THE BOURSE WHISPERER: Queensland-based uranium hopeful Alligator Energy has signed an exploration agreement with Cameco Australia to earn up to 90% of an exploration licence in the Alligator Rivers uranium province, in the Northern Territory.

Alligator has signed the agreement through its wholly owned subsidiary Northern Prospector.

Cameco is a wholly owned subsidiary of Cameco Corporation of Canada which is the world’s largest publically traded uranium company.

Previous exploration carried out by Cameco on the licence area has reported uranium mineralisation in rock chip samples.

This work included surface rock sampling, which identified a drill target associated with a major regional fault.

Initial sampling returned values of greater than 1000 parts-per-million uranium in eight rock chip samples with a maximum of 9388ppm uranium within this target area.

Alligator said in its ASX announcement the tenement is consistent with its strategy to explore for high value deposits in the Alligator Rivers uranium province.

“EL 24992 is contiguous with ELAs 27251, 28315, 28176 and 28293, which are all held by Alligator, and consolidates the company’s uranium exploration package in this world recognized uranium province,” the company said.

Under the terms of the agreement:
 
– Alligator has committed to spend $500,000 on exploration including the completion of 3 drill holes for an aggregate of 600m prior to 31 December, 2012.

– Upon electing to and subsequently spending a further $2 million within 3 years Alligator will earn a 40% interest in EL 24992. Following which Cameco may elect to fund their 60% interest or,

– Upon Alligator sole funding a cumulative $10 million within 6 years, AGE will be entitled to a further 50% of the tenement ( for a total interest of 90% ) OR Cameco may elect to refund 3 times total expenditure to claw back to 60%.

THE BOURSE WHISPERER: Burkina Faso-focused gold play Canyon Resources has entered into an agreement with a Burkinabe vendor to purchase two additional exploration permits contiguous to its Derosa project.

The new permits, currently under application, represent an additional 385 square kilometres of exploration landholding.

The acquisition will increase Canyon’s Derosa project area to over 1,389sqkm covering six contiguous permits.

It will take the company’s total landholding to over 2,500sqkm in Burkina Faso.

 “The addition of these permits to the Derosa project further consolidates Canyon’s position as an explorer in Burkina Faso with three significant exploration projects; Tao, Taparko and Derosa,” the company said in its ASX announcement.

“The acquisition is consistent with Canyon’s strategy of continuing to selectively grow its exploration portfolio in Burkina Faso, whilst actively exploring its existing projects.”

Canyon will acquire 100% of the Bompela and Sapala permits, adding them to its Derosa project.

The acquisition will be made via an initial payment of US$50,000 on signing of the contract, and a series of payments over a three year period from the granting of the permits.

To gain 100% ownership of the two permits Canyon is required to pay the following consideration:

– US$50,000 at the time of the permits being granted;

– US$50,000 six months from the granting of the permits;

– US$60,000 on the 1st anniversary of the granting of the permits;

– US$60,000 on the 2nd anniversary of the granting of the permits; and

– US$80,000 on the 3rd anniversary of the granting of the permits.

The tranches are paid at Canyon’s election. If Canyon chooses not to complete one of the tranches it will hand back the rights to the permits.

THE DRILL SERGEARNT: Burkina Faso-focused gold play Predictive Discovery recently completed a program of reconnaissance RC drilling at the Dave East prospect.

The company has now completed approximately 5,300 metres of reverse circulation drilling on the Dave and Dave East prospects.

The drilling identified a wide undrilled gold system approximately 1.5 kilometres along strike from artisanal workings and historical drill holes at the Dave prospect.

Power auger results received have also indicated bedrock anomalies at Dave and Dave East to be continuous and extending for 3.6km along strike with an average width of 0.3km, and open to the east and west.

Predictive will continue drilling on 200m line spacing at Dave East for up to 2 weeks more, weather and access permitting.

“PDI is very excited by these new RC and power auger drill results,” predictive Discovery managing director Paul Roberts said in the company’s ASX announcement.

“The Dave to Dave East prospect areas are shaping up as a large gold mineralised system in their own right.

“It is especially gratifying that initial RC assay results more than 1.5 kilometres away from known workings and historical drill holes, have produced multiple ore grade and width gold intercepts in a very broad gold mineralised zone.

“Given that there are a series of other highly promising bedrock geochemical anomalies on the 16 kilometre long Laterite Hill Grid, the prospect of discovering a series of large gold mineral deposits has been significantly enhanced by these results”.

The Dave and Dave East prospects are located on the Laterite Hill Grid in the Bonsiega project. Over part of their length, these geochemical anomalies are coincident with artisanal gold workings located on small areas of outcrop surrounded by alluvial cover.

Predictive said its exploration strategy is to use power auger drilling to map the extent of the gold anomalies along the trend and then follow up high priority targets with RC drilling.

A large part of the remaining target area has now been sampled and more results will be released as they come to hand.

