A Mineral Resource is a concentration or occurrence of natural solid fossilized organic material including base and precious metals crust in such form and quantity and of such a grade or quality that it has reasonable prospects for economic extraction. The location, quantity, grade, geological characteristics and continuity of a Mineral Resource are known, estimated or interpreted from specific geological evidence and knowledge.
TCC reports its resource and reserve to two International Minerals Reporting Standards: JORC (Australia) and CIM (Canada). Under these standards, resource can be classified as “Measured”, “Indicated” or “Inferred” depending on the degree of confidence in continuity and grade with “Measured” having the highest levels of confidence and “Inferred” the lowest.
Definition of a Reserve
The same international reporting standards define a “reserve” as “the economically mineable part of a Measured and/or Indicated mineral resource”. Also states that “appropriate assessments and studies have been carried out, and include consideration of and modification by realistically assumed mining, metallurgical, economic, marketing, legal, environmental, social and governmental factors. These assessments demonstrate at the time of reporting that extraction could be reasonably justified."
Inferred Resource
Inferred mineral resource cannot be upgraded to reserve without additional geological definition and thus it is quite normal in the minerals industry that not all of the tonnage in a mineral resource becomes a mineral reserve.
Reko Diq Mineral Resource
Total mineral resources at Reko Diq are estimated at 5.9 billion tons. The breakdown of this resource includes:
- Measured Resource: 1.7 billion tons
- Indicated Resource: 1.3 billion tons
- Inferred Resource: 2.9 billion tons
As previously explained, only a portion of Measured + Indicated resources could potentially become reserves, accomplishing all the requirements from international standards. In Reko Diq, the economically mineable resources have been estimated by the Feasibility Study at 2.2 billion tons.