It's hard to be a gold bug or grass roots mining stock buff and not have an interest in buried treasures or lost gold mines. I think that is what makes prospecting exciting. In a lot of cases it's not the treasure that you hope find but all the excitement that goes into the actual searching for the treasure. I tend to think that with the true prospector it's more the adventure than it is the reward. The reward at the end if found, will just be used to help to fund the next lost treaure search.
I'm always searching out small mining plays that could end up having the potential of a worthy deposit and once in awhile you stumble onto some companies that are doing some extra ordinary things. Take Aurania Resources Ltd ARU for instance. Here is a company that is what could be called the true prospecting explorer. This company is actually looking for ancient lost cities of gold in Ecuador. The Lost Cities or known as the Cutucu Project, is located in the Jurassic Metallogenic Belt in the eastern foothills of the Andes mountain range of southeastern Ecuador. Of course on their website they state that the Lost Cities Project is not a treasure hunt but rather the workings of a "credentialed and respected university Professor and two PhD geologists with world class discoveries in Ecuador already under their belts."
The company CEO is Keith Barron. In 2001 he privately co-founded Ecuador gold explorer Aurelian Resources Inc., which was listed on the TSX-V in 2003 and found the Fruta del Norte gold discovery in 2006. That company was bought by Kinross Gold in 2008 for $1.2 billion. Today he is active with Aurania doing research and exploration for two lost cities known as Logrono de los Caballeros and Sevilla del Oro. It had been documented by old Spanish documents that there were seven rich cities of gold. Five of these cities have been found. The last city to be found was found by hunters in the jungle in 1981. It was written that the had been abandoned in 1603 after an epidemic killed most of the native workers. The discovery of this old city in 1981 let ot a gold rush where approximately 25,000 miners started back mining the area. Within a few months at the site of the this mine there were about 75 different operations. This lost city produced 2.7 million ounces of gold on the record between 1981-2000 an no one knows how much was sold into the black market.
These days the company is active with Landsat imagery study designed to determine the tectonic framework of the Cordillera de Cutucu through the identification of the interplay between faults and folds. Also airborne magnetic and radiometric survey by helicopter in order to identify porphyry systems through the detection of the magnetic core and coincident potassic alteration. The company also intends to do stream sediment sampling campaign to cover the main river basins within the permit area.
On March 15. 2018 the company issued a news release stating that the company had found a potential porphyry system at Cutucu. In the press release, Aurania's president, Dr. Richard Spencer, commented: "We are using the same stream sediment sampling technique in our Lost Cities -- Cutucu project that was instrumental in the mid-1990s discovery of large porphyry copper and copper-gold deposits located just a few tens of kilometres south of our property boundary. Aurania's airborne magnetometer survey detected a cluster of magnetic features that we believe are the buried magnetic cores of porphyries, and our exploration team recently discovered surface rock exposures of quartz-sericite-pyrite which represents an alteration shell that would typically enclose porphyry-style mineralization. This type of alteration further suggests that the target lies at a reasonably shallow depth. Since numerous similar magnetic features have been identified by the geophysical survey elsewhere across the project, we are now more confident of the potential for these to be due to porphyry bodies as well."
Aurania has 28 million shares with a 52 week trading range of $1.50 low and a $7.60 high.
If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to share. When seeking out mining stocks always use Due Diligence and see our Disclaimer and be sure to sign up for our free news letter located on the right hand side of this page.
How much gold would you have if you had all the gold that’s ever been mined? Not much. With all the gold ever mined you’d be able to make a cube of solid gold with 60-foot sides. There just isn’t that much gold in the world, and it’s getting harder and harder to find it. In fact, our love of electronic / digital devices maybe part of the problem.
In a report from the Wall Street Journal, it was stated that the world is not far away from exhausting the world’s gold supply if gold mining continues at the current pace. How could we be running out of gold? It’s simple. As gold boomed in the 90s and 00s, the easy-to-access deposits were sapped of their supplies. Now, the gold being discovered is way deeper into the Earth, which means that discovering it takes a lot more work before it can be extracted.
The BBC stated, all the gold mined since the beginning of time has been recycled: A piece of gold mined by the Romans may have been melted down into a gold bar in the 1800s, say, and may have eventually made its way into a consumer product like a gold watch. Those devices, computers and electronics that require only minute amounts of gold to function are changing that gold reuse pattern for the first time in history. Because so little gold is used in this technology, it is not cost effective to recycle it. So, while gold, like air, has remained a static resource on Earth, that’s no longer true. Our gold resources will continue to deplete, one iPhone at a time, one tablet at a time.
Large mining companies are not in the exploraton business. They are producers and not explorers. Junior mining companies on the other hand are the boots on the ground out exploring ever nook and cranny on the planet looking for the next big find and finding that next junior to invest in to take advantage of this depletion scenario is not always so easy. Open-pit or underground gold mines can command high premium prices when bought out buy a senior or major mining company, but it’s hard to find those buy out opportunities.
This year major gold producer Endeavor Gold bought out 100 % of the junior developer Avnil Resources for their gold mine in Mali for $122M, which was at a 48% premium, the reason Endeavor bought this junior was to further strengthen its high-quality project pipeline. Strengthening the pipeline is a real concern for all major gold producers because as they mine and extract gold from their existing gold mines they are constantly depleting their reserves of gold and need to replenish them for future growth, revenue and production.
