Absolutely but the one question that has`nt been asked , why was an exco geoligist spying on cudeco`s property if they weren`t close by the epm?feeding_the_fire said:EXS seems to have dipped a little in recent days. What do people think? Is the negative sentiment around AUM driving it down, or is it merely market fluctuations?
Are people still feeling generally positive about this one?
Definitely not just waiting patiently for bite from Extrata.Dyor.Cheers.herbaltech said:This thread seems to have teminated abruptly. With the recent copper price drop, has everyone cut loss and sold their EXS ?
Possibly soon. Because exs has so many strings its hard to pick which one it will be about though.booga82 said:any idea when this ann. is coming out???
I thought it was going to be a "few weeks"...four weeks ago.
Exploration Joint Venture Significantly Expands Ivanhoe's Presence in Australia's Cloncurry Copper, Uranium and Gold Mineral Belt
20:19 EDT Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Ivanhoe Australia Enters into Investment Agreement with Exco Resources
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA--(CCNMatthews - May 9, 2007) - Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. (TSX:IVN)(NYSE:IVN)(NASDAQ:IVN) -
John Macken, Ivanhoe Mines' President & CEO, and Peter Reeve, CEO of Ivanhoe Australia Pty. Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary company, announced today that Ivanhoe Australia has entered into a private placement investment in, and a joint-venture agreement with, Exco Resources NL. Exco is an Australian mineral exploration company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. Exco holds extensive exploration tenements in the Cloncurry copper, uranium and gold region in northwest Queensland and the White Dam gold project in South Australia.
Ivanhoe Australia's investment and joint venture with Exco significantly expands Ivanhoe's exploration presence in the highly prospective Cloncurry region in the Mt. Isa District.
The private placement consists of 26.4 million Units at a price of A$0.30 per Unit, for a cost of A$7.9 million. Each Unit consists of one common share and 0.8 share purchase warrants. One full share purchase warrant allows Ivanhoe Australia to purchase, subject to Exco shareholders' approval, one Exco common share at a price of A$0.35 on, or before, June 1, 2008. If all the warrants are exercised, the total investment will be $A15.3 million and will result in Ivanhoe Australia holding approximately 19.9% of Exco's common shares.
Exploration Joint Venture on Exco's Cloncurry Tenements
The second part of the investment is an exploration joint venture on approximately 785 square kilometres of Exco's 100%-owned tenements located south of Ivanhoe's Kuridala tenements, which form the northern part of Ivanhoe's 2,140-square-kilometre Cloncurry copper, uranium and gold project. The terms of the joint venture call for Ivanhoe Australia to spend A$5 million over three years to earn an 80% interest in Exco's tenements. The joint venture expands and consolidates Ivanhoe Australia's exploration land position around its current Cloncurry Project.
Ivanhoe's Cloncurry Project covers the historic Selwyn-Mt. Elliot Mining District. Ivanhoe acquired the project in 2003 with a plan to expand the known copper, gold and uranium mineralization and to conduct an integrated exploration program designed to test for significant deposits similar to the Ernest Henry Mine, owned by Xstrata, to the north, and the Osborne Mine, owned by Barrick, to the south of Ivanhoe's existing exploration tenements.
Ivanhoe's exploration work to date at Cloncurry has discovered a series of related high-grade Iron Oxide Copper Gold (IOCG) systems, with associated uranium, that are geologically similar to the nearby Ernest Henry Mine, and to the Olympic Dam and Prominent Hill mines in South Australia.
"Ivanhoe Australia's investment in Exco Resources highlights our commitment to exploration in the Cloncurry region," said Mr. Reeve. "The area remains substantially under explored and is highly prospective given the geological prominence of this world-class mineral region. Both Ivanhoe's and Exco's exploration teams are keen to begin aggressively exploring the new tenements."
Ivanhoe Mines' shares are listed on the New York, NASDAQ and Toronto stock exchanges under the symbol IVN.
Additional information on Exco Resources and its exploration projects is available at www.excoresources.com.au.
CANTEEN URANIUM PROSPECT
• Initial reconnaissance at the Canteen U3O8 prospect has identified highly anomalous
uranium and copper from rock chip samples
• Samples collected to test large (>2km strike length) coincident uranium radiometrics and
magnetic anomaly
• Best assays of 2,877 ppm U3O8 from magnetite alteration zone
• Assays between 130 to 365 ppm U3O8 across 1000m strike length of main anomaly
(13 samples, see details and map below)
• Anomalous copper identified within same mineralised system
• Site access work underway in preparation for drilling
• No previous drilling or known exploration
CRITERION
Tim Blue | July 20, 2007
Compass Resources (CMR) $5.17
COMPASS Resources has learned the hard way that the comrades in the People's Republic of China are just as happy to take a profit along the road to socialist nirvana as anyone else.
Its shares took a dive when Chinese joint venture partner Hunan Nonferrous Metals Corporation sold a 5 per cent stake in the company at a deeply discounted price of $4.10. That was about half of Hunan's holding after taking a placement at $2.50 a share about a year ago.
