"Thank you, Rocky, it's always a pleasure ta have a chance to get away from my other time and space musings. The words "No Brainer" is quite a statement, and it means things will be so obvious, as to no thought required.
So, to summarize, I will outline what we do know of this situation in the McFauld’s Lowlands or the so called "Ring Of Fire (ROF)".
This area was one of the hottest mining speculative areas for the last couple of years. Noront Resource (NOT) hit a very rich drill hole in 2007. They uncovered a rich magmatic source of base metals, such as Nickel, Zinc, Lead, Copper and precious metals such as Gold, Silver, Platinum, Paladium, Rhodium (and a host of other rare earth metals). A staking and drilling frenzy followed. More magmatic metals were found including Chromite beds. The nature of Chromite is that it is heavy and settles in magmatic situations on the bedrock in bed layers or stratas.
Step back a few years, this area was explored by Spider (SPQ) and KWG Resources (KWG) in a Joint Venture. They had previously uncovered a few kimberlite sites with diamonds and some Volcanic Massive Sulphide sites with Copper, Lead and Zinc. In fact Debeers has just opened a $1 Billion dollar diamond processing facility at their Victor Diamond camp which is just about 60 kilometers away from the ROF.
Also uncovered by the SPQ/KWG JV was a curious hit on something, that nobody knew anything about --over 40% chromite over a considerable length.
So along comes the 2008 financial implosion, and mining share prices are destroyed. Governments everywhere are supporting and injecting cash into their economies. The worst of the downturn may now be over in April 2009. Mineral prices and mining share prices may be pointing the way up to recovery.
Noront, the company was taken over by opportunists and has ousted the founder Nemis. Noront declares that they will be concentrating in 2009 on delineating their Chromite horizons.
Cliffs Natural Resources (CLF), an aggressive Cleveland based iron ore and coal miner steps in, and buy 19% of KWG. Now obviously, CLF have a stated intention of diversifying into Chromite, which is a component of stainless steel. The other world suppliers of Chromite are Russia, South Africa and India, far away and not your most stable source of supply. How handy to have a Chromite source right next door in Canada. CLF is vigorously in discussions with other ROF players. CLF have also made inquiries into railroad availability and electricity supply for a mining operations. CLF's VP of Acquisitions sits on KWG's Board of Directors. CLF stock prices are still perilously low, at a 85% discount from 2008 highs.
NOT have announced that they are drilling for more Chromite.
FWR have announced that they have hit more Chromite.
SPQ/KWG/FWR are now announcing that gravity and geophysics have delineated a strike length of 1.1 kilometers for their “Big Daddy” Chromite beds.
What is obvious from this; bearing in mind that I am not a geologist; and it is all relative anyways:
1. Chromite is used in stainless and other high strength steels.
2. Steel is indispensible in the modern world and there are no substitutes.
3. China uses 3 times the amount of steel than the US.
4. The demand from China, India and Asia for steel will not go away.
5. The growth of China, India, Asia and the third world is inevitable; in fact CLF uses this same word in their investor presentations.
6. There appears to be a large Chromite source in the ROF.
7. Chromite is deposited in beds, and these deposits run for considerable distances.
8. The Chromite found so far is rich and high in Chrome %.
9. The Chromite beds found so far are relatively thick.
10. The Chromite beds found so far are near surface; allowing for easy extraction.
11. The value of the Chromite found so far has been variously estimated at over $100Billion; but remember that these are not hard numbers; we shall just say Billions in value.
12. There are many world miner/chrome/steel players just monitoring the ROF situation; but they have to bide their time until markets recover and their share prices recover.
So I did not have to strain my brain at all for these observations, as they are patently obvious to anybody.
In conclusion then, I will say that a Chromite mine is in the future for the Ring of Fire. Just remember that this is mining business and that anything is possible; not like in the world of math, where 1 plus 1 is always two; well it is all relative, anyways.”
