MEDELLIN, Colombia – Two weeks from now, a presidential election willcapture this gold-rush nation’s undivided attention.
Natural resources investors have big bucks at stake in Colombia, one of the world’s most promising generators of gold, copper, coal and oil prospects.
President Alvaro Uribe and his enforcers reduced G/pt to about 8,000 guerillas from twice that amount. His guerillas-per-term metric ran two terms, or eight years. The take-no-prisoners president has in his eight years in office put miners, prospectors and their investors at ease.
Now, the popular Colombia president will see whether former Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos succeeds him in the nation’s top office. Mr. Santos is in a tight race with Antanas Mockus, the Green Party candidate.
Polls right now show Mr. Mockus capable of staging a big upset. The former mayor of Bogota, Colombia’s largest city is preaching what he calls “citizen culture” – his willingness to serve a people who are sick and tired of government 
corruption and senseless political and narcotics killing.
Yet for investors, the label “Green” conjures fears of restricted mining and rule changes on prospect leases, fees and corporate taxes.
“The question most people will have with Mockus is this: What is Green? We’ve already seen how legitimate eco-system concerns about Colombia’s Páramo (Andean elevations above 2,800 meters) are rattling cages. Just look at Greystar’s Angostura,” says Patrick Abraham, a director and founder of Bellhaven Copper & Gold of Panama and Colombia.
Greystar Resources Ltd.’s (TSX: T.GSL, Stock Forum) shares have been on a rock and roll ride. The company faces environmental hurdles that could restrict an open-pit gold and silver mine it has been planning at Angostura for 15 years.
I am this week in Medellin, a city of 4 million in gold-rich Antioquia. I am interviewing a new associate of Bellhaven Copper & Gold Inc. (TSX: V.BHV, Stock Forum), the freshest Planetary Prospect of our Ticker Trax service. My interview is with former Colombia vice presidential candidate and Bellhaven adviser Maria Isabel Patiño of Bogota. Ms. Patiño ran for office with Antanas Mockus in 2006.
“People will tell you Antanas is a dreamer,” says Ms. Patiño, a 47-year-old lawyer who has represented flower growers, energy companies and miners. “Not so. He just wants to enforce order and respect in an environment of legality. He is a doer.”
Colombia was once Latin America’s most prolific gold producer. It has a flock of candidates running for the top office. Only two are likely to make it to a mid-June runoff: Mockus and tough man Santos.
The new top executive will follow an insanely popular President Uribe. A fresh face after eight years of Uribe will be charged with continuing to reduce political guerillas per territory in rough departments of this longstanding democracy.
And if Green wins the day?
“I think he (Mr. Mockus) will have as much to do with promoting free trade and foreign investment as he does enforcing the environmental laws that already exist,” says Ms. Patiño, who still collaborates with Mr. Mockus on social initiatives. She declined to speculate whether she will have a role in a Mockus administration. “His platform is also what he teaches at the university and what he did for Bogota – a very strong policy of providing service to citizens. Citizens pay for government service and deserve that service.”
If Mockus swings into power, Colombia’s gold and copper miners, coal companies and oil producers will want to know that his administration will continue President Uribe’s wealth-building methods for Canadian prospectors. (Oil winner Pacific RubialesEnergy Corp.– (TSX: T.PRE, Stock Forum) – made many people in government and the private sector hundreds of millions of dollars in a span of 18 months.)
Mr. Mockus (seen in photo above with Ms. Patiño) will need to concentrate less on terrorist kill-count and more on boosting overseas capital flows into the resource-rich country if he is to replicate the wealth-building practices of the current president.
One of Ms. Patiño’s former mining clients, Serafino Iacono, tells of entering Mr. Uribe’s office in the capital city of Bogota and hearing him say that Colombia welcomes gold investors, in particular the Canadian miners and prospectors. “But for God’s sake, they should learn how to spell Colombia,” Mr. Iacono paraphrases.
Mr. Iacono made investors a lot of money as a director of both Pacific Rubiales and of gold miner Medoro ResourcesLtd. (TSX: V.MRS, Stock Forum), which is spearheading efforts to develop historic mines at El Marmato and Frontino, both in Antioquia.
But as Ms. Patiño explains, the sometimes controversial and extremely successful entrepreneur followed each and every mining law and environmental regulation on the country’s books.
“Serafino understands that there is no running around the rules looking for short cuts,” says his former consultant, who provided advice on environmental practices and social responsibility for Mr. Iacono.
Ms. Patiño (in photo below) says she believes her former running mate, Mr. Mockus, can become the next president and satisfy investors and those looking for social and environmental reforms. “What he did in Bogota (a city of 9 million) was promote respect for life and for civic duty,” she says. “On a national scale, this is the next step for him.”
Still, for Colombia, the presidential election shapes up a lot like show-me-the-money time. President Uribe, by some accounts, improved overseas investment in Colombia more than fivefold to $10 billion in his two terms.
New money from North America in particular is the performance bar that matters in a country fast beginning to resemble the Colombia of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Back then, the nation boasted tens of millions of ounces of gold pulled from Frontino, Zancudo and other historic mines. That is, before killing swept the Andean nation and the Colombian peso lost thick slices of its purchasing power … from 1940 until just recently.
We’ll have more from Colombia in Ticker Trax. I am at present doing further research on Bellhaven Copper & Gold.
Bellhaven this week named an interim CEO, fund manager and doctor of geology Paul Zweng, whom Ticker Trax subscribers know via his involvement in Antares Minerals Inc. (TSX: V.ANM, Stock Forum) of Peru. Dr. Zweng is a central reason we have placed Bellhaven on our Planetary Prospect list. The Stanford University doctorate says he is hopeful about Bellhaven prospects in Panama and in Colombia.