When it comes to discovering new gold deposits, the low-hanging fruit has likely already been picked. Gone are the days when someone could stumble upon an exposed hunk of gold at the bottom of a riverbed, as James Marshall did in 1848, setting off the California Gold Rush. Every year, the pursuit of gold becomes increasingly more challenging not to mention more expensive requiring ever more sophisticated tools and technology, including 3D seismic imaging, direction drilling and airborne gravimetry. Major gold producers are increasingly buying out junior gold miners that have a gold deposit of merit. Both Guyana Goldstrike and Nexus Gold Corp. are on the verge of the the next big find. Guyana Goldstrike has it’s 880,000 ounce Marudi Mountain project in Guyana and Nexus Gold has a drilling campain in Burkino Faso.
Guyana Goldstrike’s Marudi Gold project could be the next buy out target for a major or senior producer. In Guyana, Cambior which has the operating Omai Gold mine, there is also senior gold producer Guyana Goldfields with their Aurora mine. Guyana Goldfields has over $75M in cash and could be watching the development of Guyana Goldstrike’s Marudi Gold project.
Nexus Gold’s Bouboulou property borders Roxgold’s property. Endeavor Mining is active in Burkina Faso and is watching drill results very close of any juniors in the area. Winter drilling returned 26.69 g/t gold over 4.85 metres (including 8.50 g/t gold over 0.62 metre, and 120.00 g/t gold over 1.03 metres). Hole NGL-17-DD-006 returned 4.00 g/t gold over 6.20 metres (including 20.50 g/t gold over 1.00 metre). NGL-17-DD-009 returned 2.61 g/t gold over 4.00 metres (including 5.92 g/t gold over 1.00 metre), and NGL-17-DD-003 returned 1.80 g/t gold over 5.10 metres (including 6.14 g/t gold over 1.10 metres).
If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to share. When seeking out mining stocks always use Due Diligence and see Our Disclaimer and be sure to sign up for our free news letter located on the right hand side of this page.
Is The Gold Market And Gold Price Really Manipulated? Anyone who follows the gold market these days is probably questioning why the price of gold is still so low. No sooner does it start a bit of climb and “whack” down it goes. There are always lots of conspiracy theories out there about manipulation by bullion banks and big money people but trying to find out the real truth on why gold is acting the way it is, one needs to get a bit of an inside perspective.As someone who gold mines and runs this website, I have to be some sort of a gold bug. If I was a farmer I would love to see high grain prices so being a gold miner it is in my best interest to see high gold prices and of course lower input costs like fuel. Anyhow, this video just came out this week, November 10 I think, between Greg Hunter and Craig Hemke. Craig who is a wall street veteran and trader knows the inside story and has some real interesting facts about why gold is acting the way it is. Craig also run a metals website. Once you watch this video though you just may come away with a totally different perpective on how the gold market works and the bit about conspiracy theories. I don’t usually recommend vidoes but this one for me was a real eye opener. I hope you as readers find it the same.
If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to share. When seeking out mining stocks alsways use Due Diligence and see our Disclaimer and be sure to sign up for our free news letter located on the right hand side of this page.
There has been a lot of talk and chatter on the net the last few weeks in the silver camp about the price of silver being primed to take off. There has been some pretty interesting articles in the last little while that tell you the reasons why silver is heading higher. Of course there is also a bear camp that has all the stats that can show all the reasons why silver won’t go up any time soon also. But for conversations sake we will stick with the silver bull camp and look at the reasons why it is about to explode.
The first article I read was quite interesting as it explains that there is only a certain amount of value in the worlds economy and its all about how that value is invested. The author uses a method called fractals to measure and analyse everything using time and valuation. With this data the author goes onto say that the value of equities like big stocks have gotten to an over valued point. Realestate in most cases is over valued. Almost every tangible item of value is overvalued at the present time except oil, precious and base metals. Oil might be undervalued but as he explains there is just too many factors that could push oil down again. Factors like Iran or Saudia that could dump millions if not billions of barrels of oil out on whim driving the prices down just to elimenate competition
.
With base metals there is also too much uncertainty in the world economy as far as expansion goes so things like copper or base metals are questionable. All this leads to the precious metals like gold and silver. The reasoning for silver is because it is the cheapest out there. Silver is like picking a penny stock. It’s only human to pick through and look for the bargains. Our thinking tends to tell us that if we buy a 2 cent stock, we only need a 2 cent rise to 4 cents to double our money. So it is the same mentality that would say that silver being only $15-$16 per oz that it only needs to go to $30-$32 for me to double my money. Whereas with gold it would need to break a new high and need to get beyond $2,400 an oz for a double.
Another person Bo Polny who uses cycles and time to analyse trends and commodities is basically saying the same thing. His call is for triple digit silver this year in 2016. Of course we read lots of articles stating that certain banks have hoarded all the physical silver there is. This is the explaination that a lot of silver stackers use pointing to the fact that bothgovernment and private mints have run out of physical silver for minting but yet the paper silver price remains the same or even goes down. Of course the entire gold or silver market is the smallest markets on the planet money wise so it would not take much for any one nation or even a large corporation to actually take over the complete market if they could actually get their hands on all the material.
All the gold and silver that is traded, is just paper. There is something like 100 oz of paper silver or gold for every physical oz of metal so the day may come when some unlucky people find that silver they supposedly own is not worth the PAPER it is written on. Either way going by these writers this past week it should be an interesting time coming up if any of this stuff actually transpires. I’ve read lots of these theories over the years and I have developed an “I’ll wait and see” attitude. But as a gold and silver bug I have always said that owning a bit of either is a great way to hold some money as a saving. And while I’m talking silver here, make sure you sign up for my newsletter. The form is on the top right hand side of this page and your email goes into the draw for a 1/4 oz silver coin.
