Pic: Getty
Mining
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early Monday, March 7.
Shares of coking coal hopeful MR1 climbed to great heights this morning on news that the Alberta Government has designated Montem’s Tent Mountain Mine as an “advanced coal project”.
The Coal Policy Committee had been reviewing reports and recommendations in line with the Alberta 1976 Coal Development Policy and as released by the Government of Alberta on March 4.
It has now been reported that Alberta’s advanced coal projects are unaffected by the additional exploration and development restrictions implemented as a result of the Committee’s recommendations.
This means MR1 can continue advancing towards the restart of the existing coal mine and the transition of the mine to a renewable energy complex (TM-REX) where works “will continue for the remainder of the first half of 2022” until the economic analysis of TM-REX is available.
The TM-REX project will see the combination of a 100-megawatt wind farm with 320MW of pumped hydro energy storage and a 100MW green hydrogen electrolyser to provide the Canadian state with power grid stability as it phases out coal.
MR1 had $4m cash in the bank at the end of the December quarter.
Copper-gold focused ASX-lister Duke Exploration has received the results from the first two holes of the latest five-hole diamond drilling program completed at the end of January at the Quorn and Isens prospects within the Bundarra Gold Project in central Queensland.
Zones of copper with “highly encouraging” grades were intersected, such as with hole BNDD001 at the Quorn prospect which passed through a broad interval of altered breccia and visible copper oxides returning 15.4m at 1.07% copper and 9.52 g/t silver from 32m.
At Isen, drill hole BND002 intersected two significant zones of copper mineralisation within sulphide veins, hitting 3.72m at 0.46% copper and 4.26 g/t silver from 38.94m.
DEX managing director said the assay results – particularly the thickness and grade are “significant in themselves”.
“With the follow up 46- hole reverse circulation drilling campaign currently underway, these mineralised targets will be further tested for scale along with the other recently announced primary targets,” he said.
DEX had $9.03m cash in bank at the end of the December quarter, placing it in a strong position to carry out planned exploration and work programs.
The ~$456 market cap company of SMR is up big time this morning after releasing news that it has completed the institutional component of its 7 for 3 underwritten pro-rata accelerated renounceable offer, with retail rights of new shares in Stanmore at an offer price of $1.10 per new share.
Its institutional entitlement offer represents the first stage of Stanmore’s A$694 million (~US$506 million) capital raising announced on March 3 – which closed at 5pm (Sydney time) that day following the raise of A$656 million.
SMR managing director Marcelo Matos said the “overwhelming support” for the offer from both existing shareholders and new investors is an endorsement of the “value of the proposition offered by the BMC acquisition and the enlarged Stanmore business.”
Back in November 2021, Stockhead reported SMR was on the ‘cusp’ of a transformational purchase of BHP’s BMC coal mines, in a deal understood to be worth up to $2 billion.
At the time, the junior coal miner emerged as the surprise frontrunner in the hotly contested race for BHP’s 80% stake in the Poitrel and South Walker Creek mines in Queensland’s Bowen Basin, which dragged on for over a year.
Stanmore is primarily owned by Singapore’s Golden Energy and Resources, chaired by Indonesian billionaire Fuganto Widjaja, a member of the Widjaja family’s Sinar Mas dynasty.
South American lithium brine play AGY has confirmed that the work at its brine systems have been 100% completed, as part of the development of the 2,000tpa lithium carbonate production operation at Rincon in Salta Province, Argentina.
These works comprised the expansion of the pumping station and construction of associated equipment, piping installation, plant settling ponds, and establishing the brine production wells into the brine operations circuit.
The remaining construction works include completing the process plant, equipment and associated installations, and site construction, which are progressing on budget and schedule.
Upon completion of the construction phase works, the plant commissioning, production test-works, and ramp-up to 2,000tpa operations will follow immediately thereafter.
(Up on no news)
Up this morning on no news is platinum group metals and gold-base metals explorer POD.
Last week, the company enlarged the exploration target at its Parks Reef PGM Project in Western Australia from 70Mt to 75Mt at a grade ranging between 1.2 g/t to 1.6 g/t 3E PGM, containing between 2.7 and 3.8 million ounces of combined platinum, palladium, and gold.
Podium said at the time it hopes to drill test the exploration target block, beginning in March, with a 10,000m stage-1 reverse circulation (RC) drilling plan.
The program is designed to complete the first pass of the 200m spaced drilling and test the reef to 100m below surface in areas where previous programs had been unable to complete holes.
Mining
Mining
Mining
Get the latest Stockhead news delivered free to your inbox.
