Subject: Comments to Draft Specifications for Application of UNFC-2009: from Geoscience Australia

- The main objective of Geoscience Australia’s interest in UNFC-2009 is its potential as a communication tool (a ‘Rosetta stone’) for national scale comparison of resources as reported by different countries under their individual classification schemes provided that such resource categories are mapped to a common international base such as the UNFC-2009. However, the full use of UNFC-2009’s enhanced granularity in regard to extra resource categories will ultimately be limited by the amount of detail contained in reports published by company.

- From Geoscience Australia’s experience:

Companies are only permitted to report resources which are reasonably expected to be viable in the foreseeable future so that effectively excludes ‘Non-commercial projects’ as defined under UNFC-2009. In regard to resource sub-categories within ‘Commercial Projects’ and ‘Potentially Commercial Projects’ – a lot of the relevant criteria needed to assign mineral resources to different sub-categories are commercial-inconfidence or not published for other reasons, so effectively the companies who own and operate the deposits/mines in question are the only ones with the required information to place the mineral resources in the relevant
categories.

- The description of in situ appears confusing since F2 quantities are generally reported as in situ under the CRIRSCO/JORC codes. One example of recoverable resources being reported are the uranium resources published in the ‘Red Book’ as per NEA/IAEA classification.

- Sub-categories F3.1, F3.2 and F3.3 would prove to be very useful but are not shown in Figure 3 of UNFC-2009.

- ‘On production’ sub-class is confined to E1.1:F1.1 and E1.2:F1.2 which are correlated with ‘Mineral Reserve’. There are a few uranium in situ leach operations and a few gold mines for which it is considered not possible to establish a JORC/CRIRSCO compliant ‘Mineral Reserve’ ie the operations are based on ‘Measured and Indicated Resources’. Should some additional guidance be provided for such cases?