Here's Why The Trillion-Dollar Afghan Mineral Discovery Is Bogus

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One does not have to be a geologist or an engineer to understand why. When geologists find outcropping mineralization, or other signs that an economic deposit of minerals may be present, that is not called a discovery. Even if the signs come from the latest scientific equipment flown over the country, as the U.S. government appears to have used, the result is still just an anomaly: a hopeful indication of where to look. And anomalies are like opinions: everybody has one.

Once an anomaly is identified, it takes extensive, and very expensive field work to determine the best locations for drilling holes in the ground, which you have to do to calculate a volume of mineralized rock, from which you can estimate the metal contained. It usually takes at least a year, and often several, to identify targets for drilling. And drilling off a deposit of any significant size takes several more years, usually after many false starts and setbacks, because you can’t see through rock and know where the goods are.

But even after you drill off a deposit, and know how big it is, how deep it is, and roughly what’s in it, you still don’t know what it’s worth. For that, you have to conduct extensive testing on the mineralized material, not just to quantify the metals or other desirable minerals within, but also to see if there are contaminants, or other elements present that can complicate, or even make impossible the economic recovery of the valuable mineral.

In short, until you know how much it would cost to mine and process any sort of mineralized material into a salable product, like gold bars, copper concentrate, etc., you cannot say what it’s worth. Even a huge deposit of gold may be completely worthless, if the grade is low and there’s lots of carbon that would mess up the gold recovery.

Now, back to Afghanistan. A "small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists" cannot possibly have drilled off these deposits, let alone done the engineering required to value them. The NYT article described airborne geophysical surveys and a little surface work – no drilling. This is not a discovery – no serious exploration geologist would call anything a discovery until enough holes have been drilled into it to outline a significant volume of potentially economic material.

What we have here is a regional survey that may or may not lead to significant new discoveries.

. . .

No responsible geologist would circulate a valuation figure at this stage of the process in Afghanistan. In fact, if a public company put out a press release like this story in the NYT, the exchange would likely reprimand them severely and require a retraction.

. . .

Note that this doesn't mean the minerals are not there – Afghanistan has, for obvious reasons, not seen any modern exploration, or even antiquated exploration, for decades. It is, in all likelihood, a terrific place to look for minerals. But the government’s story sounds like the sort of PR stunt put out by Pink Sheet scammers.


http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-the-trillion-dollar-afghan-mineral-discovery-is-bogus-2010-6


Just one big distraction campaign.

I would expect similar publicity. Since when do people express caution anymore?

how do we know this "find" wasn't discovered some years ago. And how do we know this is not the real reason we are still in Afghanistan.

probably by the same NSA/CIA/TIA/OSI or whatever they're calling their Information Manipulation and Professional Propaganda Squad these days.

Yes, it smells of the Usual Suspects. Why not? Obama didn't want to "look backwards" and get rid of them.

Afghanistan has long been a rich source of minerals, but the development of those resources has not been very active. As a producer of gemstone minerals, it has produced some of the world's best specimens. It's not surprising that other minerals are also there.

I'm not sure what lies behind the statement that the total could be $1 trillion, but the Chinese are there, and have paid large sums for rights, so there must be some truth to it. The resources have not been extensively developed, but that does not mean that mining interests do not know about them or their extent.