21st Century Prospecting … still in business at $45/bbl

by Robert Munday, Ph.D., P.Geol.

Robert J. Munday is making an official disclaimer: he will be making forward looking investment strategy statements in the followings to which he assumes no legal responsibility whatsoever.

Robert considers himself a prospector – which is more business than science and engineering. He identifies a place/project/concept, where large quantities of money will be spent in expectations of multiples in return. And just as important as identification of this prospect is the establishment of a funding source to explore the prospect.

Robert has been in this business as a prospector for 50 years or more and has been closely involved in investments where $100s of millions, maybe $billions rewards resulted, e.g. McArthur River Uranium and Wordsworth Oil being two of them. Other projects failed to deliver; coal liquefaction and in-situ bitumen upgrading as examples.

Looking into the 21st Century Robert sees other prospects just waiting for a motivated ‘Prospector’ to get his teeth into them, such as robotic mining (jet-boring) as is presently being tested by Cameco at Cigar Lake. Others are the re-opening of the DRC copper-cobalt concentrations as Glencore-Xstrata (Lon:GLEN); Katanga Mining (TSX:KAT) et al are claiming. The stock exchanges are also good places for individuals to ‘prospect’.

For us MEG’rs, Robert sees a looming alternate to mines as we think of them – it is called recycling. He sees this increasing everywhere. Robert has just bought solid copper ‘recycle’ pans in Mexico – a 3lb pan for 200 pesos (about $US14 at $4.5/lb). The spot price of copper right now is ~$2.5/lb. This pan had been fabricated, transported and had a sales margin. To Robert it looks that recycled copper is firmly established.

Precision Cast Parts (DOW:PCP) has a long disclaimer about how its Co, W, Sn, Ta is obtained from scrap of unknown origin … but that’s where it’s from!

Cameco (TSX:CCO) is in Joint Venture with PhosEnergy (private Australian) to extract uranium from phosphoric acid streams of phosphate fertilizer production plants at $20/lb and 400,000 lb/year potential which will hugely impact underground uranium mining (Linkedin)

Amongst all the above, Robert also sees an amazing improvement in technology which will keep pressuring resource values downwards: Oil recovered by Hz drilling, targets identified by GIS, handheld XRF, miniature core drills, Quads, data stored in massive on-line access banks, cloud data recovery, digital cameras, GPS, Earth etc. … and VISA, PayPal, eBay, Alibaba. Add in redrawing of political boundaries, as ISIS is doing right now, and who knows where we’ll be when our new graduates get established as prospectors.

**Robert will bring some nice samples to go with the talk with massive gold and silver from ex-Russian mines

Robert J. Munday is a registered geoscientist with APEGA and APEGS. He has a B.Sc. in Geology from London University 1966 and a Ph.D. in Science (Geology) from Newcastle University 1970.

Presenter’s Bio:

Bob spent 7 years as a Government Geologist with the DMR (Department of Mineral Resources) in Saskatchewan 1970-77 before migrating to the bright lights of Calgary, which led by various meandering routes to McArthur River Uranium and Wordsworth SE-Saskatchewan oil.