paragraphs from the australian.FURTHER to recent items here on...

paragraphs from the australian.


FURTHER to recent items here on molybdenum, Far East Capital's Warwick Grigor provides an interesting slant. His latest client note on potential tungsten producers considers the moly co-product that has added appeal to two of them: Queensland Ores and Thor Mining.

Grigor says the market has now woken up to the non-corrosive qualities of molybdenum and its being an essential element in new oil pipelines and nuclear power stations. And here is a crunch figure: about two-thirds of all oil pipelines will eventually have to be replaced because their steel doesn't contain molybdenum.

BUT, getting back to tungsten, Grigor notes that some projects have been facing delays, as was reported recently by Pure Speculation in respect to the expected first cab off the rank, Queensland Ores, which is not now going to make it into production in 2007.

King Island Scheelite has been pushed back from March to December 2008 and Thor Mining from March to August next year. On the positive side, Thor has just reported it expects to be able to revise its resource estimate at the Molyhil tungsten-molybdenum project. Another good piece of news is that metallurgical results have confirmed expected concentrate specifications.

The only projects on schedule are Paradigm Metals and Vital Metals. The latter company said on Friday that trials at its Watershed project in Queensland appeared to back the plan to use low-cost processing technology. Chairman Bill Ryan says this means a substantial reduction in size - and therefore capital cost - of the treatment plant and lower costs.

* AFTER reading that Paradigm Metals had intersected a thick copper zone at its Frogmore, NSW, project, Far East Capital's Warwick Grigor sent out a quick note on Friday to clients that it was early days, but exciting stuff for a company capitalised at $9.6 million. "Is it another Cobar?" he added.