I am sure you can see you have these 2 stocks mixed up. Easily done.
--------------------------- if anyone still visits this board (or there's another one i should go to) please check this out:
But that is the case at junior nickel explorer Sirius Resources (ASX: SIR) after last week's appointment to its board of industry veteran Terry Grammer.
Grammer was joint winner of the award in 2000 with Tony Rovira for discovering the high-grade Cosmos nickel deposit. He was also one of the driving forces behind the successful mid-tier nickel miner Western Areas.
He's in good company at Sirius, joining managing director Mark Bennett, who took out the award for discovering LionOre's Thunderbox gold deposit and Waterloo nickel deposit, and major shareholder Mark Creasy, who picked it up for Yandal belt gold discoveries.
Sirius was floated off last year to hold and advance the nickel exploration assets of Creasy and Apex Minerals.
It recently began a nickel drilling program at its Lawlers joint venture, where it holds the nickel rights on two joint ventures with Barrick on ground surrounding the Lawlers goldmine.
Later this year, it plans to boost drilling at the Polar Bear project in the Widgiemooltha area, which is prospective for nickel sulphides and gold.
It won't take much in the way of exploration hits to get the share price moving. It closed on Friday at all of 0.7¢ a share.
* PURE SPECULATION: Robin Bromby * From: The Australian * June 28, 2010 12:00AM
WE usually try to avoid jargon, but there's no getting around "metacommodity".
That's a commodity formed by, or about, other commodities. Fertiliser is just such a commodity related to potash and phosphate. They are all joined at the hip when it comes to issues of price, demand and supply.
Pure Speculation has harped on about those two fertiliser feedstocks, so it's nice to read that Fortis Bank Nederland and London-based Virtual Metals have declared that fertiliser is a leading candidate for the title of the 21st century's metacommodity.
One of the main reasons, as we have pointed out on several occasions, is that -- as the report puts it -- "on current trends the world faces a serious arable land crunch". The Food & Agricultural Organisation forecasts that food production will have to grow by 70 per cent between now and 2050 to support the expected world population of 9.1 billion.
With fertiliser at present used in 60 per cent of world food production, it is inevitable that fertiliser use will grow, especially with more land disappearing under urban growth.
Local investors initially got enthusiastic about potash and phosphate a few years back. Potash rose from $US150 a tonne to $US1000/t in 2008, but these markets collapsed along with everything else when the global financial crisis hit.
But here's the key point: the report shows that, while fertiliser prices fell substantially, they did not plunge to levels seen before 2005, and certainly nowhere near prices in preceding decades.
Fortis Bank points out that potash is trading around $US350/t, $US200 above where it started in the run-up to the commodity spike of 2008. Diammonium phosphate is $US370/t now compared with $US232/t before the 2007-08 boom run.
FAO forecasts for the 2008-13 period show that East Asia will account for 32 per cent of extra consumption of fertiliser and South Asia another 22 per cent of growth.
In the potash market, much will depend on whether BHP Billiton (BHP) goes ahead with its $US10bn ($11.5bn) project in Canada. This would be the world's biggest potash mine and would have considerable impact on the supply-demand situation.
Not that this is deterring those potash explorers at the junior end of the market.
One company flying well under the radar has been Elemental Minerals (ELM), which owns the Sintoukola potash project in Republic of Congo, the country of 4.1 million which was the scene in the past week of two tragic accidents -- the death in a plane crash of the Australian mining executives and then a dreadful train smash (with the Brazzaville government now blaming a drunk train driver).
Sintoukola's potash was first known in the 1960s when a company drilling for oil found the mineral. ELM is targeting up to 300 million tonnes of the high-grade sylvinite mineralisation but four of the planned 16 holes will be drilled deeper to assess whether beneath the main target there are economic quantities of carnallite, which a is less valuable potash source but would add to the appeal of the mine project.
The camp will be completed this week and two rigs will be moved in to start work. ELM sees Brazil across the Atlantic as its potential market. Desktop modelling has the company initially producing 600,000 tonnes a year, moving to 1.2mtpa.
But with a market capitalisation of $46 million it is still a minnow by industry standards. Compare that with Calgary-based Agrium, which produces phosphate and nitrogen as well as potash and which is capitalised at $C8bn ($8.8bn).
On the other side of Africa, South Boulder Mines (STB) has begun diamond drilling at its "potentially world class" (their words) Colluli project in Eritrea, a country with a history of potash mining from Italian colonial times. A Canadian company is also drilling in the same basin and has reported grades of up to 34. 8 per cent.
Doolgunna history
FURTHER to our report last week on all the activity around Doolgunna following the big 2009 DeGrussa copper-gold discovery by Sandfire Resources (SFR), an alert reader reminds us that part of this area was, back in the 1990s, held by Troy Resources (TRY) in joint venture with another then listed junior. And before that, it been explored by one of Joseph Gutnick's companies as an extension of activities at the nearby Plutonic mine. No one picked up the DeGrussa bonanza until SFR managed to drill in the right place.
Peak Resources (PEK) also had ground there but relinquished it during the GFC as one of the tough decisions it had to make at the time, and that prospect is now part of the area held by Talisman Mining (TLM).
They're philosophical about it at Peak, but the company does still hold the Three Rivers project, 20km from Sandfire's find.
Peak's main focus is now on Tanzania. It has the Nagualla project, which was originally acquired for phosphate.
While that mineral is still attractive, it's the presence of rare earths niobium and tantalum that has the company excited. And there have also been some encouraging drill results from Peak's gold project in the Lake Victoria goldfield.
And a postscript to our mention of not being able to get any response from another Doolgunna explorer, Astro Resources (ARO). Apparently the key player is overseas but an announcement will be forthcoming. One problem has been the scarcity of consultant geologists to process data collected so far.
A long-term thing
SHARES in Anglo Australian Resources (AAR) rose 45 per cent to 4.5c on Wednesday on news that there were more high-grade copper-zinc intersections from its Koongie project 25km from Halls Creek in the Kimberley region. More than 100 million shares changed hands compared with 395,000 on the previous day.
The news certainly seemed impressive, including one assay at the Sandiego deposit being 71m long at 5.04 per cent copper, 7.69 per cent zinc, 68 grams/tonne silver and 0.43g/t gold. The company is promising a more comprehensive drilling report in July.
But just before we get too excited, it is worth pointing out that your correspondent's hair has gone grey in the years since he first reported on the Sandiego deposit at Koongie Park.
Oh, yes, here's one from this newspaper's edition of July 8, 1996: "Anglo Australian Resources NL and Lachlan Resources NL sent excitement through the base metals market with a report of high-grade intersections on their Koongie Park property."
It went on to report that a hole at Sandiego had returned 33 per cent zinc over 20.9m.
Lachlan was taken over in 2003 and pulled out of the project, but by 2006 we were on the job again, reporting that Koongie had been taken off the backburner due to rising metal prices.
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