TORONTO -- When EBX Group ejected some, or all, of its
Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. (
TSX: T.IVN,
Stock Forum) stake this past (northern hemisphere) summer, his Brazilian fire sale marked low points for owner Eike Batista and for Ivanhoe's Toronto-listed shares.
Mr. Batista's distress, fittingly during his southern hemisphere winter as he battled bankers and creditors, was other investors' good fortune. Purchasing those IVN (
in Canada) shares were fund managers in southern California, northern California, New York City, Toronto and Johannesburg.
Mr. Batista's block-stock sales -- of as much as 4 percent of IVN's common outstanding -- pushed the former
Ivanplats, an Africa-centric mines developer, as low as $1.30 Canadian.
Three months later, brisk trading has ignited IVN shares. They're almost $1 higher, at $2.25 -- yet still wounded badly from an October 2012 equity IPO that coined $300 million for Ivanplats/Ivanhoe at a price of $4.70 Canadian.
Ivanhoe Mines founder and chairman,
Robert M. Friedland, is feeling his oats amidst the share recovery.
In Toronto speaking at a Merrill Lynch Bank of America mining conference, Mr. Friedland reeled off the copper cutoff grades his company's Kamoa property is registering in DRC Congo: 3 percent cutoff for 224 million metric tons of ore, or 19 million pounds of contained copper (indicated resource); and 2 percent cutoff for 550 million tons, or 37 million pounds of copper (indicated).
As is his style, Friedland, a 63-year-old Singapore-based mine developer, was pointed in his remarks. He cited
Teck Resources Ltd. (
TSX: T.TCK.A,
Stock Forum) (
TCK: T.TCK.B,
Stock Forum), which at $15 billion is 12 times the size of Ivanhoe's stock-market worth. Teck is developing a Highland Valley copper (and molybdenum) property in British Columbia, Canada.
"My dear friend Don Lindsay is at Highland Valley mining air," Mr. Friedland said, pointing toward three or four Teck executives in the audience. "
His head grade is down to point 0.3 and our cut off grade in the Congo is 2 percent. We throw it away if it's not 2 percent."
Mr. Lindsay, Teck's chief executive, was not in the Sheraton Centre ballroom during the Ivanhoe chairman's keynote address. The Teck executives at one table looked grim.
In fairness, Kamoa, which looks like the world's largest high-grade copper find, is years away from production.
Plus, Ivanplats CEO
Lars-Eric Johansson, age 66, and VP of Exploration
David Broughton (
photo attached -- Thom Calandra credit at Platreef) are sure to cringe when they hear their chairman use the words 'throw away.'
This is because in Kamoa's 43-101 published mineral resource, 43 million pounds of copper are categorized as indicated with a cutoff of 1 percent.
Still, overall copper grade for those 43 million pounds is almost 2.7 percent -- freakishly potent for any primary copper ground on our world.
Note to readers:
Mr. Friedland differed today (Wednesday) with several comments in this article. He says, "Why would my executives cringe? Our mine design at Kamoa will have a 2 percent cutoff."
Just getting started, TCR audience. Much more ahead. Please do not distribute this subscriber report to hoi polloi
before Wednesday 2 p.m. Pacific Time.
Coming: Our TCR On-Site Review of Ivanhoe Mines' Kipushi (zinc & copper), Kamoa (copper) & Platreef (platinum group metals) properties -- September 2-5, 2013. In process. (Photo: At Platreef with bankers, analysts, insurers and MDM Engineering's (MDM in U.K.)
George Bennett --
Thom Calandra/Gerick Mouton credit)
Next IVN driver: Gabon gold assays are back from the laboratory. No confirmation of that from Ivanhoe. The property in Gabon saw four or five drill targets that began in June under the stewardship of David Broughton and his team.
News flow: Liberty Metals & Mining, an investor, will be glad to see that met-tests confirm True Gold Mining's (TSX: T.TGM, Stock Forum) strategy of heap-leaching at Karma in Burkina Faso. True Gold's Mark O'Dea et al tell us that gold recoveries from oxide material at Karma's main three deposits were rapid and almost complete within 10 days.
Column leach recoveries run to 97.4% percent from 90 percent.
Liberty, a unit of the Boston insurer of the same name, likes to take 19.9 percent stakes with net smelter royalties in heap-leach gold properties, among other criteria. Liberty's Diana Walters will speak next week at Precious Metals Summit in Colorado. ... Bob Carrington's Colombian Mines Corp. (TSX: V.CMJ, Stock Forum) continues to option Colombia properties to willing developers in exchange for immediate and future cash. This one was called Rio Negro. I own shares of CMJ.
For the first time in several years, I will be skipping the Medellin Feria mining show later this month.
Addition: I neglected to mention, in our look at Western Lithium USA Corp's (TSX: T.WLC, Stock Forum) sharp gain and then decline Friday and Monday, another factor. We were discussing the Frankfurt Auto Show and automakers' drive into alt.energy cars and trucks -- electric, hybrid, hydrogen cell. WLC also is entering the market for drilling fluids, the viscous and lubricating kind that are used in oil fields and such. This is called thermally stable organo-clay for high-pressure and high-temperature oilfield drilling.
A Stockhouse.com reader helped get me back on track here. Thank you.
Also: Is Bruce Duncan's Canada Carbon Inc. (TSX: T.CCB, Stock Forum) the next high-grade graphite stock? CCB has a hydrothermal lump/vein graphite property 80 km west of Montreal, Canada. CCB shares are in motion. I also am looking at Mason Graphite, which is in the Forbes Manhattan stable of companies and has a large and varied graphite property in Quebec, Canada. Mr. Duncan is at some battery developers' conference, Tommy Humphreys tells us.
Real-time reading: Tommy Humphreys' CEO.ca take on the cat's ass of platinum.
Oil Sands: TWO BIG INVESTORS this week were part of a group that raised $80 million Canadian for oil sands developer U.S. Oil Sands (USO in Canada), a Utah prospector. But did you know that tiny American Sands Energy (AMSE in USA) controls a larger contingent resource in Utah? AMSE has 150 million barrels of contingent P-90 resource vs. USO's approximately 15 million barrels. "Amoco and Chevron spent tens of millions drilling our property," says CFO Daniel Carlson from American Sands Energy. By the way, Mr. Carlson is a member of the TCR family. I do not as yet own shares of AMSE, which I hear is seeking further capital. AMSE's bulletin-board market cap. is less than $20 million U.S.
Correction: It is Ron Shorr of Vermillion and formerly Maudore Minerals. We misspelled the New York City investor's surname. Apologia.
Note: I own more than -- we own more than -- 100,000 shares of IVN, originally as private Ivanhoe Nickel & Platinum and in market purchases of IVPAF (in USA) as recently as last week in Toronto.
Finally: I continue to keep an eye on
Rango Energy Inc. (
OTCQB: RAGO,
Stock Forum), which is running into tremendous hurdles in the San Joaquin Basin. I bought shares at 21 cents or so, and the oil fields developer at Kettleman Middle Dome promptly announced its first rig was
kabosh. I hope Vincent Ramirez and Harp Sangha have something up their sleeves to get my stock back above water.
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