Next Thursday morning at the American Exploration and Mining Association annual conference in Spokane I will be giving a presentation entitled: “Challenges of Advancing a Near-Economic but Relatively Small Hardrock Gold Deposit in Today’s Market” in a session entitled “Alaska: Daring Explorers; Patient Developers; Innovative Producers.”  Also in my session are talks on three major Alaskan developments:  the Chulitna Coal project (a Hunt-financed coal project fighting environmentalists and permitting issues), an Update on the Pogo Mine (Sumitomo’s underground gold mine, producing about 350,000 ounces per year) and two technical talks on Hecla’s Greens Creek mine (2015 anticipated production: 7.3 million ounces of silver with very significant gold, zinc and lead credits).   I’m somewhere between a daring explorer and a patient developer, aspiring to be an innovative producer!  But at least I get to hang out with the big boys for the morning! 

Golden Zone is quite small compared to these other projects – we expect to produce between 20,000 and 30,000 ounces of gold annually along with some silver and copper.  By being a smaller project, we really don’t appeal to larger mining companies (who aren’t in an acquisition mode these days anyhow), and smaller Canadian exploration companies (“juniors”) can raise a dime these days.  On the other hand, we’re small enough that we should appeal to private entities.  And that’s really been the focus of our marketing the past six months or so. 

Alaska and Golden Zone offer several significant advantages to a private entity that is interested in getting into the gold producing business, and along with my marketing efforts that’s what I will be talking about.