If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to share. When seeking out mining stocks alsways use Due Diligence and see our Disclaimer and be sure to sign up for our free news letter located on the right hand side of this page.
Is Lithium The Next Big Play?
We are going to look at lithium but first a bit of info about the Ritchie Bros. auction this week. The results are in for the two parcels of mining claims that we had advertised here that were to be sold by Ritchie Bros. Auctions. The two groupings of claims sold on April 27. The first grouping of claims which was 51 claims on 13 Mile Creek sold for $127,500 CAD. The second grouping of claims on the 60 Mile consisted of 53 claims and sold for $106,000 CAD.
One has to keep in mind that these claims were river access only meaning that all equipment would need to be either barged in or wait until winter when the ground is froze enough to get equipment in. What this does show though is that there are buyers who are interested in buying mining properties.
With gold seeming to rally this last little while there has been a renewed interest in mining claims. I am getting emails from various vendors thinking about getting out of mining or selling portions of their mining properties. Some who had expressed interest in selling have taken a “wait and see” attitude as they feel the gold price will continue to go up there by making their properties tha much more valueable.
Talking to various mining people along with marketing people, there is getting to be more money available for mining and exploration pprojects. In the public arena, private placements are finding investors and in some cases depending on the project, placements are getting over suscribed. This sure beats the ways things were even 6 months ago. Last year for instance was almost a no show for raising money and a lot of junior mining company types were ready to throw in the towel. That being said I am sure that there still is a lot of companies that are working marginal ground and have little investor awareness that probably wish they could call it quits.
In the last month or so there has been a rush for some of smaller companies to get into the lithium plays. It seems everyday there is some news release that says this company or that comapny has aquired ground in some area somewhere that is located close to where someone else has found some interesting ground with lithium. I get asked what I think about about and I am not sure what to say. First and foremost I know nothing about lithiumor than it goes into batteries. The public interest kind of reminds me of the NWT diamond rush about 25 years ago or the Voisy’s Bay rush 20 years ago. One company strikes it big and everyone rushes in hoping to find something big. I think it started with Lithium X and also Nemaska Lithium Inc.
Looking above at the two charts I don’t have tell you that being a gold bug can sometimes be detrimental to your potential winnings in mining stocks. Had I bought into one of these lithium plays I would be a lot better off money wise than holding gold stocks. The one problem I do have with these lithium plays is how long will they be in the spot light? It was only a couple of years ago when a lot of these junior miners were all bummed out and decided to get into the marijuana thing. There were several compnies putting out news that they were no longer involved in mining but were signing deals to get into pot. That scenario played well for maybe a few but aside from those select companies who were maybe first in the game, the rest never did anything. Other than getting the stock to pop for a few sessions, most investors ended up being bag holders of dead stock. If you were late to the party you know what I mean.
Today, April 28 2106 and gold is at a high for the year as is silver. Let hope this trend continues and never mind the summer doldrums. News any day in regards to New Carolin Gold and their 3D modeling followed by drilling. There will be lots of action this summer for that play for sure.
If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to share. When seeking out mining stocks alsways use Due Diligence and see our Disclaimer and be sure to sign up for our free news letter located on the right hand side of this page.
ween Christmas and New Years it really looked good for the metals. I thought we would be in full tilt rally mode the first of the year. With all what’s happening in the USA in regards to politics or shall I say the “uncertainty” of politics, you would really think gold would be sky high way over that $2,000 price that so many were predicting. But not so. Last week it after a slight decline the price got smashed down $80 in one day and then proceeded to sell off even more. Since then it has rebounded and is holding well in the mid $1,800 range.
Except for these last few days of a rally, silver was not doing much better. Platinum and palladium also taking a hit. Platinum and palladium also taking a hit. Even copper and nickel rolled over this past week. Nickel’s actually been on a real tear the last few months as seen in the chart below and stocks like Sherrit TSX-S let you know by hitting 52 week highs.
Lithium stocks however have put on a real shine this year. Stocks like Neo Lithium TSX-V: NLC and America Lithium TSX-V: LI have also been trending up well. Neo Lithium hit new all time highs this past week as well as Cypress Developments TSX-V: CYP hitting new highs. These stocks all have lithium properties in Nevada there is quite a bit of specualtion that maybe one of the companies will see a potential deal with someone like Tesla which wants to be able to produce batteries in Nevada. These lithium stocks will the ones to watch this year especially as the demand for lithium increases.
Getting back to gold and why it hasn’t performed as well as expected, there is a lot of news out regarding a lot of private and public funds that held gold are now seeing that gold being sold and the money then going into Bitcoin. Bitcoin, the digital currency has gone from a low of $5,000 in March to over $40,000 this past week. Infact the price rallied $20,000 just this month of January alone setting a new all time high of $40,880
This buying spree whether it be speculation or otherwise has created the demand rush for a fast return on equity in the markets. Others see Bitcoin as a new gold that is going to revolutionize the worlds financial markets on the way money is traded and handled. Being a global currency that is de-centralized, in other words, no country has control, some investors see Bitcoin as the ulitmate store of wealth because it is all digital and can be transferred anywhere in the world with a click on a laptop or smart phone. Whether this will happens still remains to be seen.
Of course there are still the gold bugs who under no circumstances will change their mindset on gold as being the safe haven, the hold it in your hand safe haven that has been around for thousands of years.
If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to share. When seeking out mining stocks always use Due Diligence and see our Disclaimr
er and be sure to sign up for our free news letter located on the right hand side of this page.
