The Role Drilling Plays in Exploration

There’s a good reason why the first thing a person investing in a mineral exploration company wants to know is, “when are you drilling?”, and why the second thing they want to know is, “when are the drill results coming out?” Simply put, drilling is the core of any exploration program.

If you want to know the real potential of a discovery you’ve got to undertake a drilling program, there are no shortcuts. Surface sampling will tell you a great deal but if you want to know how deep the mineralization runs, what the strike length is and how good the grades are (in short, everything you need to build a resource) the drill is necessary.

Investors in the junior mineral exploration sector know that. There is generally excitement around the launch of a new drill program and I’ve known investors who will count down the days of approaching drill results like a six year old waiting for Christmas.

Unfortunately to most of us the ‘drill program’ is like an airplane; we don’t really understand how it works and we just assume those who should understand it are doing their jobs. With drilling we’re not trusting our lives to something we don’t understand, but make no mistake, we are trusting our investments to it.

How many major discoveries have been made on properties previously drilled? Or how many discoveries are still in the ground because the target was, in fact, never actually intersected? Did the geologists come up with the wrong target, or did the drillers miss the target? Did the drillers miss the ‘window of opportunity’ in the weather and pull out from the property never having reached the target? Considering how much is riding on the drill program, and more specifically the drillers and their equipment, I wonder that I spent seven years in the exploration industry without knowing the first thing about the whole process.

Now that I have joined Cabo Drilling I find myself on a crash course in drilling. I am learning about the process and about the challenges and opportunities inherent in this business. Through this blog I invite you to join me as I dive into this learning process. In the weeks to come as I drill down to discover how the business works I’ll try to summarize my findings for you. Oh, and I promise I’ll dispense with the industry jargon puns...or at least try to.

Kevin Hull