Hello Peter
This past Thursday evening, the Royal Bank put on an investments night here in Yellowknife. He wasn't on the list, but a source flagged me a few days earlier and told me Dr. Jennings would be there. Sure enough, he was, (with his better half), and he had the patience to let me ply him with questions for more than an hour.
I thought I had died and gone to heaven!
To top it off, he was the closing speaker, and put on a slide presentation with photos of the latest progress at Klipspringer, mining at the aluvial concessions in Angola, the Camafuca pipe, an obviously circular jungle covered feature he indicated was on one of their upriver Angolan concessions and which he was reasonably confident was the source pipe to those $900/carat stones dredged down river, and photos of the Ground Mag graphs overlain on maps of both their McKay Lake/Back Lake properties and their Lac de Gras properties and which prominently featured about 20 beautifully blue circular magnetic bullseyes like buck shot spray on the screen.
He also hinted that they were cautiously optimistic that they had more pipes than previously announced on both their Klipspringer, Angolan and Zambian concessions (I believe he said). The Zambian one he described with obvious relish even unwitingly licking his lips when he spoke about it.
In discussing all those NWT mag lows I mentioned above, he did not say targets, and only fleetingly referred to them as mag lows. He called each of them pipes with what I would characterise as unrepressed confidence.
In the photographs he had with him were the two large "pinks" Southernera's partners (Sphere Trading) found on their Angolan aluvial concession last year. Of one of the stones, both the original approx. 80 carat rough and the cut and polished flawless rose petal 28 carat finished stone were pictured. Sphere apparently sold the rough for about $8 million and when cut and polished the finished stone was apparently sold to the Sultan Of Brunei for about $22 million (give or take). Chris pointed out that Argyl currently produces the best and most abundent "pinks" of any active mine. Out of their whole production last year, they had two of which 7.28 carats was the largest. Sphere produced two an 80 and a 50 carat (I believe he said) in ten weeks.
One of the onlookers asked Chris why some of the stones had such a frosty patina to their surface. Chris answered they weren't exactly sure, but they think it was because there were so many stones in the "glory hole" in which it was dredged, that they were actually rubbing on one another giving the frosty surface! It was difficult to hear clearly at times, but I believe he said that Sphere took 100,000 carats out of that one "glory hole" last year!
Southernera gets 10% starting this year of what is recovered from the existing river channel, and 35% of recoveries from adjacent flood plains and old river channels.
What Chris showed put pictures to what was described in the RBC Dominion/SMK analysis we discussed last week and much MUCH more besides.
Barring helicopter accidents and civil unrest, I may have been conservative suggesting $500/share!
He flew out to what was described as the Mun Lake pipes site (McKay Lake/Back Lake Friday morning and is expected back this evening.
Watch for initial pipe(s) news next week as the drill has been turning for seven days now. I think the rush will be on to get all the pipes drilled quickly as the weather is warming quite fast this year. Some of the drill targets (pipes) are well out in lakes so the ice is all they've got to drill from and its rotting faster than usual. I expect only one core per pipe with the best revisited later. Info will probably be released intermitently for most of the summer as all the various original cores and subsequest cores are drilled, processed drilled again and processed again.
Chris' wife Jannine by the way is a charming lady and I warmed to her immediatly. It really was a terrific evening.
Hope this was of interest
Regards |
