Ben: Clients often bring reports to us that other geological engineering or mining companies have produced, and the problem that we often see is the overall work product is substandard; it’s poorly written and overestimates or over-highlights the quantity and quality of mineable material that is available on a project.
Typically, the reports or mine plans gloss over key aspects of the project, such as how they’re going to handle overburden and what the actual mine life is going to be. How much material can they actually mine? They usually don’t take into consideration the overburden storage. How are they going to handle addressing wetlands, or the addition of railroad spurs or access roads? Some of the reports I’ve seen take into consideration mining the entire property, when that’s not even physically possible.
Question: When the reporting is incorrect and inaccurate, what are some of the issues that arise?
Ben: Often the clients will find themselves in some type of legal proceedings, like tax court or inquiry by the Department of Justice or the IRS. When the authorities look at a report that doesn’t make sense or has erroneous information—or, in some cases, completely incorrect information—everything gets called into question, including whether or not the project is even realistic.
Question: What makes GeoLogic different?
Ben: All of the work that we do is based on real data. For example, we take into consideration the boundary survey and the final topographic survey of the potential project site. We look at geologic maps, and if we have access to an existing geological report of the property (from another company), we essentially redo it and recreate the entire geology profile. When we design the project, we take into consideration things like legally required setbacks, wetlands, floodplains, endangered species, and historical sites, as well as anything that would make the report inaccurate or misleading. We remove all the ambiguity, and spell everything out as to exactly what can be done with the project. That’s what makes us different, and clients come back to us all the time because they want the truth—not what they’re getting from many other geological engineering and mining companies, unfortunately.
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