Battery metals like lithium and cobalt as well as graphite and vanadium are vital to the lithium-ion batteries used to power electric autos, with need expected to increase in the coming years. As the green power revolution continues to unfold, car makers are becoming more concerned with the requirement to protect these raw materials in order to complete their ambitious electrification objectives.
Everyone has hear about lithium and a lot of juniors jumped onto the lithium bandwagon last year. Just a quick look at their stock prices will tell you that that buying into the rage last year wasn’t such a great idea. Some of the Nevada juniors like Cypress Minerals TSX;V-CYP, Neo lithium TSX:V-NLC have held up OK but the rest it seems have lost a lot of value.
One of the lesser followed commodities in batteries is Vanadium. The past couple of years in battery developement have actually brought renewed rate of interest in vanadium. Experts anticipate that the battery metal, which is made use of mainly as an alloy in steel manufacturing, will certainly see an uptick in demand thanks to its enhanced use in the power storage space industry.
The meteoric rise of the silvery-gray steel has stimulated the passion of experts and capitalists who see the value in a battery steel that is safer, longer-lasting as well as a lot more durable than lithium.
There’s not a lot of vanadium miners out there to chose from. Most juniors will come across vanadium as a by product from another commodity they may be mining. However there are a few that focus on exploring for vanadium. One such company is Vanadium One TSX-V: VONE Vanadium One has the Mont Sorcier Iron ore property hosts a large high quality Iron resource with significant and extractable Vanadium. The Mont Sorcier Iron-Vanadium deposit is located just 18 km outside of Chibougamau
The deposit which is a higher grade iron ore deposit consists of a North and South deposit and with a low Titanium content, allowing for simple extraction of the Vanadium metal by a blast furnace. Mont Sorcier boasts an impressive 113.5 Mt Indicated and 520.6 Mt Inferred with the potential for expansion along strike, where the deposit’s magnetic anomaly continues, and at depth. Over 7,000 m of drilling at 32 holes by Vanadium One Iron in both the North and South Zone between July 2017 and December 2018 have revealed wide downhole iron ore intersections as long as 214 meters.
The company this year entered into a long-term arrangement with a wholly owned subsidiary of mining giant Glencore, to support the development of the Mont Sorcier Iron and Vanadium project. The parties have entered into a financing agreement and a separate concentrate offtake agreement to support the ongoing development and the eventual construction and production of the Mont Sorcier iron and vanadium project.
In early June the company announce they had raised 6.9 million dollars in May and had commenced a drill program at Mont Sorcier. This would be in fill drilling with a goal to upgrade sufficient inferred Mineral Resources to the Measured and Indicated Categories to support at least a 20-year mine life. This will be part of a feasibility study to begin later this year or early 2022.
A couple of other companies that are in the exploration and extraction of vanadium are Energy Fuels TSX: EFR and Largo Resources TSX: LGO. Energy Fuels is big in uranium. Energy Fuels is also a major U.S. producer of vanadium and an emerging player in the commercial rare earth business in the USA while Largo has a high grade vanadium deposit at the Maracas Menchen Mine located in Brazil.
If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to share. When seeking out mining stocks always use Due Diligence and see our Disclaimer and be sure to sign up for our free news letter located on the right hand side of this page.
Disclosure: The author of this article does not own any shares in any of the above mentioned companies at the time of writing
Gold prospecting. When ever we think about the gold prospector we envision the old bearded man with the mule loaded with supplies. A life of living in the mountains spending their days searching for small traces of gold that one day might become a discovery. Well in a lot of ways nothing has really changed except maybe the mule has been traded in for an ATV and the days of searching are now done in hours instead of days. Welcome to the new age of mineral prospecting! Cameras, drones, laptops and smart phones.
Prospecting use to be tough work. Well actually it still is. The prospector still has to put up with living out of the his pick up truck or wall tent for maybe weeks at a time. Eating out of tin cans and bathing in ice cold creeks. Most prospecting is done in areas out in the middle of nowhere and there is usually nothing out there but wild weather, lots of bugs and depending what part of the world your in, other creatures that bite or maybe even kill. So in a lot ways nothing really has changed.
However the way we actually search now has changed dramatically with the use of drones. Having the advantage of seeing from the air, modern day prospecting has taken on a huge change. Small personal drones can be purchased for a few thousand dollars and be equipt with top notch video cameras. A fully charged drone can fly out for up to 30 minutes and depending on what model of drone, can travel a few miles away all the while being watched on a small screen of your smart phone. Flying over ravines and embankments means no more unnessary hikes into dangerous spots. Flying over creeks or rock faces or even above trees looking downward give the prospector a birds eye view of whats below. Picking out rock outcrops and boulder placements is now possible without having to “stumble” on them.
Small cameras mounted on the drones take live video of what below. Camera can be remotely controlled by the operator as he watches in real time. All this recorded information can then be downloaded onto mapping software with GPS coordinates and laid out in a map for the prospector. That rock out crop you saw on the video? It’s over there about 130 yard away. No more hunting through the bush trying to find something you saw in a helicoptor. Just plug all the drone data into your personal GPS and hike and take a look. Days of hiking and looking has been cut down to a tenth of the time. After all the most time spent prospecting is search for that illusive target.
For covering an area throughly, you can set up a grid pattern on software and the drone will fly in a grid pattern by itself and video the entire ground work below. This video can then be laid out into other mapping softwares to give the prospectors a full arial landscape. GPS meaures everything down the inch.https://web.archive.org/web/20220926001839if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/eYotEDFOcdI?rel=0
A lot of people will wonder about the cost of exploring this way. For the most part prospecting with drones is cheap namely because electronic is cheap. When time cost is factored in a drone can pay for itself in a matter of days. You can buy a fairly good performing drone for about around $2000. That would come with a good hi-def video camera. The most common drones are also known as quad-copters having 4 rotors. Moving up the latter to more expensive drones like the be brand you can expect to several thousand dollars.
