And Eva, instead of blaming people, you should better do your DD.
Regarding CME, is THIS "pumping", is Voisey Bay pumping??? Get real.
biz.yahoo.com
And is THIS article written by me???
Inco's midnight shopping spree
Inco geologist Brian Randa sat down at his computer late one night last month and over the course of three hours, spent more than $400,000 to acquire 6,884 mineral claims in Labrador. It's a sign the hunt for new reserves has intensified.
By JACQUIE MCNISH
Monday, September 19, 2005 Page B1
TORONTO -- It was just after midnight on Aug. 24 when Inco Ltd. geologist Brian Randa sat down in front of his office computer in Sudbury, Ont., to log on to Newfoundland's on-line minerals claims staking service.
When he finished three hours later, Mr. Randa had spent more than $400,000 to acquire 6,884 mineral claims covering 172,000 hectares of land south of Inco's legendary Labrador Voisey's Bay nickel deposit.
The geologist's covert shopping spree, the largest claims purchase in Inco's history, was orchestrated by the company's senior executives to avert a staking rush in the area before it had finished the massive on-line purchase.
"There was quite the buzz in the office here, I can tell you, when we came in the next morning and realized what Inco had done," said James Hinchey, who oversees Newfoundland's claims records. The purchase accounted for nearly one third of the 19,000 claims staked so far this year in the province.
The midnight-claims caper is the latest example of the extraordinary steps mining companies are taking these days to hunt for new reserves to feed the insatiable appetite for steel and other metals in such red-hot economies as China and India.
Nickel prices have softened in recent months, but Inco executives and other market experts are projecting that demand for minerals such as nickel will continue to outstrip supplies for at least three more years. While experts continue to debate the outlook, a number of major mining companies are quietly expanding exploration budgets and dispatching geologists to remote corners of the earth to hunt for new discoveries.
"The excitement is back in exploration," said Logan Kruger, a vice-president with Inco. The mining firm expects to spend as much as $40-million (U.S.) this year hunting for ore in Australia, China and Canada, nearly double its budget of $24-million two years ago.
John Kaiser, a California-based author of an influential mining newsletter, said exploration has been mostly dormant since the late 1990s when slumping metal prices and scandals such as the Bre-X gold fraud spooked investors.
With major players like Inco increasing spending on the hunt for new resources, he said, "we may be heading toward the largest bull market in exploration that we have seen in a long, long time."
Although Inco is guarded about details, Labrador appears to offer the most exciting exploration potential for the company. Inco virtually shut down its exploration activities in the province after the company became mired in governmental, environmental and aboriginal negotiations.
With the discussions settled and nickel prices cresting record highs last year, Mr. Kruger said the company stepped up its geological assessments and drilling in an area west of the core Voisey's Bay deposit, which is known as the Reid Brook property.
Drills tests at Reid Brook are showing a massive ore deposit near the surface with nickel content in some drill cores as high as 3 per cent, he said.
"Suddenly Reid Brook is looking very exciting . . . the potential is much larger than we originally thought," Mr. Kruger said. The development prompted the company to reinterpret its geological models of the areas surrounding Voisey's Bay. When it did some reconnaissance studies of an area south of its existing claims, known as Garland Lake, he said, its geologists found the kind of mineralization "you would expect to find in a Voisey's Bay style of deposit."
He said the geologists' work convinced Inco's senior management to make the major claims purchase last month.
For junior mining companies with claims in Labrador, Inco's move is one of the few bright lights in a region that has largely been forgotten since the mining crash in the late 1990s.
"Our stock price has tripled," said Brenda Clark, president of mining junior Freeport Resources Inc., which has held on to claims near the Voisey's Bay discovery for 10 years. The claims were purchased in 1995 by Freeport founder Bill Clark, who has since passed away, but his daughter Brenda now runs the company from Vancouver.
"My father would be delighted," she said.
Freeport has traded for little more than a few pennies a share on the Toronto Stock Exchange in recent years, but the stock has been climbing in recent weeks, closing at 28 cents a share Friday.
Celtic Minerals Ltd., which also has claims in the area, this week purchased an additional 309 claims near Inco's new property.
"There is a lot of excitement about what Inco did," said Barry Green, Celtic's vice-president of exploration. |
