Could be that, but could also be that they just haven't finished the development and processed the ore from the different areas of Stacpoole to have a releaseable plan yet for if they are going to bulk trial Stacpoole and when.
I think it's a matter of completeness of what they said they were going to do. They were development mining from 4 points in Stacpoole and to assess the best location for the bulk trial based on development results. If the dev mining isn't finished or the processing of presumably 4 ore SPs isn't completed, there isn't really much they can advise us of, because it's operation according to plan until that point.
Minjar are an operator, so unlikely they would want to wait for ages as a spare wheel while MS & ROD are awaiting plans re. what to do with them. They have maintained an interest rather than walking away as someone suggested; my reasoning on this is that if they thought the place was complete waste of time why not demand the money now because they would effectively have been holding AUL to ransom. We may see more involvement from them again in the future if things go according to the previously released plans (we don't know yet, so no point speculating).
The way I see it now is that they have a clear run at ROD, MS (or whatever is left of the carcass at the top and open at depth like a couple of chatters on here want to see explored) without having to have agreements with Minjar Shadong, which will have been a pain in the behind due to their directors having to satisfy they are operating within their remit wrt shareholders. The clear run should enable them to proceed along the path they see as best fit; I'm hoping that is that they verify before EOFY what is hapoening at MS, and it is that trial mining will proceed in conjunction with a clear plan for a bulk trial at ROD. They mentioned that the are assessing priorities, so if that means switching to ROD now and trial bulk now to produce some gold, then I'm up for that because it's all about where they cam get the most gold from asap. We can't rule out that achieving ROD ownership wasn't the plan all along and that they know exactly where they want to get some gold from and that only a few people in AUL are privvy to what they know is there. I've seen it at other places - lowkey at the start from people who knew where something was but didn't say, and then pull the 'look at what we found' rabbit out of a hat. Not saying that is what is going on here, but I wouldn't mind if an ROD rabbit was pulled out if it produced profit faster than MS.
At the back of my mind I'm still thinking about why all the effort in Stacpoole under geo control, with presumably a lot of confirmining geo samples if it is going to blow up in their faces? The only plausible strategy I can think of is that they are going after the MS deep stuff and needed ROD (or somewhere else close by) to fund it.
Isn't making wild stories up fun!!!? Many ways to get to 4c (consolidation included) and many possible boardroom strategies and permutations of results and their meaning. Is the cat alive or dead? We'll find out when they open the box... some day.
AUL Price at posting:
0.8¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