But Compass has since bounced back, helped by some very good drill results from its Browns East Prospect in the Northern Territory that revealed high-grade copper and uranium. It has found high grades of copper and uranium about 100m underground with associated cobalt and lead.
Stockanalysis.com principal Peter Strachan says it has an in situ value of about $1650 a tonne at today's metal prices, made up of about $600/t each for copper and uranium and about $300/t for cobalt content at that high grade of 0.46 per cent cobalt. The market has decided this is good news, especially since mining approvals in the Northern Territory are controlled at the federal level.
StockAnalysis has a valuation target of about $10 a share for Compass, nearly $6 of which is ascribed to its sulphide project. The company is scheduled to crank up its oxide project in October to produce copper, nickel and cobalt, and work is under way on the sulphide project.
Yet there are other considerations when looking at Compass. It is talking of splitting itself into three entities covering base metals, exploration activities in NSW, and uranium. Criterion wonders if this is necessary and merely adds complications.
Details of the floats have yet to be finalised, but Compass hopes to offer guidance in a few weeks.
Compass is sitting on a 6500-tonne uranium resource near Rum Jungle in the Northern Territory, but it's the Browns base metals project, also in the Top End, that promises immediate revenues.
The Browns project is an intriguing mix of cobalt, copper, nickel, lead and zinc in oxide and sulphide form. The mineralisation is discrete, but most of the different ore bodies would need to be mined contemporaneously.
Compass reports the construction for the first plant is "well advanced", with the project on track for commissioning in October. Even at the oxide stage Compass envisages some serious output: annual production of 10,000 tonnes of copper cathode, 1000 tonnes of cobalt and 700 tonnes of nickel over a 10-year life.
Back in February, Criterion rated Compass as a speculative buy. We are happy to maintain the rating.
Exco Resources (EXS) 37c
ANYTHING that interests Canadian mining entrepreneur Robert Friedland has to interest your columnist, and Exco Resources is exactly that. Friedland, a nickel king, is planning to list the Cloncurry assets held in Ivanhoe Mines under Ivanhoe Australia.
Two months ago Ivanhoe Australia bought 12.2 per cent of neighbourhood explorer Exco Resources for $7.9 million and was given about 21 million options exercisable at 35c before June 2008, as part of a larger $12.25 million placement.
Included in the deal was a joint venture over 715sqkm held by Exco adjacent to tenements held by Ivanhoe Australia. By spending $5 million over three years, Ivanhoe Australia can earn 80 per cent of the ground.
This week Exco Resources revealed that it has a fair bit of uranium in its E1 and Monakoff copper deposits, with 3477 tonnes of uranium oxide at an average grade of just 0.27 pounds/tonne.
Stockanalysis.com's Peter Strachan says this is not a startlingly commercial grade, but at a uranium oxide price of US$129/lb, it adds a remarkable, average in situ value of around $40 per tonne to Exco's 100 per cent-owned copper-gold ore.
Extracting uranium from flotation tailings should be a fairly low-cost affair, considering that Exco will already be planning to go to the expense of mining, crushing and grinding this ore in order to float off a concentrate containing the sulphide minerals of copper and cobalt plus most of the gold," he says.
"Most of the cost associated with recovering uranium will actually be carried by base metals and gold, so extracting say $30 per tonne of uranium from the tailings product should keep everyone happy, including the mines department."
Exco managing director Michael Anderson said the latest funding would help his company proceed with its exploration plans. It already has 345,000 tonnes of copper resources on its ground and wants to lift its exploration spend to $5 million a year.
Criterion ranks Exco a speculative buy.
Energy Resources of Australia (ERA) $19.57
IT might have rained bucketloads on ERA's Ranger mine in the Northern Territory, but the company produced more uranium oxide than ever in the June quarter. It will not go on for ever. ERA will maintain a force majeure over sales contracts from Ranger, where in the first quarter the open pit was flooded, cutting off access to high-grade ore at the base of the pit.
ERA returned the mine's plant to full production, and produced 1490 tonnes of uranium oxide during the June quarter, up 48 per cent on the rain-affected March quarter.
The mine has produced 2496 tonnes of uranium oxide over the year to date, 26 per cent higher than the first half of last year.
An ERA spokeswoman said the improved performance was a result of stockpiling high-grade ore late last year in case of another big wet season, which certainly occurred with a vengeance when the beginnings of Cyclone George dumped record rain on the mine.
After the event, the company forecast it would produce about 4750 tonnes of uranium oxide in the full year, about the same as last year. The forecast said the full effect of this year's rains would be felt in 2008, when ERA expects to produce 25-35 per cent less uranium oxide than this year.
The company's uranium production is committed under long-term sales contracts that last year averaged $US18.36 a pound. The spot price reached as high as $US138 a pound earlier this year, and is now trading at about $US129 a pound.
Who knows how long ERA will maintain force majeure, but the spokeswoman said more might be known by the time ERA hands down its half-year results next week.
ERA has said it expects a loss of $5-$10 million for the first half (against a $23.7 million gain in the second half of 2006) as a result of the water problems. It expects to completely drain the pit by early 2008.
Criterion ranks ERA a long-term buy.
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