There's nothing really Jason can do other than focusing on ESG at the moment. LCL has come to the decision to develop into a mine or to sell it, which Jason always being sketchy on that. The only barrier from here is the social permit really - the resistance is coming from the minority of people, the Embera Karambá Indigenous community. Since the previous Canadian company, Seafield Resources Ltd. was in charge of the Quinchia before 2017, Edith Lucía Taborda Guevara has been actively opposing the mining activity (
http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=13592). Now the history is just repeating itself, Edith Taborda strikes again - she is protesting against LCL for exploring in the Indigenous region (
https://news.mongabay.com/2022/08/a-13-year-fight-against-gold-mining-in-colombian-community-marches-on/). Now it is just a long fight between the company and the Indigenous, and see who will ride it out. The advantage of LCL this time is they still have enough fund to combat this, but they will inevitably need to raise capital in the next few years.
Another Canadian company, Batero gold is finalising its PEA too, but little update from them since last year, so I'm supposed they are currently stuck too, just like LCL.
Nevertheless, the upside of this company is huge once this barrier get resolved, have a look on this commentary (
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4541995-gold-silver-development-optionality-plays-part-1-microcaps) about the Batero company, LCL is comparable to them:
Batero Gold (OTCPK:BELDF) (BAT:CA) has a low-grade open pit project in Colombia. It has a 3 million oz resource (.6 gpt). Surprisingly, Batero Gold has a low valuation of $7 million fully diluted. The stock has crashed 99% from $3.80 per share in 2011 to 5 cents today. Batero's Quinchia project has 3 deposits on 3,500 acres, and 8 drilling targets. The company has about $3 million in cash and no debt. Expect share dilution soon.The company presentation is from 2019, and is only 7 slides, which is not a good sign. The good news is that they updated the resource for the La Cumbre oxide deposit to 730,000 oz (at 1.5 gpt). It should have higher recovery rates and could be a good starter mine. The Dos Quebrada deposit is 950 meters long and growing. La Cumbra is 700 meters long and growing. El Centro is smaller but of significant size.This could be a 25+ bagger if they develop and operate the property on their own, which is their intent. They released a PEA in 2013, and it was marginally economic, with an after-tax IRR of 21% at $1400 gold. The capex was $110 million. That's a high capex for only 55,000 oz of annual production. However, the PEA was based on only half of the deposit.It has a tiny market cap versus its value. At $5 per oz for future reserves, that is about as cheap as you can get for 2 million oz of resources. If gold prices rise and they have exploration success, this stock is going to do incredibly well from this tiny valuation. It is being valued as if gold prices will never rise and they will not get financing. One of the best things about this stock is one family owns more than 50% of the shares. Thus, I do not expect them to sell the project.There are red flags. It has low economics and a high capex for low production. Plus, management has not made much progress. The PEA was back in 2013, and they have not advanced to a PFS. There is still a lot of work to do, and production is at least 3 years away. Until management makes some progress and shows a path to production, this is a high-risk stock. The good news is that it is currently economic at $1800 gold, and they can probably finance the project.Eventually, they will have the motivation to build this mine, and if it gets built, the stock should take off. With their resources, they should be able to reach 75,000 oz of production. Plus, they have exploration potential. The big unknown is the location. Open pit mining is not always easy to permit in Colombia, due to environmental concerns.There has been very little activity. They released an update in November 2021 and said they were working on the EIS and engineering scoping for an oxide heap-leach mine (those are not easy to permit in Colombia). They plan to update the PEA in 2022.
