New life for Northern Territory copper/cobalt project awaits translation review
Monday, 9 April, 2007
by Ross Louthean
Mine Web
At the close of trading on the Australian Stock Exchange before Easter Compass said a translation of the joint venture documents into Chinese had been completed.
"In any subsequent event of conflict of meaning, the English language version will prevail, with the governing law being that of New South Wales (Compass is based in Sydney)," Compass said. "Hence it is important for HNC to thoroughly review the documents in both languages."
Compass has traditionally been a conservative company and the advancement of its deal with HNC has not gained a wide media profile.
The plan is for the documents to be signed in Darwin with Federal Government, NT Government, traditional Aboriginal landowners and the Central Land Council, along with dignitaries from China's Central and Provincial governments.
The Browns Oxide project gained Major Project Facilitation Status in August last year which helped accelerate the foreign investment provisions for HNC to acquire a 50% stake.
HNC will provide an advance facility of $A40 million ($US32.77 M) upon signing and an additional $A32 M ($US26.21 M) upon plant commissioning, should that occur before the joint venture commences.
The only likely obstacle in the way of a smooth passage of the joint venture was cited by Compass as the stamp duty assessment by the NT Government (which has not proven popular with other parties). However, Compass raised this as "an unlikely event."
The plan is to commission an oxide process plant by mid 2007 which will treat 1.3 million tonnes per annum to produce 10,000 tpa (22 million lbs) of copper cathode and 1,000 tpa (22 M lb) of cobalt and 700 tpa (1.5 M lbs) as cobalt and nickel chemicals. The mine life is projected as 10 years.
Compass also has plans to mine the associated lead-copper-cobalt-nickel sulphide deposit at Browns, which has a projected life of 20 years.
Compass also said in its latest announcement that it was also a successful uranium explorer and has a JORC defined resource of 14.5 M lbs of yellowcake.
"Compass holds some of the most prospective uranium exploration ground in Australia," the company said. The Rum Jungle field (in the Browns region) was site of the first uranium mines in Australia that operated from the 1950-1970s.
The company said a scoping study completed in March indicated that the Mount Fitch uranium project was viable at a mining rate of 2 Mtpa for 10 years.
In its December quarter report the company reported intersecting a radiometric anomaly in weathered dolomite at about 45 metres depth in a hole 700m north of the existing Mt Fitch resource.
A report on Compass late last year by Adelaide Stockbroking firm Baker Young said the oxide resource at Browns represented only about 10% of the total resource inventory at this NT project and that the total in ground value was about $A18 billion ($US14.74 billion).
Baker Young said that as well as a lot of regional exploration upside Compass stood to gain $A90 million ($US73.74 million) in cash after the Hunan payments.