Gold Digger: The only thing glittering in this beat up market
Mining
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Gold has hit yet another Aussie dollar record as markets take a single-day battering very close to what was witnessed during the GFC.
The price of the safe haven metal punched through $US1700, touching $2600 in Aussie dollar terms, on Monday after a mass sell-out of the oil and equity markets.
Investors fled from oil markets after Russia refused to make the production cuts recommended by OPEC, and Saudi Arabia responded by initiating a price war.
Paul Robinson, managing director at CRU, told Kitco that he expected gold would be the asset to own in the near-term as markets were still a few weeks away from full-on panic.
He said European and North American markets still didn’t fully understand how the virus would impact economic growth.
Robinson also noted that the coronavirus was creating massive demand destruction in oil and natural gas markets.
SMALL CAP HIGHLIGHTS
On a dire day for the ASX, there were a few bright spots.
GREAT BOULDER RESOURCES (ASX:GBR) +45%
Market Cap $5m
Great Boulder’s flagship project isn’t a gold project, but the company does have exposure to the precious metal via its new Whiteheads gold project, about 45km north of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.
GBR’s share price has been gaining over the past week, closing higher again yesterday on the back of news it had started drilling a large nickel sulphide target at its Mt Carlon project in WA.
Market Cap $244m
De Grey’s shares have been heading north ever since it revealed a new gold discovery at the Hemi prospect, part of the 1.7moz Mallina project in the Pilbara, back in mid-February.
Last Thursday the company said drilling at Hemi continued to hit “some of the best discovery intersections” De Grey had seen – including 93m grading 3.3 grams per tonne (g/t), just 39m from surface.
WEST AFRICAN RESOURCES (ASX:WAF) +17%
Market Cap $540m
West African Resources is aiming to be producing from its Sanbrado gold project in Burkina Faso around mid-2020.
Burkina Faso is Africa’s third largest exploration jurisdiction for gold and the continent’s fourth largest producer.
Proving just how gold-rich the nation is, West African previously reported hitting grades of up to 860g/t and expects its Sanbrado mine to be a highly profitable operation producing as much as 301,000oz in the first year.
The company went into a trading halt yesterday pending an update on the commissioning of the mill at the Sanbrado project.
ORA GOLD (ASX:OAU) +11%
Market Cap $12m
Between 1908 and 1915, the 21.7g/t Crown Prince underground mine produced 20,178oz from two strongly mineralised quartz veins to a depth of 90m below surface.
A scoping study released in December last year for the Crown Prince open pit development – part of the Garden Gully tenements near Meekatharra in WA — envisages an operation mining 177,472 tonnes at 4.1g/t to produce about 22,444 ounces of gold.
At the current gold price of over $2,500, that would net Ora Gold nearly $58m.
