MINING OPERATIONS REPORT

During the last decade the metals mining industry has met a number of major challenges, which have made it vital to manage one’s limited assets wisely. In today’s competitive environment, the access to and knowledge of information on various aspects of the base and precious metals mining industry can play an important role in the successful planning of exploration and corporate strategies, project evaluations, development of future mines and acquisitions.

There is a considerable wealth of geological, engineering, metallurgical, environmental and financial data from a wide variety sources on exploration properties, advanced stage development projects and existing mining operations. Over the last seventeen years, my work as a research consultant for the mining industry has offered me an unique opportunity to study mining operations throughout the world. This on-going study currently comprises one of the most comprehensive research packages of its kind on the base and precious metals mining industry. It presently contains detailed summaries on six hundred five metals mining operations, totaling more than 9,000 pages in length, and includes data on the following topics:

Location of Mining Operation - includes country or province/state location maps, latitude and longitude, elevation and a legal or descriptive location of the operations.

Brief description of the regional geological setting and economic geology of the deposit.

Historical Summary of the Area’s Mining Activity - includes history of mining district and/or mining project with a summary of historical production statistics from the mine and/or mining district.

Operator and ownership information.

Present status, commodities produced and employee data.

Technical Mining Data - includes description of mining methods, inventory of mining equipment, breakdown of mining costs, haul distances, mining rates, waste-to-ore ratios and cut-off grades.

Technical Processing Data - includes ore types, description of various methods used to process the ore, more than four hundred schematic diagrams of processing facilities, breakdown of processing costs; power, grinding media, water and reagent consumption; plant design capacities, actual average daily processing rates, metallurgical recovery factors and bullion and/or concentrate content.

Financial Data - includes historical summary of property ownership with a brief description of acquisition agreements; acquisition, exploration and capital expenditures; royalty information, property descriptions, annual operation costs and revenues and other miscellaneous financial data.

Annual Production Data - includes ore mined or processed, ore grades and metals recovered.

Annual Reserve Data - includes proven and probable reserves and/or mineral resources.

References used in the compilation of the reports.

Numerous links to web sites containing additional information on many of the mining operations in this report.

Information contained within the Mining Operations Report has been obtained from public sources, which include annual reports, 10-K, 20-F and 40-F reports filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission or similar reports filed with foreign securities regulatory agencies, professional publications, engineering and technical reports, various governmental agencies and through personal contacts within the mining industry.

This study on former and existing mining operations as well as research on selected exploration properties and advanced stage development projects can be used as a cost effective tool by an aggressive exploration and corporate development program to:

identify and accurately assess potential business opportunities.

quickly evaluate a mining property’s assets and liabilities.

identify and evaluate exploration targets that will become the profitable mines of the future.

identify existing technologies that can be applied or modified to improve the efficiency of your metallurgical operations and successfully solve multiple engineering challenges.

Please examine the United States and international geographic lists for the operations, which are presently contained within this study. Bingham Canyon, Escondida, Round Mountain and Yanacocha have been provided as representative examples of the type of information currently available in the Mining Operations Report. Also enclosed is a copy of one of the more interesting aspects of this research, which involved the development of a classification model for the ore deposits contained within this study.

Geological Services Research Services