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Gold/Mining/Energy : Canmine resources -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Marshhawk who wrote (2297)	1/28/2000 9:38:00 AM
From: Aurum	Respond to of 2769

Hi Marshhawk, you won't find much in HotCopper regarding Preston and Bulong. A few weeks ago a couple of stock broker brothers posted some scathing commentary concerning Bulong on the HotCopper site. Somebody took offence, and the matter is now in the courts. I have noticed that there is very little in HC now regarding any of the laterite projects (and there are more projects than just the three "operating" plants in WA). Digressing a bit, one of the projects is a laterite with associated free platinum, possibly 1+ million ounces. Given the problems with platinum supply this project might get a bit of attention. There is another laterite project in WA that also has associated platinum metals, but in this case the PGEs can be extracted by hydrometallurgy (in cyanide solution like gold) - a decidedly unusual situation. Regarding the cyclone, it is fairly normal. They usually don't travel south very far. There was a rumour a week ago that Anglo would be happy to scrap the Murrin Murrin plant, and start afresh. And rumour that the Murrin Murrin plant was a bodgie job. I have been following the platinum and palladium markets with interest because I had anticipated that laterite production would eventually result in over supply of nickel (and particularly cobalt), which would force some of the higher cost sulphide ore producers to close or cut back. This would mean that platinum group metal (PGE's) production would decrease because more than 50% of PGE production comes as a by-product of sulphide nickel processing. There are literally dozens of laterite projects that could start up if the West Australian project ever iron out their problems. I am particularly interested in rhodium - in July 1990 ago rhodium climbed to US$7,000 per ounce! I still don't know why it did this. At the time I suspected that the rhodium was being used in new semi-conductor devices, or some similar hi-tech application. Just something to bear in mind.