Publications

Presentations

"Technical Report on the Bolivian Operations of Ag-Mining Investments AB and Buckhaven Capital Corp."

Terms of Reference - This technical report (“TR”) was prepared for Ag-Mining Investments AB (“Ag-Mining”, the “Vendor”) and Buckhaven Capital Corp. (“Buckhaven”, the “Issuer”), by qualified persons Donald J. Birak (Birak Consulting, LLC), Luis Oviedo Hannig (NCL) and Carlos Guzman Perez (NCL), to disclose scientific and technical information pertaining to Ag-Mining’s wholly owned subsidiary, Empresa Minera Manquiri, S.A. (“EMMSA” or “Manquiri”). Manquiri is a precious metal mining and processing company based in Bolivia with offices in the capital city of La Paz and in Potosí. The Company also maintains an office in Oruro to manage oversight of the Cachi Laguna operations and regional exploration.

"Regulation S-K (Subpart 1300) - What Every Minerals Geologist Needs to Know"
GSN - May 2022

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Since the roll-out of the new SEC regulations, there has been an explosion of consultants offering services to help companies implement the new regulations in their filings with the US SEC. This presentation is only a partial summary of the new SEC regulation S-K 1300 and is not intended to be complete and it is not intended to give, nor should it be taken as,
legal advice. The reader should consult their own legal advisors when navigating the new SEC regulations. The manuscript (Birak and Earnest, 2020) to support this presentation was included in the GSN Symposium proceedings.

"Exploration Best Practices: Success and Compliance"
The Geological Society of America - May 2016

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BIRAK, Donald J., Birak Consulting, LLC, 2142 E. Sundown Dr., Coeur d'Alene, ID 83815 and EARNEST, Donald, Resource Evaluation, Inc, Suite 125, 1955 W. Grant Rd, Tucson, AZ 85704, djbirak1@outlook.com
Exploration targets are specific geographic areas possessing geologic attributes, known and inferred, suggesting potential for occurrence of a valuable mineral deposit. The areas may be regional to local in scale, leading to different scopes of work and financial investments to evaluate the mineral potential. The evaluation process involves the use of regional- to outcrop-scale geologic and geographic data, remote sensing and mineral spectra data, geophysical and geochemical surveys, surface and subsurface sampling by prospecting, trenching or drilling, sample preparation and analysis and corresponding quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) procedures, and sampling for metallurgical, environmental and other purposes. These activities must incorporate industry-accepted best practices for the collection of all of the various types of data required, and conform to the legal requirements related to the right to explore given targets and the disclosure of results to the securities-buying public, if appropriate. Blending best practices with exploration and geologic skills can enhance and streamline the mineral discovery process.

Papers

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s New Regulation S-K 1300, Disclosure Requirements for Mining Registrants; What Every Minerals Geologist Needs to Know

Abstract:
Until most recently, field geologists employed by mineral exploration and mining companies, with stock listings in the United States (U.S.), had little reason to be concerned about public disclosure of their data generated by field mapping, geophysical surveys, geochemical sampling, drilling, and analytical work. Public disclosures of results from such activities were often made by senior exploration or mine operations management, based on the data and information fed to them by their hands-on geologists. This situation had the potential to cause a disconnect between the persons generating the results and those disclosing them—if they were disclosed at all. For those disclosures, officers, senior management and investor relations staff of companies registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) relied on a
set of general and brief guidelines set forth in the SEC Industry Guide 7 (Guide 7), which was based loosely upon the 1980 U.S. Geological Survey Circular 831.
Prior to Guide 7, and outside of the U.S., guidelines and/or requirements for public disclosure of technical exploration results and data had, for the most part, not yet been developed. However, governmental concern in Australia, in the 1980s, regarding fraudulent disclosure of exploration results and mineral reserves for certain projects resulted in the formation of the Joint Ore Reserves Committee (JORC) of the Australasian Institute for Mining and Metallurgy and the Australian Stock Exchange and the subsequent enactment of the JORC Code in 1989. Despite promulgation of the JORC Code, in February 1999, it was revealed that the publicly disclosed mineral reserves of more than 200 million gold ounces for the Busang gold exploration project in Indonesia, operated by the Canadian-listed junior company, Bre-X, was fraudulent. This infamous, watershed event caused radical changes in public disclosure requirements and responsibilities to begin to take place worldwide. Canada was first to react to the Bre-X fraud by enacting National Instrument 43-101 (NI 43-101) in 2001, which consisted of a comprehensive set of technical guidelines and regulations pertaining to public disclosure of geologic results and data for projects ranging from grassroots exploration to mine operations.
In the U.S., work to revise SEC Industry Guide 7 public disclosure requirements began, as early as 1989, with the formation of the first of a series of committees assembled by the Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration (SME). After much effort by SME and other groups to encourage the SEC to update its technical disclosure guidelines and requirements, in line with those of Canadian, Australian, South African, and other jurisdictions, SEC Regulation S-K 1300 For Mining Property Disclosure was approved on October 31, 2018. S-K 1300 effectively replaces Guide 7.