David Pescod's Late Edition March 29, 2007
HARD CREEK NICKEL (V-HNC) $2.80 +0.35
We comment on Hard Creek Nickel from time to time mainly because of the key personnel behind this story…Mark Jarvis. You can be lucky once, but can you be lucky twice? Does that mean you are actually good at something?
One of the most successful oil and gas stories over the last decade has been Ultra Petroleum (UPL) and one of the key founders and players in that story as it developed was Mark Jarvis. After that company was put in the good hands of Mike Watford, Jarvis was off to other things and of course, he’s always maintained he’s never been anything more than a frustrated playwright. The visual of him sitting on a park bench somewhere tapping out a play, somehow just didn’t fit the image of this successful oil and gas guy. Sure enough, he just couldn’t stay out of the public markets very long when he took over Hard Creek Nickel almost three years ago.
It was a little tougher than he thought at first, but now that the bookkeeping has been taken care of, it looks like he’s got another tiger by the tail in Hard Creek Nickel.
Nickel prices these days are soaring, recently flirting with almost $20 a pound, which is almost incredible when you think that some companies are still doing feasibility studies based on nickel at $5.00 a pound. That tells you the kind of leverage. Most nickel companies in the last few days have been leading the junior mining market upward and the major questions facing Hard Creek Nickel these days as they probably try to sell the company to a major is coming up with ways to keep costs of production on their Turnagain project in Northern B.C. low.
This involves questions mainly dealing with power that affects Hard Creek, but also half a dozen other potential mines all based in Northern B.C. and all of which would be very much affected by electrical rates and other utilities and service costs.
When we caught up with Jarvis today he mentions, “I feel like the ugly duckling that has suddenly turned into a beautiful swan.” He suggests that “people started to pay attention when we came out with a new resource calculation which shows contained nickel in sulphides of 1.6 billion pounds in the measured plus indicated category plus an additional 2.7 billion pounds in the inferred category.”
“That’s a lot of nickel” he suggests and he’s right!
But he suggests, “What kicked off this recent run in the stock was the announcement that LionOre is being taken over by Xstrata.”
“People are speculating about who is next.” He suggests that “the list is very short when you look at truly huge deposits.” And he wants to be very clear on this that “they have not been approached by anyone and to the best of his knowledge, nobody yet has them in their sights.” He suggests, “any kind of thinking like this might be premature.” He ends with this thought, “Give us a chance to finish drilling off this monster deposit and we’ll see where we sit then.” |