High tech prospecting is the way of the future however you will still need the hammer, the pick and the pans and wall tent so don’t get rid of that mule just yet.
If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to share. When seeking out mining stocks always use Due Diligence and see our Disclaimer be sure to sign up for our free news letter located on the right hand side of this page.
For all us gold and silver and silver bugs out there, we always seem to have our finger on the pulse of the gold and silver prices. It’s almost a natural thing and we tend to think that everyone else thinks the same way. However that is not the same. I’m starting to think that us metal bugs are the 1% that you read about and the everyone else is the 99%. Ask anyone what the price of gold is and almost all will not have a clue. In fact some are so dense on reality that they you could not give them gold or silver. I know it’s hard to believe but it is true. This is just stuff you can’t make up. Sit back and enjoy the 2 videos below. Wish this guy would come around to my town.
What a dilemma!! A Hershy’s bar or a silver bar? Or 10 ounces of silver for 10 bucks. I often wonder if any of these people are actually embarrassed after seeing just how uninformed they are? But hey, this seems to be the norm these days and it’s these aame folks that are running governments spending your tax dollars.
If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to share. When seeking out mining stocks alsways use Due Diligence and see our Disclaimer and be sure to sign up for our free news letter located on the right hand side of this page.
I’ve been reading bits of articles lately about a coming shortage of cobalt. Now I don’t really know a whole lot about cobalt other than it’s mined so I decided to to do a bit of investigating. There are a few things that I found out about doing some quick research and one is that cobalt mining shouldn’t be protested about by enviromentalists. Another important issue that I’ve discovered is that the price of cobalt has been going up steady. In fact while most metals have been floundering for the past several years, cobalt has risen steady and for almost six months now the price has not seen any kind of decrease. Prices today are right around $60,000 USD per tonne and there is little sign that prices will retreat.
Pretty much the bulk of cobalt that is used in the world today comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa. They produce about 60,000 metric tons a year on average. This is followed by China with about 7700 MT and then Canada which produces about 7300 MT. For the longest time the world produced a sufficient amount of cobalt to keep the needs of all the industries that used it but in the last few years the demand for cobalt has increased exponentially.
Cobalt is known as a supper alloy and is used in manufacturing things like jet engines components, and other high wear moving parts. As it is added to different steels and alloys to allow for extra strengthing it is used in almost every industry possible. Aside from industrial uses cobalt is also used in the medical fields as there is a very important radioactive isotope that is used in medicine. It’s not too radioactive and doesn’t hurt the patient, but it can be used as a tracer element to find things like cancer. Almost everything made today that has a super alloy involved will have some percentage of cobalt.
So what has happened in the last year or so that has created such a drastic increase in the price of cobalt? The number one reason is the electric car. Cars like Tesla that use high grade lithium batteries also use a lot of cobalt. Infact there is more cobalt in a lithium battery than there is lithium and with all the millions of devices that are being bought up everyday, so goes the increase in good ole cobalt. Here’s where you can thank the ole tree huggers and greenies.
Now the big question is how do you as an individual profit from this? Unless your into buying and selling bulk loads of cobalt, the next best thing is to either find a cobalt miner or a cobalt junior explorer and juniors explorers are where it going to be for the next while. Finding the next big deposit to sell to some big miner. Of course once any commodity gets hot and in demand, so to does the amount of juniors who start to focus on that commodity and cobalt is no different. Some of the companies that are exploring for cobalt are Cruz Cobalt CUZ, Fortune Minerals FT, Cobalt Power CPO, and Clean Energy CLE. All of these players are on the hunt for cobalt.
Cruz Cobalt has nine cobalt projects located throughout North America, comprising four in Ontario, three in British Columbia, one in Idaho and one in Montana. Cruz’s four separate Ontario cobalt prospects are all located in the vicinity of the town of Cobalt, making Cruz one of the largest landholders in this emerging cobalt district.
Fortune Minerals is focused on developing the Nico cobalt-gold-bismuth-copper project in the NWT and a related refinery the company plans to construct in Saskatchewan.
Clean Commodities has the Juliet lithium project, located adjacent to Critical Element Corp.’s Rose lithium project in Quebec, Canada which of course is in a cobalt area
Cobalt Power has about 21,000 acres of properties. It’s main project is the Smith Cobalt project along the Ontario Quebec border. Also the company just started a second drilling campaign on september 13 0217 and will comprise a minimum of 2,000 metres 10 to 15 drill holes. Something to look forward too
Of course there are other companies that are out on the hunt for cobalt but hopefully this small group will give you a start for doing any kind of due diligence and also put some of these juniors on your watch list.
If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to share. When seeking out mining stocks always use Due Diligence and see our Disclaimer and be sure to sign up for our free news letter located on the right hand side of this page.
Exploring For Gold In Guyana
Whenever someone thinks about mining in South America they usually start of by thinking about copper in Chile, gold in Peru, silver in Bolivia and lithium in Argentina. Looking deeper in the subject we start to see that there is gold in Ecuador and Columbia and industial metals of all types in Brazil. However very few people tend to look beyond that group of countries and because of that narrower view, many people miss out on great investing opportunities that take place in some of the other smaller less known countries.
