Folks, important answers to some of the questions & comments posted on SI have been offered by Marum president Richard Boulay. I will relay them here, with permission, fyi. It's a lil lengthy, but well worth the read!:
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Hello Jesse,
Thanks for your questions and posting excerpts. Here are some responses which don't contain any disclosure sensitive items so feel free to pass them on.
There sure seems to be a lot of negative energy out there and a wee bit of misunderstanding (which I will take responsibility for). As to the negativity, hostility even, that happens in depressed markets when positive news fails to generate market gains for favourite stocks and people get impatient. The only part that frustrates me are the suggestions that everyone has to wear the same colour, do the same thing and, in this game, blindly flail away at anomalies just because they are there. Diversity makes a more interesting world and increases the chance for overall success.
First a contest: (A good question, a bit tricky, with an honest curve. No prize except the satisfaction of finding the answer. I will send you the answer tomorrow, unless you need more time). "What world scale and world class mining company, one whose name would be readily recognizable to most diamond stock investors and who, in the not too distant past commissioned an important diamond mine, is currently busy calculating pre-stripping and waste to ore ratios on a large Alberta open pit mine which might reach the final production go/no go decision stage in 1999? This company is consequently well positioned to assess stripping and mining costs for any Alberta diamond miner. (As is Marum, of course!)
As requested I hereby provide comments to some of the questions that have been asked on the thread.
"Does anyone know if Jeffrey Robinson (a director of Marum) ever posts on the Marum forums under an assumed name? Maybe trying to promote?" - Of course not. That would be unethical and possibly illegal. Jeff is currently living in Phoenix. He has never posted anything to an investment bulletin board and if he did it would be under his own name. Our policy is to issue news releases and to answer specific questions being mindful of disclosure restrictions. As far as we are concerned all of this material is "postable" as long as it is attributed to Marum. We have decided only to answer questions sent to us or pointed out to us by investors or observers, by email, rather than by direct post. This is more in keeping with the spirit of the Alberta Stock Exchange rules. So, send in your questions.
"Does Marum have the financial capacity to continue its exploration". The company is running lean like many other companies. We have raised exploration funds so far by stock issues and joint ventures on peripheral properties and will continue to do so. The company's principals are also in the fund raising business for Marum and for other companies in other industries and their intention is to always keep Marum funded to the extent needed to work effectively.
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[me: Rick Boulay is also a founding shareholder and director of Mount Real Corp., a financing company-- Website: mountreal.com ]
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"Marum does not trade well" - that's not what the traders tell us and the volume figures are easy to pull. We trade not too badly even if we have the odd "no trade" day in an awful market.
"Marum has been looking for diamonds for 10 years" - Current management took over the company five years ago. Marum was not engaged in diamond exploration before then. We have been active for diamonds in northern Alberta for about 3 years.
Re: Tree sampling..... I mentioned as a matter of interest that the AGS has asked us to collect a few branches for their research and somehow it has "become" our core exploration technology. No. There were some good questions about this.....
The new growth sprouts are burned and the ashes are analyzed for lots of elements. The "theory", NOT OURS, is that the ground over iron and magnesium-rich pipes will contain more metals that will be collected by the tree out of groundwater. It's logical, so why not lend a helping hand since there is no extra cost involved?????
Re: vegetation anomalies..... we think these are neat looking and there is a well known connection with other kimberlites pipe structures around the world. It's a low level, confirmation only criterion in our list of target selection items and it seems to infuriate some people that we consider this evidence. Somehow, they cannot place this tool in the proper perspective. Our job is to consider all possible mineralization indicators.
Re: Caribgold..... There is some confusion about their intentions and there has been no contractual event that allows us to make a news release. Also, there is no disclosure restriction on management discussing the matter since CaribGold is talking about it. We have been informally advised that for corporate reasons (they have decided to focus on gold) they are not participating or continuing any more diamond projects. They are quite happy to participate in the Chinchaga diamond play via their 1.25 million MMU shares and 1.25 million MMU warrants which last until the end of 1999. We have informed them that the condition that they spend an additional $225,000 by the end of 1998 can be fulfilled by putting the money in trust for exploration during 1999. This is to allow them the entire first year to make up their mind. It is our intention to fully brief them on all technical matters in mid-December. We expect, based on their informal comments, that their option will expire at midnight on December 31, 1998 and that the optioned 50% interest in the property will revert to Marum, bringing Marum's interest to a gross 75% and net 50% interest. We have discussed re-optioning the property with another group but will not finalize any arrangements while the current option is in full force and effect.
