quarterly report out, page-6

A quick appraisal of the quarterly.

Copper production marginally below my expectation. Costs in line but higher av price of copper in Q2 meant earnings from copper up over 30% from Q1.

Zinc the big surprise for me - production well above what I had expected. Costs steady enough as was price. Earnings from zinc a 40% improvement on Q1.

By my calcs the second best earning quarter the OXR has ever had (the best being Q4 2006) adding $190m to OXR's already bulging cash coffers - cash is king and OXR has plenty of it. All said not a bad result - I think coloured by the issue with cost of gold production at Sepon. A big disappointment - production in line with my expectation but a cost blow out from $649/oz to $708/oz (shared evenly between higher operating costs and ramped up depreciation) has eroded profits on gold production for the quarter and in fact by my calcs gold production actually cost the OX money. Not a great result on gold production.

However, PH remains on Schedule and some positive exploration results to boot. Quite surprised at the negative reaction of the market - don't think it served that bearing in mind presently what a miniscule part of OXR's revenue comes from gold production. Cu and Zn performance overshadowed the gold issue by some margin I think - a lot to be positive about.