has a diverse audience:

• Professionals in the minerals industry that perform mineral property evaluations.
• Companies that have mineral properties and perform mineral property feasibility studies and evaluations or are buying properties based on property evaluation.
• Financial institutions, both domestic and overseas, that finance or raise capital for the minerals industry.
• Consulting firms and architectural and engineering contractors that utilize mineral property feasibility studies and need standards to follow.
• And probably the most important, the mining and geological engineering students and geology and economic geology students that need to learn the standards that they should follow throughout their careers.