Letter to the editor: Excuses, excuses

Poor geology is a poor, but valid, excuse for a mining company to use when describing why their ore deposits do not have the ore as expected.

For example, when a group describes their deposits as “orogenic gold” when they are actually “epithermal gold,” this would explain why their gold has limited vertical extent. The only remedy for such mistakes is to use geologists who understand different deposits, particularly those that can differentiate between volconogenic, orogenic and epithermal gold. There are sometimes subtle but important differences in these three types of gold deposits, and overlapping deposit types are also fairly common, and need to be recognized.

Thomas A Henricksen

via the Internet