oh boy, page-10

Deiadiva,

I posted regarding the possible need to drill to keep the tenement. My comment regarding the article in the Australian was the cavalier attitude to preserving cash. The spend rate could have been arrested long ago knowing the due date on the loan.

The loan was due in full, but the size of a raising and impact could have been mitigated by cash on hand. There are a million creative options including a raising from all shareholders at an arbitrary figure at or above 11c i.e. above the Sentient Notes level. You could also do a share buyback of $5m at market then enter into negotiations with Sentient to drive the price up. Of course the Loans terms might precluded most options but I think they just ensure issue of shares or further notes to Sentient to maintain their relative value and ownership level on any raising.

At the end of the day extra cash requires the support of other major holders who simply may not be interested. Unfortunately I don't think the company looked at options involving the full shareholder base. More's the pity.

No-one is what they seem on the share market, Quantum started the share decline by dumping on market, declaring it in hindsight to the TSX but not the ASX as it occurred. Marengo never reported it. Unfortunately the share market is a game of poker, you can simply be out raised in a bluff.

The people of PNG have the right to be suspicious of Deep Sea Tailings Disposal but we don't know what kind of treatment it might undergo and how deep it would be pumped. It has come up again as its probably cheaper and would only be formalized if they knew it would be approved. Ok Tedi was awful but was't closed as its the lifeblood of the PNG economy. The government simply couldn't afford to lose it. If DSTD is shown to be less polluting in the long term than a tailings dam and gains PNG government endorsement then I doubt Quantum would object. But the decision is really in Sentient's court.

MRN trading on the Canadian exchange has never really operated normally. Its traded more in blocks and on most days really just to give the appearance of maintaining price parity with movements on the ASX. In other words we haven't really seen any trading as a result of redomocile.

Like Zorba, sometimes when everything is crashing down around you, all you can do is dance.