“We are on the hunt for highly prospective properties,” says new CEO Paul Zweng about Bellhaven’s Colombia and Panama exploration. Paul Zweng is working closely with Julio Benedetti, Bellhaven’s president and a longstanding Panama prospector and real estate developer. Both of them, along with Mr. Abraham of Panama, are in Antioquia this week. I’ll have more to report in coming days.
I have had the good fortune to be in the company of Paul Zweng on several tours in South America, including a tour of Bellhaven’s properties in Colombia and Panama. Dr. Zweng of Honolulu’s Resource Venture Partners says he is an interim CEO until someone more permanent comes along. Mr. Benedetti, a Panama mining veteran whom 53-year-old Dr. Zweng replaces as chief executive at Bellhaven, will remain Bellhaven president.
Other Colombia companies we track as Planetary Prospects or speculative concerns:
- Colombian Mines Corp. (TSX: V.CMJ, Stock Forum) – CMJ has one of the thickest property books in Colombia for such a tiny company: some 300,000 hectares. Bob and Gloria Carrington and Nate Tewalt’s company two weeks ago reported drill results from the Yarumalito project in Colombia. Good results for the gold and copper prospect … but not great. The company just optioned its Anori gold and copper prospect to Yamana GoldInc. (NYSE: AUY, Stock Forum, and (TSX: T.YRI, Stock Forum). President Gloria Carrington tells me CMJ will get $50,000 from Yamana right from the get-go. Ms. Carrington and her geologist husband, CMJ’s Robert Carrington, say Yamana also will refund CMJ for taxes paid on the concession licenses. (Please see the password-protected libraryfor coverage.)
- Antioquia Gold Inc. (TSX: V.AGD, Stock Forum) at approximately 30 cents Canadian a share is worthy of high-risk speculation. I own 17,500 shares purchased in the past 10 days. I have been to Antioquia Gold’s Cisneros Project twice. I believe the company’s next round of results at Cisneros in the department of Antioquia will shed more light on what looks like a worthy prospect. This is highly speculative and not a Planetary Prospect of Ticker Trax. (Please see the Ticker Trax libraryfor coverage.)
Ticker Trax™
Please see Stockhouse for a selection of our Ticker Trax research and our password-protected library for subscribers. Thom Calandra owns shares of each of the 13 Planetary Prospects in Ticker Trax. Please see our Ticker Traxpassword-protected library for coverage of copper in Peru, gold in Peru, gold and copper in Colombia, gold in Ghana and silver and gold in Mexico.
(All photos by Thom Calandra. Thom and his family own shares of each of the 14 Planetary Prospects. Thom’s personal holdings are available for all to see on Stockhouse, the Canada publishing company. Subscribers are informed well in advance of any shift in research regarding Planetary Prospects and any purchase or sales decisions. Subscribers always come first.)
Ticker Trax™Please see tickertrax.com to learn more about this wealth service and its Planetary Prospects. For an index of free Thom Calandra articles, please click here. For an entire explanation of our strategies, research methods and disclosure procedures regarding all aspects of Ticker Trax and our Stockhouse reports, please visit our readily available Stockhouse articles. Please see this one in particular: Core Box Revealed. Thom Calandra’s on-site tours of properties are paid in part by the hosting companies and in part by Stockhouse and Thom Calandra. For the password-protected Ticker Traxlibrary, please see: www.tickertrax.com/Login.aspx.
HOLDINGS: Thom’s holdings are listed for Stockhouse members at www.Stockhouse.com under the “portfolio setting” for user TCALANDRA. It is public and free to view. He and his family own recently minted gold and silver coins and shares of about 30 public and two private companies. As with each of the Planetary Prospects, Thom Calandra owns Colombian Mines, Xtra-Gold Resources, Endeavour Silver, BioCryst Pharmaceuticals and the other Planetary Prospects researched in Ticker Trax reports.
THOM CALANDRA of Ticker Trax helps his audience find value in a quagmire of investment choices. Thom co-founded CBS MarketWatch and MarketWatch.com. As the voice of Thom Calandra's StockWatch and The Calandra Report, Thom pegged $300-ounce gold as a long-term hold in 1999 and in 2000. He has been covering life-sciences and natural resources since 1988.
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Ticker Trax™ is published by Stockhouse Publishing Ltd. Ticker Trax is an information service for subscribers and neither Stockhouse nor Thom Calandra is a broker or an investment advisor. None of the information contained therein constitutes a recommendation by Mr. Calandra or Stockhouse that any particular security, portfolio of securities, transaction, or investment strategy is suitable for any specific person. Ticker Trax does not purport to tell or suggest the investment securities subscribers or readers should buy or sell for themselves. Subscribers and readers of Ticker Trax should conduct their own research and due diligence and obtain professional advice before making any investment decisions. Ticker Trax will not be liable for any loss or damage caused by a reader’s reliance on information obtained in the reports. Subscribers and readers are solely responsible for their own investment decisions. Opinions expressed in Ticker Trax are based on sources believed to be reliable and are written in good faith, but no representation or warranty, expressed or implied, is made as to their accuracy or completeness. All information contained in Ticker Trax should be independently verified. The editor and publisher are not responsible for errors or omissions or responsible for keeping information up to date or for correcting any past information. Ticker Trax does not receive compensation of any kind from any companies that may be mentioned in the report. Any opinions expressed are subject to change without notice. Owners, employees and writers may hold positions in the securities that are discussed in Ticker Trax. PLEASE DO NOT EMAIL THOM SEEKING PERSONALIZED INVESTMENT ADVICE, WHICH HE CANNOT PROVIDE. Copyright 2010 all rights reserved.