Excellent post and in my opinion you hit a fistful of nails right on the head. The only thing I would say is that I don't think the pace of their exploration program is dependent on the silver price. I think it is a question of manpower, logistics and the rate at which they need to feed the pipeline. In other words, if they hired a dozen more geologists and several more drill crews, they could increase the rate at which they are putting deposits into the production pipeline. But unless they increase the milling capacity, the result would be a pipeline that is out of proportion to their capacity to mine the deposits. Impact is working on expanding their milling capacity (taking the current mill up to 500 tpd and deploying the 200 tpd semi-portable mill that they have acquired), but greatly expanding the pipeline wouldn't make sense, imo, unless mining and milling capacity is expanded accordingly.

As for gold and silver, I agree, the battle is on and raging fiercely. But there are factors today that were not present in previous gold bull markets, particularly China. I don't expect the cartel to surrender any time soon, but this time around they may be facing a truly worthy opponent. China is encouraging their citizens to accumulate gold and silver so they may have their own version of a Plunge Protection Team to deploy, if you know what I mean.

Thanks for the heads up on Orvana, I am not familiar with them but I will take a look.

Best,

tsl