₪ David Pescod's Late Edition October 9, 2007
AURELIAN RESOURCES (T-ARU) $7.71 -0.19
It’s interesting, all the news that been coming out of Aurelian Resources over the last while and in the main, the good news was their huge increase in gold reserves to just shy of 14 million ounces. Isn’t it ironic that we did an article not too long ago featuring Aurelian and how big their Fruta del Norte (Condor) deposit might be? In the article that featured the Gabriel project in Romania and Crystallex’s project in Venezuela, two of the world’s biggest gold deposits that look like they might never be developed because of politics.
In Venezuela, it’s obvious and in Romania it’s because of work done by some of the busy body “greens” who don’t want to see jobs created in a very poor area of Romania.
Now we hear from Bloomberg’s, Reuter’s and other agencies that Ecuador plans to propose for oil companies a new type of contract in which the State would keep all the crude produced and pay firms a service fee to extract it, President Rafael Correa said on Saturday.
“On Monday, we will have a new type of contract for them as service companies” Correa said during his weekend radio show.
“We are not going to be cheated again”.
Oil and gas plays a rather large role in the economics of Ecuador as it produces almost 530,000 barrels a day, roughly half by State Oil Company Petroecuador and the rest by private companies. If Ecuador is in the nationalization game in a big way, the question remains, what happens to the gold producers and other mineral explorers in Ecuador?
Ecuador has definitely been finding a lot of mineral riches in the last few years, much of which is yet to be developed or to be producers.
To be long Aurelian or to be short? It depends on the politics because the goods appear to be there.
MIRAMAR MINING (T-MAE) $6.28 +1.09
Newmont Mining used to be one of the biggest, best operated of the gold companies around the world. It had a sterling reputation as one of the smartest in the precious metals game.
Over the last few years though, with management changes, much of the lustre has left Newmont and all of a sudden a few weeks ago, they announced that they were having trouble replacing their gold reserves. So what do you do when you have trouble with that? Well, you buy someone else.
Today, Newmont announces that they are buying out Miramar Mining for $6.25 a share and today we notice huge volumes and I suspect there are a few happy shareholders. One wonders now, if Newmont is still on the prowl for maybe another company or two and who they might be? The take-over game comes back to life.
CORRIDOR RESOURCES (T-CDH) $10.00 +0.80
PETROWORTH RES. (PTWR) $2.61 +0.31
We’ve always wondered about management of Corridor’s fixation with Prince Edward Island and the time and money they’ve spent drilling there. Particularly over the last while, when it looks like they have something absolutely spectacular—the McCully in New Brunswick and a deep target that appeals to a persons greed and all this at a time when most natural gas companies are at levels you’d think had a three for one sale.
But we were in PEI for much of the last two weeks due to a death in the family and took some time out to drive by Harmony Junction, PEI to see where Corridor and PetroWorth are currently drilling. No flares, excitement on Saturday when we drove by but, ironically today, PetroWorth and Corridor give an update on the new Harmony #1 well. This well was spudded on September 14th and reached total measured depth of 3403 metres on October 6th according to the news announcement.
The well was drilled primarily to test carboniferous age clastics of the Bradelle formation. The announcement suggests, “several significant gas shows were reported in the Bradelle at depths ranging from 2790 metres to total depth of 3403 metres.”
They add, “The proposed total depth of 3200 metres was extended 203 metres because of encouraging gas shows in the deep section. The well has been logged and sidewall cores have been cut in order to thoroughly evaluate reservoir characteristics.” They add that “a full evaluation of the logs and cores may take several weeks to complete.”
While this is actually rather positive, but still doesn’t tell you whether it is economic at all and we would point out as we’ve mentioned many times that this is in PEI where there is absolutely zero infrastructure for natural gas and even if they do find something that’s economic, it would take a long, long, long time to build pipes or plants that would have any need at all for natural gas.
Did we mention a really long time?...
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