One of these smaller countries we will look at is Guyana. Guyana is a one of the smaller South American countries that borders between Venezuela to the west, Suriname to the east and Brazil to the south. The country covers and area of 83,000 square miles and has a population of less than one million. Guyana use to be called British Guyana as it was a British colony under British rule and today the country still follows British law and English is the official language.
Guyana may be a small country but it is big on mining. In fact Guyana is very often called the "Land of Eldorado" because of the vast amounts of quanties of bauxite, manganeese, diamonds and gold along with other precious stones that are buried within the ground of this country. Historic records show that mining for gold from surface deposits began in the Amazon region as early as the 16th century. Since that time, it's estimated that over 50 million ounces of Gold have been extracted from this region as opposed to only 12 million ounces that was extracted from California during it's 1800's Gold Rush.
Most people have the preception that mining in Guyana is just small time artisanal miners working the river beds with old antiquated tools gathering a few grams of gold per day. That much is fact that there is alot of small time operators. Infact many operate their small hand mining operations on property owned by major mining companies. However Guyana not only sees individuals coming into the country to explore but also public companies. Companies from all over the world have come here to explore and some of these companies have done very well. Of course some people may dispute that fact of Guyana being a good place to explore. All lot of the nay sayers will immediately point to some of the most recently aired TV episodes of Todd Hoffman and his gang of the Gold Rush series who went down to Guyana and tried their hand at gold mining only to find themselves packing up and heading home empty handed. Being a reality TV show however can not really be rated as 100% factual as there is always that twist of dramma that is added in. Real companies do their homework and have funds on hand before jumping into the mining game in some foreign country. Fact is that right now in Guyana some companies are thriving and have very successful gold mining operations.
(Artisinal miners working in Guyana)While most goldmining operations in the country are smaller alluvial/placer mines, there are larger operations that are open pit and underground also. One of the larger gold mining operations in Guyan is none other than Guyana Goldfields GUY. Guyana Goldfields has the Aurora Gold Mine. This mine reached commercial production January 1, 2016 and is designed to produce 3.3 million ounces of gold, averaging 220,000 ounces per year, over an initial 15 year mine life. Of the total of 3.3 Moz ounces recovered over the life of the mine, 1.7 Moz are sourced from the open pit operations and 1.6 Moz are sourced from the underground operations.
Another well advanced gold project is the Toroparu Gold Project owned by Sandspring Resources SSP. This project is a 62,603-hectare mineral concession in the Upper Puruni River Region of western Guyana. A pre-feasibility study completed for the Toroparu Project outlined the design of an open-pit mine producing 228,000 ounces of gold per year over an initial 16-year mine life.
Another company doing work in Guyana is Australian miner Troy Resources TRY. Troy holds two main project areas in Guyana. Both were obtained through the acquisition of Azimuth Resources. The exploration to date has been focused on the Karouni Block where Azimuth outlined Inferred Resources of 1.6Moz at the Smarts Deposit and Hicks Deposits.
One of the newest entries into Guyana is Guyana Goldstrike GYA. Guyana Goldstrike is the new owner of a proven mineral concession called the Marudi Gold property. Their property is comprised of two areas, one being Mazoa Hill and the other Marudi North. A combined potential resource sits around 880,000 oz. gold. Guyana Goldstrike is not only exploring for gold but they are also active in mining as they have taken over the previous owners operations. This gold junior is featured on our website here where you can read up and get a lot more information.
Ensurge ESGI is a gold and diamond company in Guyana. The company through its subsiduary, North American Resources Inc. has been conducting gold exploration and mining for over twenty years. They currently operate two cutterhead dredges on the Konawaruk river. Ensurge also has mining operations in the Kaburi river regions. The mine consists of 1000 acres of mining rights with the rights to prospect another several thousand acres. The area is an historical gold producer and is adjacent to the largest ongoing mining project in Guyana.
Junior miner Goldsource Mines GXS is exploring its Eagle Mountain gold project which is located approximately 45 km from the historic Omai Gold Mine, which profitably produced an estimated four million ounces of gold at an average grade of approximately 1.4 g/t, from 1993 to 2005. The Eagle Mountain project is located in the Madhia area wher historical production is estimated at over one million ounces of gold from alluvial and eluvial sources.
An Early Investment Opportunity With A Small Float
The junior miners website has a directory of junior mining companies. After cleaning out the ones that no longer exist and adding in the new ones that have started up, I think there is about 2400 public junior companies out there listed on various exchanges. A lot of these newer juniors are formed to take advantage of the higher gold and silver prices we are seeing lately and are out on the hunt for ground to explore that has potential. Then there are companies that get started already owning properties that have good upside potential to take advantage of these higher metal prices.
While most of these newer start ups seem to gravitate towards places that are hot like Red Lake Ontario region or BC's Golden Triangle, there are those companies who look tend to look for potential in the more un-noticed and un-known areas. Clarity Gold CSE-CLAR is one of those newer small juniors doing just that in British Columbia.
The company just start trading in June of 2020 but already had a property owned 100% under it's belt. This property is the Empirical Property which is the company's flagship property ,is located within the Cordilleran Continental Arc of BC. This region contains multiple significant porphyry deposits, including Imperial Metals historic Huckleberry Mine and Norandas historic Babine Porphyry camp. The land package is quite large at 10,618 hecatares. The bonus is this property already has a completed 43-101 report. Previous work on the Empirical property has demonstrated good gold values. Some of the historical work includes approx. 1600m of drilling where 6 of 15 historic drill holes intersected anomalous gold values. These values include one interval of 21m of 3.67 g/t Au. Other grade showings include: 1.75 m @ 3.20 g/t Au - 1.01 m @ 3.30 g/t Au and 0.88 m @ 10.27 g/t Au Originally this property was explored for it's moly potential and not much interest was put towards the gold values. However with gold prices setting all time records, this property offers a whole new exploration potential.
