News

August 20, 2008

Citadel Resources Stakes Some Big Claims In Saudi Arabia, Proving That There’s Life After Oxiana For Owen Hegarty

By Our Man in Oz

Older investors might remember a young chap visiting London in the 1990s to spruik a story about a copper/gold discovery in the almost forgotten South East Asian country of Laos. A few listened, but not many. Pity, really because those who did made fortunes. That youngster was Owen Hegarty. The project was called Sepon and his company was Oxiana. Roll forward a decade or so and the young man isn’t so young any more, and Sepon ended up making Oxiana one of Australia’s most successful miners with a share price that ran from a few cents to more than A$3.00. A few months ago Oxiana disappeared into the merged OZ Minerals, but out the side door crept Hegarty, not in an official capacity yet, but with his sights set on replicating the Oxiana copper-gold story, this time in an even more interesting country: Saudi Arabia.

The vehicle chosen for the soft return of Hegarty is Citadel Resources, a company which has its foot on a portfolio of prospects in Saudi, including a 50 per cent stake in the Jabal Sayid copper-gold project to the north-east of the Red Sea city of Jeddah. In geological terms this deposit can be described as “a beauty”. It was largely drilled out in the 1970s, by the French mineral survey organisation, BRGM, on contract to the Saudi government, and then simply handed back, complete with a...