THE BOURSE WHISPERER: Australian rare earths company Arafura Resources has completed a deal with OneSteel Manufacturing, a subsidiary of OneSteel Limited, to purchase approximately 800 hectares of land at Whyalla in South Australia.

The land, which is located within the current OneSteel Whyalla landholding, is to be the site of Arafura’s proposed rare earths processing complex.

The contract incorporates easements for the location of infrastructure.

Settlement is subject to final approval of the change in ownership by relevant government agencies.

Arafura and OneSteel signed an Exclusivity Deed late last year to negotiate a formal sale agreement.

Since that time Arafura has been given access to the site in order to undertake detailed engineering and environmental studies.

The company recently received EIS Guidelines relating to development approvals for the Rare Earths Complex at the site.

“Today’s signing marks a very important milestone in the development of the Nolans rare earths project, and helps to cement Arafura’s position as one of the very few near-term producers of rare earths,” Arafura Resources managing director & chief executive officer Steve Ward said in the company’s ASX announcement.

“Whyalla is a key part of Arafura’s business model which is to add value to resources in Australia and produce rare earth oxides for users worldwide using production processes developed in Australia.”

Arafura selected the Whyalla site following a comprehensive Australia-wide assessment.

The company identified many of the characteristics it deemed necessary for the development and operation of a substantial minerals processing and chemical facility at the site.

These included availability of services, close proximity to transport infrastructure, and access to a skilled workforce.

“The Whyalla community and the South Australian and Northern Territory governments have been very supportive of our plans to deliver a project that will place Australia well and truly on the global rare earths industry map. I look forward to Arafura being a member of the Whyalla community for many years to come,” Ward said.

THE BOURSE WHISPERER: The regular game of musical chairs continues within the boardrooms across the resources industry. The Whisperer pokes his head down the corridors of power to take a quick look at some of the chairs to have recently been vacated and to find out which ones have been filled:

Callabonna Uranium MD steps down

Stephen McGaughey has stepped down as managing director of Callabonna Uranium due to family reasons.

The current director of operations Michael Raetz will be takeing up the reigns until the company is able to appoint a new managing director.

Mike Raetz is one of the founding directors of Callabonna.

The company’s project team remains in place, including a business development group that will include McGaughey and two leading consultants, Dr Chris Blain and Dr Martin Hughes.

Appointment of managing director and CEO

Heron Resources has appointed Jonathan Shellabear as managing director and chief executive officer, effective from 1 August 2011.

Shellabear has experience in the Australian and international mining industries having held senior corporate and investment banking roles with NM Rothschild & Sons (Australia) Limited and Deutsche Bank.

Most recently he was the managing director and CEO of Dominion Mining, a position he held until February 2011 following the completion of the agreed takeover of Dominion by Kingsgate Consolidated.

Chief Financial Officer appointed

Universal Coal announced the appointment of Daryl Edwards as chief financial officer.

Prior to joining Universal Coal, Edwards was CFO for Botswana-based coal exploration and development company Asenjo Energy, a joint venture between Aquila Resources, Sentula Mining and Jonah Capital BVI.

Other previous positions include financial and commercial manager for Vincemus Investment, a large South African multinational diversified company in the transport, automotive and property management industry; he has also been a senior internal auditor at BHP Billiton.

THE DRILL SERGEANT: ASX-listed gold and molybdenum exploration play Catalyst Metals has intersected further high-grade gold mineralisation at its Four Eagles gold project in central Victoria.

The results come from aircore and diamond drilling programs carried out by the company between March and May this year.

The best intersection Catalyst received was 9.0 metres at 7.1 grams per tonne gold from 75m, including 3.0m at 15.3g/t gold from 81 metres and 3.0 metres at 5.5g/t gold from 75 metres.

Other results returned intersections within the 0.5 to 1.4 g/t gold range.

Together with arsenic geochemistry and quartz vein distribution Catalyst has been able to delineate at least three parallel zones of gold mineralisation at the Four Eagles gold project.

“The 2011 aircore drill program has identified at least three parallel gold trends with high grade gold mineralisation intersected on each zone,” Catalyst Metals technical director Bruce Kay said in the company’s ASX announcement.

“Gold is mostly associated with quartz veins and assay variability suggests that it is quite nuggety in character, similar to that encountered in the Bendigo goldfield.

“For this reason, assays above 0.5 grams per tonne gold are considered very significant as our drilling has shown that these values are often in close proximity to high grade gold intersections.

“All drilling other than two diamond drillholes and two aircore holes has been vertical so it is highly encouraging that we have intersected so many vertical quartz veins with high grade gold values at such wide drill spacing.”

Catalyst will be attempting to have all data from the drilling program compiled and interpreted before the end of July.

