Breakthrough for Filipino gold/copper planBreakthrough for Filipino gold/copper plan
By: Peter Gonnella
Posted: '02-DEC-04 09:00' GMT © Mineweb 1997-2004
PERTH (Mineweb.com) -- Copper-gold hopeful Indophil Resources [ASX:IRN] and its shareholders can breathe a sigh of relief after the Philippines Supreme Court cleared the way for the possible US$500 million development of the world-class low-grade Tampakan project.
Melbourne-based Indophil today (Thursday) advised that the court had reversed a decision handed down earlier this year that placed the advancement of the project in jeopardy (as far as obtaining the necessary foreign investment was concerned) and ruled that the Aussie junior indeed had security of tenure over Tampakan.
It hosts a latest published JORC-compliant indicated and inferred resource totalling 659 million tonnes of ore grading 0.81 percent copper and 0.32g/t gold for an in-situ 5.34Mt of copper and 6.78 million ounces of gold (at a cut-off grade of 0.5 percent copper) or 151Mt at 1.27 percent copper and 0.48g/t gold for 1.92Mt of copper and 2.33Moz of gold (at a cut-off grade of 1.0 percent copper). As well as Ivanhoe Mines’ Oyu Tolgoi project in Mongolia, Tampakan is one of the largest undeveloped copper-gold deposits in the South East Asian region.
This validation of the Tampakan mining title allows Indophil to proceed with the planned pre-feasibility and feasibility studies following a scoping assessment completed in September that suggested an estimated development capital cost of between US$350 million and US$500 million and production start-up target of around 2009 at an initial output rate of about 200,000 tonnes per annum of concentrate.
Investors welcomed the greater certainty and drove the stock up almost 36 percent today to A$0.53, which equates to a market capitalisation of about A$110 million. However, there is still some uncertainty over the ultimate Tampakan ownership split, with global diversified resources group Xstrata currently holding an option (inherited from MIM Holdings) to acquire a 62.5 percent equity for an entry payment ranging from roughly A$20 million to about A$50 million depending on when it was exercised, if at all. If Xstrata did choose to farm in, that would leave Indophil with about a one-third stake and Philippine partners the balance.
The proposed Tampakan joint venture structure is being tossed around between Indophil and Xstrata – which is one of Indophil’s major shareholders and last month launched a hostile A$7.4 billion cash takeover bid for WMC Resources, a former Tampakan participant. “We would hope to resolve those discussions in a very short timeframe, certainly by early next year at the very latest,” said Indophil’s managing director, Tony Robbins.