Some six weeks after the fact, gold’s dramatic drop made for lively discussion at Vancouver’s World Resource Investment Conference 2013. On May 26 Chris Berry, founder of House Mountain Partners and co-editor of Morning Notes, posed some key questions to a four-person panel of prominent gold-watchers.
With three rigs, three barges and $6.95 million, Fission Uranium TSXV:FCU and Alpha Minerals TSXV:AMW have a busy summer planned for Patterson Lake South. The 44-hole, 11,000-metre campaign announced May 21 will focus on delineating and expanding three zones of high-grade, near-surface mineralization. Additional targets southwest and northeast of the 850-metre trend come courtesy of a radon survey. Ground geophysics will follow up on two “highly prospective” areas spotted by an airborne survey over the property’s southwest and southeast areas. The agenda also includes environmental baseline studies and sampling for metallurgical tests.
Even before speaking with President Ollanta Humala, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Peruvian visit included a May 22 meeting with mining executives in Lima. Among them was Glenn Nolan, president of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, who urged the PM to press Humala to unlock some $4 billion of unspent royalties earmarked for regional spending. Nolan, who’s also Noront Resources’ TSXV:NOT VP of aboriginal affairs and a former chief of Ontario’s Missanabie Cree First Nation, told Canadian Press, “We want to see good laws and transparency so that our (royalties) go back into the community.” At least by implication, he drew attention to powerful community concerns that have sometimes resulted in deadly clashes. Speaking to ResourceClips, Panoro Minerals TSXV:PML president/CEO Luquman Shaheen discussed Peruvian social issues and politics, as well as his company’s Cotabambas and Antilla copper projects.
A conference in the middle of this market? Investors look shell-shocked. Mining and exploration CEOs wonder whether to eat their children. In times like these, why would anyone bother attending the World Resource Investment Conference 2013? Well, according to Rick Rule, it’s the ideal time.
The best assay yet from Patterson Lake South’s R00E zone hit the news on May 16. That’s when the Fission Uranium TSXV:FCU and Alpha Minerals TSXV:AMW joint venture reported nine more holes from last winter’s 46-hole program.
Just the stuff to develop bigger and healthier crops, potash complements a world growing in population and appetite. Two contrasting companies pursuing the commodity are Western Potash TSX:WPX, the most advanced junior in the space, and Pacific Potash TSXV:PP, with a very big but early-stage property optioned from Western. Those differences aside, both companies have seen a general upturn in share price over the last month.
If British Columbia’s mining and exploration sector needed a massive jolt of reassuring news, they got it May 14. The pollsters were wrong, the pundits were wrong and the winners might be as surprised as the losers are disappointed. Although the popular vote was close, the BC Liberal party won an historic fourth term, handily defeating the New Democratic Party.
What? Two weeks without assays from Patterson Lake South? No scintillometer readings either? Taking a break from reporting drill results, Fission Uranium TSXV:FCU and Alpha Minerals TSXV:AMW instead revealed a survey showing “the strongest radon-in-water anomaly to date,” the companies stated on May 6.
We’re about three and a half hours north of Vancouver, bouncing up a rough mountain road in a four-wheel-drive. The objective? To check out what Ryan Sharp calls “a grassroots exploration company with a producing mine. Or the other way around—a mining company with blue sky exploration potential.” He wants people to see for themselves Huldra Silver’s TSXV:HDA Treasure Mountain and Thule projects because, he says, “We’re not a paper company.” In particular, the nearly 3,000-hectare Treasure Mountain silver-lead-zinc operation hasn’t been divulged on paper nearly to the same extent as most working mines.
Geology has a way of stimulating even the most discouraged investors, as shown by the way North ROK excited an otherwise dismal market. The very first hole from the Colorado Resources TSXV:CXO project sent company stock soaring from an April 24 close of $0.16 to a May 6 high of $1.25. Along with the excitement comes revived interest in the northern part of British Columbia’s Golden Triangle, in the region around the discovery hole and Imperial Metals’ TSX:III development-stage Red Chris project, 15 kilometres east.
