November 29, 2011
Excalibur Will Shortly Change Its Name To Pendragon, And Unveil New Projects To Develop Alongside The Tennant Creek Flagship
By Our Man in Oz >>
www.minesite.com/aus.html (free registration)
The road to Tennant Creek has been a rough one for Excalibur Mining, as the super-rich pods of gold that the company has targeted around the remote town in Australia’s Northern Territory have proved to be painfully elusive. However, undeterred by a near-death experience last year when a large theoretical gold resource shrivelled in the cold light of drilling results and a fresh look at old data, Excalibur is plotting a return - with major changes.
First: a new name, though the Arthurian theme persists. Back into the lake goes Excalibur, and onto the scene comes instead Pendragon, which Round Table officionados will know was the name of King Arthur’s father. The precise details of the emergence of Pendragon are still a well kept secret. But from what Minesite’s Man in Oz has picked up while wandering the back-streets of his home town, Perth, the process will involve a new listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange to complement the quotation on the ASX.
And, as a means of attracting North American interest, it seems a number of fresh gold exploration assets, most probably in the gold-rich Indonesian province of West Papua, which is home to Freeport’s giant Grasberg mine, will be injected into the company.
Excalibur’s executive chairman, Alex Bajada, was keen to talk about the behind the scenes work at the company, but said it was a bit early to discuss the new Pendragon name, or the details of the fresh assets. What he did acknowledge is that a recapitalisation is now well underway, and that a prospectus is currently in the market to raise A$5.9 million via the issue of a wheel-barrow load of 5.9 billion shares at a microscopic one-tenth of a cent. A major consolidation will follow the share issue, leaving a fresh-looking Pendragon with an ASX and TSX listing, up to A$8 million in cash, new Indonesian gold tenements, and another chance to prove that the gold at Tennant Creek is more than a mirage.
The reason Excalibur/Pendragon retains its interest in Tennant Creek is easy to understand, from both a historic and a more recent perspective. In the early life of the company’s plum Tennant Creek assets, Juno and Noble’s Nob, gold was produced by the bucketload (a non-technical term). Officially assays from drilling sometimes yielded more than 100 ounces to the tonne, and in the peak year of 1954 Noble’s Nob produced just 15,534 tonnes of ore for a yield of 47,537 ounces of gold, roughly three ounces to the tonne. After those halcyon days, the entire Tennant Creek goldfield disappeared, shrouded from the view of outside explorers by a blanket ban enforced in the name of Aboriginal land rights.
The modern appeal of Tennant Creek is two-fold. Firstly, other explorers are starting to re-connect with the gold trapped in the complex structures in the region. Secondly, a fresh technical look at the Excalibur tenements has re-kindled enthusiasm, both inside and outside the company.
Not far from Excalibur’s Juno and Noble’s Nob projects, where Excalibur flamed out on its first pass at its attempt to get a mine going, both Emmerson Resources and Westgold Resources are having more success. Emmerson has reported bonanza drill hits at its Goanna project, including 3 metres at 34.1 grams a tonne, and Westgold has reported assays up to nine metres at 12.2 grams per tonne from its Rover project.
The Emmerson and Westgold results have confirmed the prospectivity of the ground at Tennant Creek, and inspired Excalibur and its consultants to return to the scene for a revitalised attack, a step which could finally draw a line under the 2010 disaster, when a theoretical 800,000 ounce gold resource on the Excalibur ground was reduced to just 280,000 ounces by hard-nosed technical analysts.
“We need to finish what we started at Tennant Creek”, Alex said, in reference to the work plan that’s being hatched to go along with the corporate restructure of Excalibur. “We have received the first draft of a positive review of our tenements in the area from experts at SRK Consulting, and while it isn’t ready for release yet, it is likely to recommend a number of steps designed to answer the question about how best to locate economic mineralisation on our tenements.”
The SRK team is being complemented by an expanding group of technical experts inside Excalibur, some with extensive experience with the Canadian gold producer, Kinross. It is their input, alongside that of SRK, which is adding to the confidence of Alex and other Excalibur board members.
For investors and Excalibur’s management, the Tennant Creek saga has been bitter. When the company embarked on its attempt to re-develop a mine in the area, either by re-processing mine waste dumps which reportedly grade up to three grams per tonne, or by mining around and below the historic underground workings, hopes were high and the shares commanded a share price 10-times what they are today, namely A0.002 of a cent.
The next phase in the life of Excalibur will restore interest in the company, especially given its new name, new assets and new technical team. But, one thing that will remain unchanged is the geology of Tennant Creek which is undoubtedly hiding more rich gold pods like those at June and Noble’s Nob. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next.
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;