A strike length of in excess of 12km of plus 50 parts per billion gold power auger anomalies has been defined by the program to date.

THE BOURSE WHISPERER: Australian junior iron ore play IMX Resources has reached a shipping milestone at its Cairn Hill mine located south east of Coober Pedy in South Australia.

The loading of the Star of Abu Dhabi in Port Adelaide brought the total ore shipped to date by IMX Resources to 500,000 tonnes of ore from the Cairn Hill mine since the commencement of shipping operations in December 2010.

The ore is from the first phase of the Cairn Hill operation, which is expected to deliver 7.9 million tonnes from two pits, generating approximately $250 million of revenue per annum at current prices.

IMX transports the crushed ore via a dedicated haul road to a rail siding at Rankin Dam on the Tarcoola-Darwin railway line for loading onto trains for export through Port Adelaide.
 
As the Cairn Hill project has ramped up, unit costs have reduced with May costs running at $84.50 per tonne FOB.

IMX expects to further reduce costs as the project’s operations are optimised.

The company has also commissioned of a 66-person accommodation village in Coober Pedy for mining personnel and introduced a Coober Pedy Living Allowance.

The allowance roughly equates to an additional $10,000 per year, encouraging employees of both IMX and our mining contractor, Exact Mining Services, to settle in the Coober Pedy community.

The Cairn Hill project employs about 200 South Australians through the mine, road and rail haulage and port operations.

The accommodation village has been built in Coober Pedy to support the local community, some of whom will be employed for catering and housekeeping services. The village accommodates the mine’s fly-in, fly-out staff.

“IMX Resources is very keen to support the population of Coober Pedy,” IMX Resources managing director Duncan McBain said in the company’s ASX announcement.

“That’s why we have employed locally where we can, why we support local sport, education, opal mining and health activities and why we established the Coober Pedy Living Allowance.”

McBain went on to say the mine was achieving all set targets, including loading six trains per week and setting new crushing records.

The company is now exporting two ships per month, approximately 145,000 tonnes.

The 500,000t milestone has been made up of seven shipments of Cairn Hill ore, three of which have set new Port Adelaide cargo records with the current record being a cargo of 78,765t.

Development work for Phase II of the project is currently proceeding as planned.
“Design work for the dry magnetic separation plant is well advanced and mine planning is about to commence,” McBain said.

“The logistics for the transport and export of the ore are mainly in place and the work has commenced for the modification of the existing Mining and Rehabilitation Plan. “

Climate change inquisitor Lord Monckton doesn’t proclaim to be a scientist. All he claims to be is somebody asking questions.

Presenting his views at the AMEC conference in Perth Christopher Monckton, Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley revealed himself to be not only entertaining but also extremely well researched on what has become his pet topic.

“The points I am going to be making to you will be blindingly obvious and one of the features of this debate is that the obvious has been obscured and the obscure has been made to look as though it is obvious,” he began.

Although portrayed as monodynamic by those on the opposite side of the climate change argument, Munckton’s questioning does provide more than one burr under the saddle of his opponents.

“The very heavy cost…of trying to make global warming go away far outstrips…the cost of focused adaptation to any damages that might occur if, and only if, where, and only where, when, and only when, to the extent that global warming actually happens,” he said.

Monckton presented a slide highlighting the global temperature record for the first decade of the 21st century, which he said clearly demonstrated there hasn’t been any global warming for a decade.

This despite, he claimed, there having been record instances in the amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere

“What the IPCC would have expected to happen in this period hasn’t occurred,” he said.

“This does not mean that here is not, no such thing as global warming, or that it has stopped, or that it won’t resume.

“What it does mean is that the rate of global warming is not as fast they are trying to tell us it should be.”

Using IPCC figures of a steep trend of warming of 0.16 degrees Celsius per decade Monckton calculates the rate of warming since 1976 is down to 0.14 degrees Celsius per decade, or since 1950 – 0.12 degrees Celsius per decade.

“Not very alarming; but you see a credibility gap there between what has been happening over the last sixty years and the central estimate of the IPCC of the amount of warming we will have, each decade, over the next ninety years,” Monckton continued.

“It is more than three times greater than what has been observed in the last sixty years.”

Monckton then turned on the Australian Government claiming its credibility gap to be even greater as it attained an estimate of global warming that is fifty per cent higher than that of the supposed consensus.

“They take that fifty per cent higher figure as their central case and that is nearly five times bigger than the rate of warming we have seen over the last sixty years, during which we probably haven’t been much influencing the climate,” he said.

The debate over Monckton’s appearance at AMEC and other speaking engagements around the country has been given just as much air-time and newspaper inches, perhaps more, than the actual climate change debate.

The frustration for his antagonists is most probably the fact he does get a lot of attention, which enables him to get his message across to a wider section of the community.

Perhaps if they want to level the playing field, the climate change does exist side of the debate should seek out an eccentric peer who is equal to Monckton in his ability to research, formulate and present their case.