WAF - West African Resources

[Sean K]

WAF almost recovered from that blip. All seems to be on track with production and Kiaka development.

In the back pages they note that production was 6% less than last quarter and AISC per ounce of US$1,296 was 12% higher than the previous quarter reflecting 5% lower gold sales in the quarter and 4% higher AISC on an absolute basis.

Not sure if that matters due to the higher prices for gold.

Hopefully this recovery sneaks me back up the list in the years comp.

 

[finicky]

Yes it's in Mali and it's Barrick Gold but I'll put it here because it's Africa, another Junta and of course next door to Burkina Faso. The thugs are encouraged by how far they can go in bending over the colonialist miners and how easy it is to invent pretexts for confiscation.

Mali accuses Barrick Gold of breaching agreement, miner denies claims​

Reuters | October 24, 2024

Mali has accused Barrick Gold of failing to abide by commitments made in a recent agreement, charges the Canadian miner denied on Thursday, saying it did not accept any claims of wrongdoing.

Barrick, the world’s second-largest gold miner, announced on Sept. 30 it had agreed with the government to resolve disputes over the Loulo and Gounkoto gold mines, days after Malian authorities briefly detained four Malian staff working for the company

But in a joint statement dated Oct. 23, Mali’s economy and mines ministries said Barrick had “not honoured the commitments to which it subscribed in the agreement.”
Without sharing further details, the ministries said the breaches included those relating to environmental and corporate social responsibility and foreign exchange rules.
They said there were “serious risks to the group’s continued operations in Mali, one of whose operating licenses expires at the beginning of 2026.”
“The Malian government has decided to draw all legal consequences arising from the actions taken by Barrick Gold,” they said.
In response, Barrick denied the allegations and said since Sept. 30 it had been actively engaged with the government to reach a settlement that would include an increase in the state’s share of economic benefits from the Loulo-Gounkoto complex.
“While Barrick does not accept any claims of wrongdoing, it has chosen to act in good faith as a long-standing partner of Mali,” it said in a statement, adding that the company had paid the government $85 million in early October in the context of ongoing negotiations.
Earlier this month, three sources told Reuters that Mali’s military government was seeking at least 300 billion CFA francs ($512 million) in outstanding taxes and dividends from Barrick.
Asked to comment at the time, a Barrick spokesperson said the company was still in the process of negotiation.
The demands on Barrick follow an audit of mining contracts last year and a subsequent push by the junta to renegotiate existing agreements with foreign mining firms aimed at channeling a greater share of revenues into state coffers through a new mining code.

 

[finicky]

On the cusp of a gold boom, this miner’s world collapsed – now it wants justice

• Sarama Resources claims its Tankoro 2 permit in Burkina Faso was expropriated by its military government in 2023
• Last week the company secured US$4.4 million in litigation funding to take the case to international arbitration
• ASX and TSX miners have won hundreds of millions in damages for claims in recent years as resource nationalism rises across the globe

When Aussie mining executive and geologist Andrew Dinning wrapped up a successful stint as director and president at Moto Gold Mines in 2009, selling its stake in the Kibali gold mine in the DRC to Mark Bristow’s Randgold Resources and South Africa’s AngloGold Ashanti via a US$578 million takeover, Burkina Faso was the place to be.

The emerging West African country that captured a portion of the 7Mozpa Birimian Shield seemed the logical place to repeat the success.

From 2010, Dinning led the exploration of the Tankoro prospect, part of the broader Sanutura project near the town of Hounde in south-west Burkina, turning a greenfields discovery undrilled for 50km on either side into a 2.5Moz gold deposit after sinking US$80 million of investors’ cash into the virgin ground.

“We went to West Africa because of the geological opportunity,” Dinning said.

But a succession of coups in 2022 turned the land of opportunity into scorched earth and his gold explorer Sarama Resources (ASX:SRR) instead became a cautionary tale about the rise of resource nationalism.

Almost one year after the installation of then 34-year-old military captain Ibrahim Traore as president, the company announced on September 6 that its rights to the Tankoro 2 permit had been withdrawn.

“Instead of putting out a feasibility study that shows an internal rate of return of 100% at US$1800/oz, not US$2800/oz, you can imagine what it would be now,” Dinning told Stockhead.

“Instead of doing that we put out a news release saying the government’s taken the permit off us and killed the project,” Dinning pauses … “for pretty invalid reasons.”

Originally listed solely in Canada, Sarama’s shares closed at 19c on their first day trading as CHESS depositary interests (CDIs) in Australia on May 6, 2022, midway between two separate military power grabs on January 23 and September 30 of that year.

By the time the now C$8m-capped explorer reported the expropriation, its Australian CDIs were worth just 3c, closing as low as 1.7c in March this year, the upheaval consuming 91% of their value.

Now, Sarama is ready to fight back.

Action afoot​

On Thursday, Sarama announced a litigation funding agreement with Locke Capital II LLC, which will provide a four-year non-recourse loan valued at US$4.4 million to cover all fees and expenses related to its pending arbitration claim.

The request for arbitration is expected to be filed soon with the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, a Washington-based court of international arbitration that is seeing an increasing caseload with many disputes related to resource nationalism.

From an email
Long full article at stockhead

 

[Sean K]

I think we all need to keep our eyes and ears open for the next West African scare campaign that causes a stock to be smashed for no good reason and recover back to where it started. I'm not saying this would happen every time, but there's been several examples of this over the past few years that when looked at through Harry H, were brilliant trading opportunities, if you had the balls. Me? No. Loser.

 

[finicky]

West African scare campaign

Scare campaign?

 

[Sean K]

Scare campaign?

Well, let's just wait for the next one and see what happens.

 

[Sean K]

@debtfree WAF was a bit affected by the RSG issues as you'd expect but not as much as I thought. Must be tough for West Af companies at the moment. They all must be crapping themselves that the Juntas are just going to randomly choose them for a bribe.