I was downtown today for the Lund AGM and will answer any specific questions you may have about them. They are drilling the jv with Noront as we speak; 2 targets with one exploratory hole each and then the decision will be made whether or not to proceed. That was essentially stated in the last NR. The Ontario property is certainly more interesting. It is on trend with Hemlo in the same geology. soil geochem is being done with some magnetic .. i think .. drills scheduled for later in 09
Oromin... well let me first say it is an absolute steal here. Period!
I spoke with Chet one on one for about an hour after the Lund meeting was over. He is still excited about what we have found so far and for what the future holds for the company. I feel Chet is not only excited about the future of oromin but I can tell he really loves what he does.
Fundamentally the company is in good shape. We have enough in the treasury to get us through with the drills going ahead full. As was mentioned in the AGM report in August, a senior board listing is still in the works, this will definitely bring a new group of investors to the table. Many still shy away from a venture listing. The new listing will remedy that.
One of the main criticisms I hear is that the company doesn’t do enough with regards to the share price. I am convinced we are doing the right thing by putting money in the drills right now. The share price wouldn't be much higher (if at all) if we spent a bunch of money on the market side and we would have used up valuable meters in drilling.
The market is tough right now, I don’t need to tell any of you that. The share decline has been brutal for sure but we are not out of line with a lot of bigger companies on a percentage basis. The upside is we have a lot more leverage than the bigger companies. Every hole we drill adds ounces and those will be reported in the updated resource calc due out soon.
The Masato deposit has been the focus of recent drilling activity with the bulk of new meters to be added to the resource calc coming from there. There are also new ounces counted at Nikifiri (which was not included in the May calculation). The May calculation consisted of 555 holes with less than half of them being from Masato but Masato was responsible for proportionally more ounces than any other deposit. With the number of holes drilled at Masato, I expect we will be pleased with the updated calculation. The drill cutoff will be everything drilled up to christmas break, the assayers are now less backlogged and we can get results back in less time. We should be including over 900 holes possibly, as many 920, in the update so in the ballpark of 350 new holes. The geologic modeling has been updated to include new information since the last calculation. Drills have been exploring deeper all around the property and have encountered grades that match and exceed pervious results.
Although a bunch of the drilling was focussed on Masato they have also been drilling new meters at nikifiri, maki medina, cloverleaf and several others. The story is far from over; any one of those deposits could overshadow anything we have seen in the past, after all the best place to look for a new mine is next to an old one. We have several new mines here and we are still looking!
There will be a drilling update as well as new assays reported probably next week. (but dont hold me to that).
Santa Rosa is still slated to drill the end of the first quarter. ALL signatures have been collected, there are no more needed and thus no more to slow us down! The environmental is done, all that is left to do is secure drill rigs, pipe well heads etc. There are new tax incentives in place in Argentina; I think it was called the Petro Plus Program. It is an incentive program to find new reserves of oil within Argentina. Basically this will alleviate the $43 price cap we have been under thus far up to about a 35% increase. I will look into this in greater depth in the coming weeks.
Basic geology review on Santa Rosa: There are source rocks in the area, migration has occurred to the west with proven production in the billions of barrels. There was a test hole done off crest of the dome proving the presence of hydrocarbons to the east. It also showed a thick cap seal and reservoir quality sandstones. So we have a source, a migration and a structural trap with a thick seal. All we need to do is punch a 1200 meter hole and we will know very quickly if there is oil in the dome!
Please feel free to ask any questions you have. If I can’t answer them, I encourage you to call the office. There was a lot of information given to me and I want to thank Chet, David and the rest of the Oromin team for a great update! I hope all of us are weathering this storm. I have great confidence things will be better in the New Year!
Warmest regards as always
