Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) The first question is from John Bridges. Please go ahead.
John Bridges - JP Morgan
Hi, everybody. I just wanted to dig a little bit deeper into this Luisman situation, to begin with. The company is aggressively developing up for this big expansion which has been promised to us, and I am just surprised that this narrowing would surprise them. How much proven reserve do they have? How many years of proven reserve do they have?
Randy Smallwood
Right now, they’ve got about 1.6 million gold equivalent ounces, slightly over -- I think it is about 90 million silver equivalent, so we are talking about probably 50 million silver ounces in the reserves going forward, 55 million.
The issue, the [Santo Macea] vein system was one of the most prolific producers over the last five years. It has consistently averaged over six meters in thickness and we’ve now reached the top third of this vein system, where it does significantly narrow up. Some supporting development that was supposed to make up the production shortfall from that is on schedule now to be completed here shortly but it just didn’t step in at the same time that the [Santo Macea] narrowed up, and hence the production shortfall.
John Bridges - JP Morgan
So what went wrong?
Randy Smallwood
Obviously a bit of a mistake in short-term planning.
John Bridges - JP Morgan
There were some labor problems in Mexico recently. Was it related to that?
Randy Smallwood
No, at the San Dimas operations, the disturbance was very short. I think it was measured in the amount of days, not even a week, so I don’t think that had any issues there at all.
These epithermal veining systems are always -- there is always a bit of a challenge in terms of keeping the right amount of working faces in front of you and they are so development intensive that I think this one here, just transitioning from a vein system that is typically six meters wide to something that is a little bit over two meters wide, that essentially means you have to have two other working faces coming on stream to replace it, you know, if the average thickness is typically about two meters, and it was just a little bit of a mix-up in short-term, or a little bit of a miss in short-term planning.
John Bridges - JP Morgan
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