Lack of major JV Partners - Some commentators have expressed the opinion that the only way to explore is to joint venture with majors. That is an excellent exploration philosophy for many exploration situations and it conveys bragging rights that the property is good enough to "attract" a major. This should translate into a higher share price for the company, but the reality is that it does not work. In fact, the stocks often drift to trade where they were before the jv announcement, even if drilling is imminent or even if exploration success is encountered. There is a market perception of a loss of control of the project. Our philosophy is to acquire adjacent land and to joint venture on the peripheries, maintaining the core block as a 100% asset. When this play becomes better defined it will look completely different from the current perception and 100% land will command respect. It is not just a matter of poking holes into anomalies. These systems are far more complex and a lot bigger than currently envisioned. For example, the diamond-stuffed Namib beach deposits run for 1,500 km along the west coast of Africa. We have similar Cretaceous age deposits covering most of northwest Alberta. These targets are not necessarily explored best by joint venturing with a major company who might only concentrate on our excellent pipe targets because that's what the current armchair wisdom dictates.
"Marum does not have any kimberlites" - You can call a rock a kimberlite if it is a mica peridotite which contains pyroxene, phlogopite mica and olivine. We have encountered this rock on two targets. It's nice to also have accessory minerals such as pyrope, perovskite, ilmenite and ascent particles. We also have these in the same core samples. These are rocks which are extremely weathered so that most of the minerals are altered to clays thus depriving us of textural definition. Our reconnaissance drill program did allow us to drill a lot of targets at low cost but did not give us time to bring a heavy rig before breakup and so allow us to reach unaltered rocks at depth. We are well within our rights to use the K-word but choose not to because we feel uncomfortable not having unweathered and unaltered samples. We view this as being conservative and responsible.
Some comments indicate that we have not effectively explained our exploration strategy. It's this. "In a cratonic environment, maximize your land position over low gravity areas which are explorable and which contain evidence of the existence of pipe or remobilized sedimentary concentrations of diamonds." We are not dogmatic and do not insist that others follow the strategy, but it makes sense to us. In a cratonic area, low gravity probably means a deeper cratonic keel and if pipes exist they should have a better chance of being better mineralized with diamond. We control about 50% of the good gravity real estate on the Buffalo Head-Chinchaga complex. Ashton controls most of the remainder. Not very complicated. Also, the land has to be explorable and mineable. Alberta mines are defined by material management considerations. We have lots of experience financing and building western Canadian mines, in prior incarnations. Pre-stripping costs are critical. The key here is the word "PRE-STRIPPING". Our land acquistion strategy is based on 20 metres of till being excessive, 30 metres being too deep to mine for most deposits and 50 metres being too deep for all deposits. These are generous exploration cut-off depths, the actual real-world mining cut-offs, we suspect, will be lower (10, 20 and 30 metres?). These overburden depth cut-offs (not to be confused with waste to ore ratios, or end of mine life strip-offs where large volumes can be dumped into an old pit) are based on real historical numbers used to build real mines for major companies and refreshed by current contacts with operating mines and the ultra-efficient oilsand operators. We did not make them up. BTW, it's no accident that the original AEC/Ashton block was only 64 townships even if all of the province was available for staking at the time. There's no point in staking what you can't explore or mine. We don't presume to tell other people what to do and we certainly respect their right to disagree with and ignore our exploration strategy. We estimate that we have one of the largest land positions in northern Alberta, providing you exclude all of the land that we consider not explorable because of glacial overburden. Finally, our drilling work, our geochemistry work, including the recovery of diamond from sedimentary rock, validates the area as being prospective.
Notwithstanding different exploration strategies, we are happy to be in the play and look forward to exciting developments.
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*italics added by me |
