European shareholders predict 2000% rise in Bougainville share price
Blair Price Tuesday, 27 May 2008
A GROUP of shareholders in Bougainville Copper believe the company’s stocks could be worth up to $A30 if it restarts operations at its Panguna copper, gold and silver mine.
Panguna Copper Mine, Bougainville PNG
Bougainville Copper, an Australian-listed company and Rio Tinto subsidiary, shut down operations at the massive Panguna operation in 1989 due to political and military unrest.
Despite the mine’s long hiatus, the European Shareholders of Bougainville Copper - an internet-based group of European minority shareholders – said they expect high returns on their Bougainville investment in the medium and long term.
With shares in Bougainville last trading at $1.30, the shareholder group’s projections have the company’s shares rising between $20 and $30, or 1538% and 2308% in value.
The shareholder group’s projections were made public in a series of written questions put forward to Bougainville and answered in the company’s recent annual general meeting.
Bougainville responded to the question of where the company sees its share price heading, should Panguna resume mining, by saying the board has not made any predictions on the share price.
The renegotiation of the Bougainville Copper Agreement and the establishment of mining powers will be discussed at the next meeting of the PNG and Autonomous Bougainville Government Joint Supervisory Board, set for late June.
Since Bougainville chairman Peter Taylor said he detected a mood of reconciliation between Bougainvilleans and the ABG, the Panguna Landowners Association has also called for a return to mining.
Also apparently increasing the possibility of a return to mining at Panguna is the move by Rio to send in its Technology and Innovation Group to carry out an order of magnitude study to look at the annual production of the mine in a range of 20-50 million tonnes per year. The study is expected to be completed in August.
According to Taylor the ore body at Panguna is only partially mined with large available reserves remaining.
In the mine’s last year of operation estimated mill feed reached 691Mt at 0.40% copper and 0.47 grams per tonne gold.
With mining operations suspended since 1989, Bougainville has relied on its investment portfolio which had 13.7% growth for 2007.
BOC Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: LT Buy Disclosure: Held
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