56th Minesite Forum - 9th December 2008

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56th Minesite Mining Forum

Tuesday 9th December 2008

Bishopsgate and Chancery Rooms
Andaz Hotel, Liverpool Street EC1
(Formerly Great Eastern Hotel)

Registration - 9am
Presentations beginning at 9.30am

Something to lighten up the dark days of the end of 2008. For the last couple of years we have invited well known speakers to our Christmas Forum - last year Jim Slater, well known UK financier and investor: in 1996 Jim Rogers the US commodities guru. This year it is Ian Plimer, professor of Geology in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Adelaide University who is a prominent critic of the theory of human-induced global warming and has published over 120 academic papers and six books, but not all on this subject. His latest book, ‘Heaven and Earth (Global Warming; The Missing Science)’ will be published in the spring, but he is coming over from Australia to give attendees at the Forum a preview.

As might be gathered from the title of this book Ian is critical of greenhouse gas politics and argues that extreme environmental changes are inevitable and unavoidable. He suggests that meteorologists have a huge amount to gain from climate change research, and that they have narrowed the climate change debate to the atmosphere. Ian claims that the truth is more complex. Major points in Ian’s argument is that there is no correlation between carbon dioxide levels and temperature; that only 0.1 % of carbon dioxide emissions are due to human activities; and that 96% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapour. He affirms that the current theory of human-induced global warming is not in accord with history, archaeology, geology or astronomy and must be rejected, and that promotion of this theory as science is fraudulent, and that the current alarmism on climate change is not science.

As Ian is a lively and entertaining speaker, this should all go down well with all those fed up with being told by politicans that increased taxes in the name of global warming are for our own good. Institutions such as the Financial Times, the BBC and the CBI, who appear to have swallowed the fashionable global warming theory hook, line and sinker, would do well to send representatives to our Christmas Forum to hear the counter-argument from the good Professor.

Next up will be the Banker with Bounce. Jonathan Beardsworth was head of mining at Standard Bank before deciding that he needed a real life. Now chief executive of Metals Exploration, he is one of the few bankers, or chief executives for that matter, capable of amusing an audience while imparting the necessary knowledge about his company. Metals Exploration announced the conclusions of a positive scoping/pre-feasibility study on its Runruno gold –molybdenum project in the Philippines earlier this month. The study was based on an open pit mining operation and biological leaching using the proven BIOX® process combined with conventional carbon in leach treatment to recover gold to doré bullion and molybdenum to a saleable molybdenum product. Production is expected to average 183,000 ozs gold and 1.7 million lbs moly production per annum with average annual cash operating costs of US$285 per oz gold (net of moly credits at US$20/lb). The capital cost, which includes the moly circuit, is estimated at US$208 million.

Rusoro is a company that has intrigued Minews for some time. The name clearly stands for Russian Gold, but in this case it is gold in Venezuela run by Russians. This is Hugo Chavez territory and he does not make it particularly easy for any resource companies to operate there, particularly from North America. Russians, however, are a different matter and Mr Andre Agapov and his family, founders of Rusoro, will confirm that relations with the Venezuelan government have always been cordial. Last year Rusoro consolidated its position in the country by acquiring all of Gold Fields' Venezuelan assets, including the producing Choco 10 mine situated only 4kms down the road from Rusoro’s Increible 6 gold project. Chavez’s latest sally has been to take over over the giant Las Cristinas gold project operated by Canadian miner Crystallex. Venezuela's mining ministry said it aimed to start a mine at one of Latin America's largest deposits next year. More than likely Rusoro will be asked to participate as it has the expertise and that may be one of the reasons Peter Hambro Mining has taken a strategic investment to diversify its interests out of Russia.

Another company has yet to confirm if it will present. Attendees will also await notification of the experts on our investment panel who will give their view on the outlook for mining in 2009. To save embarrassment we will not ask any of those who participated last Christmas as they might be asked why they did not anticipate the Crash in mining stocks that subsequently occurred. Controversy is always of interest, but it fails to happen when all sing from the same hymn sheet.

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