Sure. Super high level.
Resources are concentrations of some mineral that could be economically extracted.
Reserves are the economically mineable portions of those resources.
There are a bunch of levels to each, with varying levels of confidence.
I can drill two holes, 500m apart and by pure chance intersect nothing but lithium at same spacing between 10m-20m. I could theoretically say , you know what I think between these two drill holes it’s all lithium. It’s 500m spacing and according to grades I think we have 500ktons of inferred lithium resource here.
But for instance let’s say I did some more drilling and was confident I found a resource that indicates it has 1million tonnes of lithium in it. However, it’s located in the middle of Sahara desert, where there are no roads, water sources, or infrastructure of any type.
Just because it’s there doesn’t mean it’s economical to mine it (right now). So even though it is a resource it’s not a reserve.
To define something as a resource there is a lot of room for interpretation. Lots of statistical inference, and a bit of art meets science. From public company perspective you can announce you have calling a promising resource, but if you get it wrong, there’s a lot of leeway.
Calling something a reserve is a big deal. Not only are you extremely confident of the size, shape of the resource, but you have evaluated its economic viability to get it out of the ground and have determined that it’s net positive. You lie about this, and you are in trouble.
Any chance you could explain the distinction to a layman? To me they seem to mean roughly the same thing.