ORS, IPT
Orestone Mining aka ORS continues to maintain that their primary asset is still the Captain Au/Cu prospect in northern BC, but they have continued their pivot to the mining friendly province of Salto, Argentina. Recently they formed a JV on a copper prospect, and now they have announced they can earn up to 85% of a JV with local investors on Francisca, an oxide gold prospect. There has already been quite a lot of work on the property over the years, but ORS thinks they have a better handle on the geology. To that end they are designing a programme of mapping and sampling along with geophysics, followed by drilling.
To earn that 85% interest, ORS will have to pay $2.2M cash and spend another $2M on exploration over the next seven years. They think they can prove up an open pit mine with excellent metallurgy; if they are right, that purchase price looks pretty good.
Message 35022198
Last year Impact Silver aka IPT announced the discovery of a new vein set they called Kena not far from where current mining is going on in the Guadeloupe mine on their Royal Mines of Zacual propery in Mexico. Now we hear about more promising drill results from Kena Vein South, including 597 g/t Ag over 2.77m and 1,460 g/t Ag over 0.55m.
An access tunnel to allow mining of the Kena Vein is almost complete. Meanwhile, we wait for assays from surface sampling of the vein plus more drilling to come. The Zacualpan property contains hundreds of old mines and adits, so as long as they can continue to find new minable mineralization, they should be able to make some money based on higher PM prices.
I added some cheap shares of IPT to my holdings last year based on the thesis that it has high leverage to silver prices, but this hasn't worked out so far.
Message 35022244
Saville's plight of late illustrates the difficulty of forecasting anything in the current environment. Contrary to his expectations the PoG has already broken out to new ATHs. This is driven by fear of economic destruction and disruption due to you know who, e.g. holdings of gold in the Comex warehouse are rapidly approaching the levels only seen before during Covid. Likewise the ratio of the PoG to the Industrial Metals Index is approaching its Covid extreme. He expects both the PoG and gold stocks to consolidate recent gains, possibly including a correction, and reminds us that a general stock market crash would also crush PM stocks. That said, he also reminds us that the current level of speculation in junior gold stocks remains low. |
