Food for thoughtWell first off I'm surprised nobody on here used ai to create a news release of LME being bough for $30/share on April Fools Day lol
Anyways, I saw the news that IMG announced their Cote Lake Mine poured its first gold yesterday. Cote Lake deposit was drilled by Trelawney Mining TRR and bought by IMG in 2012 for $608M. I owned shares of Trelawney at buyout time... did very well on that investment.
Now anticipating the same success (but more ) with LME.
I almost forgot that TRR sold Cote Lake to IMG. I went back to check on the details of the deposit that got a major interested enough to buy it....and actually build a mine.
Look at the info below and compare it to LMEs. Cote Lake is in Ontario with low grade open pit mining, with low cash costs @$700.... it was bought when gold was $1700....now $2250.
Inflation adjusted...$600M in 2012 is aproximately $820M now. I think I read that estimates for LMEs cash cost would be similar in an open pit mine.
Note tha LMEs strike area is MUlTIPLES larger than TRRs when the deal happened.
On February 24, 2012, Trelawney announced an updated mineral resource estimate for Ct Lake, comprising 35 million tonnes at 0.82 g/t gold for 0.93 million ounces of indicated resources and 204 million tonnes at 0.91 g/t gold for 5.94 million ounces of inferred resources. Mineralization at Ct Lake has been intersected over a strike length of 1,200 metres, a horizontal width of 100 - 300 metres and a depth extent of more than 500 metres. June 21, 2012, IAMGOLD completed the acquisition of all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Trelawney through a plan of arrangement (the "Transaction"). Under the terms of the Transaction, former shareholders of Trelawney are entitled to $3.30 in cash for each common share of Trelawney held. Technical Report on the Ct Gold Project, Ontario, Canada Report for NI 43-101 IAMGOLD Corporation SLR Project No: 233.3498.R0000 November 26, 2021
Ct Measured and Indicated Resources total 365.5 million tonnes (Mt) at an average grade of 0.87 g/t Au, containing 10.20 million ounces (Moz) Au. An additional 189.6 Mt at an average grade of 0.63 g/t Au, containing 3.82 Moz Au are estimated in the Inferred Mineral Resource category. The Mineral Resources are estimated at a 0.3 g/t Au cut-off grade, based on a gold price of US$1,500/oz Au, and have an effective date of December 19, 2019. It took IMG TEN years of drilling to find 10M oz. The cost to build the mine was over $2B. Lots of cost overuns.
| Proven & Probable | Ct | 233 | 0.96 | 7.17 |
| M&I* | Ct | 365.5 | 0.87 | 10.2 |
If Cote Lake can become a mine, I believe LMEs deposit can also become one again.
If LME indeed has found 10M GEO Au (or more)...do the price calculations. No need to cut it in half ;)
Refer to DAM$ post now and see how it compares:
https://stockhouse.com/companies/bullboard?symbol=v.lme&postid=35956786 Note that Geographical location will be a HUGE factor considering what I believe might be the start of a long bull run for gold and a major economic downturn coupled with geopolitical instability with war, elections, social unrest etc. Majors will want quality deposits in safe countries. I have money in GLO.TO Global Atomic located in Niger (just about as risky as you can get after the military coup), I went against my rules of buying in safe countries. Do you think gold prodcuers looking to add to their reserves want to spend 100s of millions or billions in politically risky Africa or Latin America (nationalize mines if gold soars to say $5k) ....or mining friendly Ontario Canada with large educated labour pool, nearby infastructure, electricity, water, good relations with the locals and indigenous, near surface low strip ratio polymetallic deposit etc etc.?