The property is located just a few kilometers from Lillooet, BC so infastructure is close at hand which helps keep exploration costs to a minimum. The company just sent in a small exploration crew in late July 2020. The crew will attempt to locate and verify these historic mineral showings and assess the suitability of the exploration program. The company will also be conducting a grab samples on targeted zones to locate additional areas of interest outside of the original Empirical project claim group.
Aside from the Empirical Property, the company also has a gold, silver and copper property on Vancouver Island. This property known as the Tyber porperty. This property has seen historic workings that deserve a second look today. There are two historic adits (14m and 47m in length) that are believed to have targeted mineralised quartz veins within local shear zones. A historic grab sample from the area showed Up to 2.328 oz/t Au (from waste dump), 16% Cu,and 305.5 oz/t Ag.
Clarity also has a third property which is also located in Vancouver Island not far from Port Alberni. This property produced a grab sample that assayed 48.00 grams per tonne gold, 51.43 grams per tonne silver and 17.8 per cent copper.
At the time of this writing, Clarity Gold has 20,358,000 share out standing with 22,237,310 fully diluted.
If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to share. When seeking out mining stocks always use Due Diligence and see our Disclaimer and be sure to sign up for our free news letter located on the right hand side of this page.
Central Banks Print Money To Buy Gold Mining Shares
Quite a bit of chatter on a lot of different news and gold sites about how two Central banks, the Norwegian Central bank and the Swiss Central bank just printed billions of dollars and then turned around and bought gold mining shares right away. In a world where zero percent interest rates are becoming the norm, there is little else that can offer a decent return on your investment. Something us gold bugs have known all along I guess.
The Swiss Central bank went on to disclose which stocks they bought. You can see in the small chart below which ones they bought positions in. Of course since buying the stocks in these 20 or so mining companies, the companies have seen their share price rise between 400% and 600% and there is no doubt that a lot of investors kind of like this buying. Nothing wrong with seeing your favorite gold mining stock go up by 500% or so. Problem could be though that at some time in the future that same bank that bought say 20 million bucks of a certain stock decides it's time to get out and just decides to dump. That would be bring in a bunch of shorters and even naked shorters so you see there is a bit of a shady side to all this. There is also some conspiracy theories about just that kind of scenario as a way to flush out gold buffs who are long on gold stocks. After all once the selling starts it will have a ripple effect and take down a lot of the other mining stocks also and not just gold stocks.
So why would a bank which prints fiat currency take that money and buy gold ming shares? Well there is plenty of info out there already about how some of the other world central banks are buying stocks. Its been know for quite some time that Japan's Central bank is one of the largest holders of the top ten stocks in Japan. As mentioned earlier, when you end up having zero percent interest rates or even negative interest rates, you have to figure out how to make your money work for you and right now it seems that the stock market is the best place. Problem is that the stock market will end up un a bubble and one day could very easily collapse.
Don't you wish your favorite gold mining stocks was just like a Facebook or something? Talked about everyday on financial TV. Selling at 350 X earnings? Well all I can say is, in the meantime be cautious and look out for those under valued gems that still do exist.
If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to share. When seeking out mining stocks always use Due Diligence and see our Disclaimer and be sure to sign up for our free news letter located on the right hand side of this page.
How To Profit On Cobalt I've been reading bits of articles lately about a coming shortage of cobalt. Now I don't really know a whole lot about cobalt other than it's mined so I decided to to do a bit of investigating. There are a few things that I found out about doing some quick research and one is that cobalt mining shouldn't be protested about by enviromentalists. Another important issue that I've discovered is that the price of cobalt has been going up steady. In fact while most metals have been floundering for the past several years, cobalt has risen steady and for almost six months now the price has not seen any kind of decrease. Prices today are right around $60,000 USD per tonne and there is little sign that prices will retreat.
Pretty much the bulk of cobalt that is used in the world today comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa. They produce about 60,000 metric tons a year on average. This is followed by China with about 7700 MT and then Canada which produces about 7300 MT. For the longest time the world produced a sufficient amount of cobalt to keep the needs of all the industries that used it but in the last few years the demand for cobalt has increased exponentially.
Cobalt is known as a supper alloy and is used in manufacturing things like jet engines components, and other high wear moving parts. As it is added to different steels and alloys to allow for extra strengthing it is used in almost every industry possible. Aside from industrial uses cobalt is also used in the medical fields as there is a very important radioactive isotope that is used in medicine. It's not too radioactive and doesn't hurt the patient, but it can be used as a tracer element to find things like cancer. Almost everything made today that has a super alloy involved will have some percentage of cobalt.
So what has happened in the last year or so that has created such a drastic increase in the price of cobalt? The number one reason is the electric car. Cars like Tesla that use high grade lithium batteries also use a lot of cobalt. Infact there is more cobalt in a lithium battery than there is lithium and with all the millions of devices that are being bought up everyday, so goes the increase in good ole cobalt. Here's where you can thank the ole tree huggers and greenies.
Now the big question is how do you as an individual profit from this? Unless your into buying and selling bulk loads of cobalt, the next best thing is to either find a cobalt miner or a cobalt junior explorer and juniors explorers are where it going to be for the next while. Finding the next big deposit to sell to some big miner.