The company said its next stage of exploration will most likely involve angled reverse circulation (RC) or diamond drilling to test the extent of high grade gold mineralisation along these trends.

A second stage of the aircore program to test the remaining 20 kilometres of strike length of the gold trend on Catalyst tenements will also recommence before the end of the December 2011 quarter.

THE BOURSE WHISPERER: Australian geothermal company Greenearth Energy has closed negotiations on an exclusive, worldwide Research and Licence Agreement for a revolutionary technology with the ability to convert CO2 emissions into fuel.

The deal has been struck with Yeda Research and Development, the commercial arm of Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science.

Greenearth will assign the technology to a new subsidiary company, NewCo2Fuels.

Greenearth said the deal has it taking the initiative in the Carbon Tax debate by investing in the development of this new technology.

“Victoria’s energy mix is dominated by brown coal generation accounting for more than 90 per cent of the State’s power and over 50 per cent of its CO2 emissions,” Greenearth said in its ASX announcement.

“Greenearth Energy’s CO2 to fuel conversion technology has the potential to reduce emissions substantially utilising low cost generation facilities and resources while at the same time potentially offsetting substantial future power cost increases.”

The technology has been developed in Israel by Professor Jacob Karni and his group at the Weizmann Institute of Science and proven in laboratory trials.

It involves a new method of using concentrated solar energy for the dissociation of carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide and oxygen.

According to Greenearth Energy the same system can also dissociate water to hydrogen and oxygen, at the same time it dissociates the CO2.

The carbon monoxide, or the mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen (called Syngas) can then be used as gaseous fuel, for example in power plants, or converted to a liquid fuel such as methanol, which has the potential to be stored, transported and used in motor vehicles.

“Greenearth Energy’s subsidiary company NewCo2Fuels Pty Ltd will fund the development of the project (via NewCO2Fuels) from the laboratory into the field,” Greenearth Energy managing director Mark Miller said in the announcement.

“Research will be performed under the supervision of Professor Karni, utilizing the Weizmann Institute’s world class solar tower and solar field facilities to generate fuel with the energy input being concentrated solar energy.”

Greenearth will fund the initial $US5.5 million stage of the project through a combination of a placement in the company to Erdi Fuels for 10% of the company’s issued capital and an option payment by Erdi Fuels.

“The option is for the acquisition of the shares of NewCo2Fuels, the licensee (following assignment) of the worldwide rights to the technology, should the project prove commercially viable, in return for which Greenearth Energy and its subsidiaries will receive a substantial capital sum and an ongoing royalty stream from future product sales,” Miller continued.

“We have been working with Professor Karni and the Weizmann Institute’s commercialisation arm Yeda for the past 12 months to bring this project collaboration to fruition.

“We believe the potential to turn our global CO2 challenge into an opportunity by way of producing commercially viable fuel from emissions represents literally a paradigm shift in the way society views and deals with one of our greatest challenges.

“We believe that this technology has the potential to be a viable alternative to CO2 sequestration and shift our thinking and approach to global CO2 emissions”.

THE DRILL SERGEANT: Recent infill drilling carried out by ASX-listed junior gold play Southern Cross Goldfields has delivered a series of high-grade intersections.

The drilling was carried out on the Golden Orb deposit, part of the company’s 100% owned Marda gold project in Western Australia.

The company said the latest results have strengthened the resource extension and mining potential for Golden Orb at depth.

The recent deep drilling intersections at Golden Orb include:

Southern Cross also said the new results demonstrate continuity with one drill hole being located 20 metres east of historic drilling, which intersected 6 metres at 6.3 grams per tonne gold, including 3m at 9.7 g/t gold.

The second new hole was located 20 metres east of other historic drill holes that intersected 3m at 15.8 g/t gold and 7m at 5.4 g/t gold respectively.

The recent intersections compliment near surface, high-grade intersections previously announced by the company.

Southern Cross considers this to indicate Golden Orb’s potential as open pit high-grade feed source for the proposed 400,000 tonne per annum processing facility at Marda Central.

“We wanted to demonstrate the resource extension and mining potential at depth at Golden Orb with this aspect of the current drilling program and it has delivered on both counts,” Southern Cross Goldfields managing director Glenn Jardine said in the company’s ASX announcement.

“Our previously announced near surface drilling results marked Golden Orb as a potential early high grade open pit feed source.

“The results of this new deeper drilling now point to high grade underground mining potential as well.”

Southern Cross will now incorporate the results into a revised JORC Mineral Resource estimate to be undertaken once all assay results are received.

Golden Orb forms part of the company’s gold production and consolidation strategy in the region.

Southern Cross is currently conducting a feasibility study into the establishment of a 400,000tpa modular gold plant at Marda to treat ore from its Marda and Southern Cross deposits.