News

November 24, 2008

Condor Is A Good Name For A Company Prepared To Pick Over Old Bones

By Charles Wyatt

When Condor Resources listed on Aim in May 2006 it raised £4.9 million at 10p per share. Its focus was on Nicaragua and El Salvador in Central America, where it had exploration licences. Fast forward to the dog days of 2008 and the shares are now 0.3p each and all activity has been put on hold in El Salvador while the Ministry of the Economy undertakes a Strategic Environmental Evaluation Study into the benefits of mining to the country. And as a result of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources ceasing to issue environmental permits to allow trenching and drilling activities, Condor has not been permitted to drill on its key projects. Political risk is a constant worry for such companies - as those in the Democratic Republic of Congo are finding right now - and the only consolation is that politics have a limited time span, while deposits remain in the ground until mined. Condor is therefore hanging onto its licences and hoping that sanity will prevail.

In the meantime a number of independent estimates have raised the global resources held by the company to JORC compliant 891,000 ounces of gold and 22.3 million ounces of silver within just two project areas. As Mark Child, non–executive chairman of Condor points out, however, around 80 per cent of these resources are in El Salvador, and the balance in Nicaragua is split among three small projects. The result is that these resources are not really worth anything in the current financial climate...