Of course once any commodity gets hot and in demand, so to does the amount of juniors who start to focus on that commodity and cobalt is no different. Some of the companies that are exploring for cobalt are Cruz Cobalt CUZ, Fortune Minerals FT, Cobalt Power CPO, and Clean Energy CLE. All of these players are on the hunt for cobalt.
Cruz Cobalt has nine cobalt projects located throughout North America, comprising four in Ontario, three in British Columbia, one in Idaho and one in Montana. Cruz's four separate Ontario cobalt prospects are all located in the vicinity of the town of Cobalt, making Cruz one of the largest landholders in this emerging cobalt district.
Fortune Minerals is focused on developing the Nico cobalt-gold-bismuth-copper project in the NWT and a related refinery the company plans to construct in Saskatchewan.
Clean Commodities has the Juliet lithium project, located adjacent to Critical Element Corp.'s Rose lithium project in Quebec, Canada which of course is in a cobalt area.
Cobalt Power has about 21,000 acres of properties. It's main project is the Smith Cobalt project along the Ontario Quebec border. Also the company just started a second drilling campaign on september 13 0217 and will comprise a minimum of 2,000 metres 10 to 15 drill holes. Something to look forward too.
Of course there are other companies that are out on the hunt for cobalt but hopefully this small group will give you a start for doing any kind of due diligence and also put some of these juniors on your watch list.
If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to share. When seeking out mining stocks always use Due Diligence and see our Disclaimer and be sure to sign up for our free news letter located on the right hand side of this page.
An Appreciating Diamond Stock Of all the junior mining stocks there are not a lot of diamond miners. Exploring for diamonds was a big deal about 20 years during the Diamet and Diavik days in the NWT. Today you hear and read very little about diamonds. There are however a few diamond stories out there that are well worth noting. One of those diamond stories is Lucara diamonds LUC. Lucara works in Africa where it has two key assets which are the Karowe mine in Botswana and the Mothae project in Lesotho. The 100% owned Karowe Mine is a newly constructed state-of-the-art mine which was fully commissioned in Q2 2012 . At the 75% owned Mothae project the company has completed the trial mining stage and is working towards completing a Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA). Both Mothae and Karowe are large scale assets with tonnage and throughput upside and production has consistently included large, Type IIA stones.
A quick look at the chart will tell you the story of how Lucara is doing stock wise. With a 52 week trading range of 75 cent low to a $2.80 high, there has baeen some very nice gains in this play. Most small juniors with a diamond portfolio are explorers. Going beyond exploration, Lucara is a producer and that what sets this miner apart from most.
The producing mine, which is the Karowe Mine is a hard rock open pit operation and has probable reserves to a depth of 324 m of 33.1 mt containing 5.1 million carats. Indicated resources from surface to a depth of 400 m of 48.07 mt containing 7.61 million carats. Inferred resource from 400 m to 750 m of 21 mt containing 3.04 million carats.
The second operation, the Mothae Project is in Lesotho. Although it is on care and maintainance at the moment it also is an open pit operation. Indicated resource of 2.39 mt @ 3.0 cpht containing 0.07 million carats and inferred resource of 36.57 mt @ 2.7 cpht containing 1.0 million carats.
Fully diluted, there are 381 million shares.
As always, use Due Diligence and see our Disclaimer and be sure to sign up for our free news letter located on the right hand side of this page.
GAdams
Lithium In Australia With Macarthur Minerals
Most of the stocks that I write about are Canadian junior mining stocks. One of the reasons why is because about 80% or more the junior mining companies are Canadian based and are listed on the Canadian exchanges. There are some junior mining companies that are listed on the Canadian exchanges but are based outside of the country. Today we're going to take a brief look at one such company. This company is an Australian lithium explorer that is working in it's home country in Australia.
Macarthur Minerals MMS is an iron ore type of explorer with two projects on the go. One of those projects is the Ularring Hematite Project which is an encompassing hematite iron ore hematite, to be marketed as potential direct shipping and/or beneficiated iron ore; and
the second project is the Moonshine Magnetite Project which is a magnetite iron ore magnetite, to be marketed as a beneficiated magnetite concentrate.These two projects however are notwhat has put Macarthur Minerals in the spotlight as far as the stock goes for investors or trading. Their recent exploration change into lithium is what has give the company some additional exposure mostly due to the excitement that is surrounding lithium these days. At present the company has about 20 exploration licenses covering a total area of 1,505 square kilometres throughout the Pilbara, Ravensthorpe and the Mid-West region of Western Australia. The Company continues to expand its acreage under application and has one of the largest acreages prospective for hard rock lithium of any junior exploration company globally and is one of a few TSX-V listed companies to have projects acquired specifically for lithium in Australia.
The Company completed its first round of reconnaissance across a portion of the tenement package in the Pilbara and located a number of pegmatites which contain one or more visually identified minerals indicative of rare element Lithium-Caesium-Tantalum (LCT) pegmatites, such as beryl, lepidolite, cassiterite and tantalite. strategy is to apply for prospective acreage proximate to known lithium occurrences or where there are either, producing lithium mines or lithium mines under development. Consistent with this strategy, the Company has applied for acreage in the Pilbara region where Pilbara Minerals Limited (ASX: PLS) has its Pilgangoora lithium-tantalum project for which it recently raised A$100 million for further development and Dakota Minerals Limited (ASX: DKO) has its Lynas Find Project for which it recently raised A$12.3 million to conduct further exploration.
At present the company has about 100 million shares O/S and trading is active with daily volumes around 250,000 and more.
As always, use Due Diligence and see our Disclaimer and be sure to sign up for our free news letter located on the right hand side of this page.
GAdams
