It's a slow day. Why would I bother reporting your posts NL (or should that be comanchero) when they put the bull case so poorly? With bulls like you who needs bears like me right...
Exploration is uncertain that's true, but it usually follows the rules of science in mineral sands. Similar geological environments in physically related areas tend to throw up similar HM deposits with similar HM assemblages. The results so far are not surprising, especially when areas have been drilled before. High grade beach placers are deep near sea-level, lower grades in overlying dunes, weathering enrichment near surface, fluvial enrichment in places, most sand is background THM. Let's see what the next round of drilling at Corridor throws up and try to avoid being an oxymoron poster.
"this thread will be empty in the near future as current drilling, FOR WHICH NO-ONE CAN FORECAST, will produce the expected results."... Shouting aside, do you not see the contradiction in the conjunction that one can't forecast results, while at the same time insisting results will be as expected?
Unless you are relaying chats with management before release again, every week you seem to have a list of results and dates that will move the share price.
So now you are wheeling out the TO and JV stick save potential, usually last refuge of the desperate in my experience. It's hard enough with a fully permitted, high margin, $1B post-tax NPV8% DFS supported project, I should know, let alone one at the very back of the wannabe pack. RIO's name gets trotted out here regularly, especially when one considers the Chinese have their hands full trying to make sense of Corridor 1. Chinese have all the low-value Corridor style product they ever need up the road, so why not RIO? They have big pockets, Ti-slag plants in Sth Africa, been through this part of Moz with other JV's, and so their name keeps getting whispered..
If you never researched the Mutamba-Chilubane JV RIO entered into with Savannah, I can tell you it RIO gave away half for nothing more than having someone else holding the bag for funding. From early chatter on HC I always assumed Savannah had a material share of the Mutamba deposit and thus it made sense for RIO to form a JV with them. Now I get around to reviewing the deal it turns out Savannah had a useless lease to the west with a postage stamp size portion of very average mineralised sand. The Mutamba Scoping Study released in mid 2017 uses a resource of 4Bt at 3.9% THM doesn't even include Savannah's lease lol, so immaterial it was excluded.
Savannah's JV announcement (my white circles on their EL Mineral) Mutamba Scoping Study 2017 Resource Leases (All RIO's)
Somehow Savannah managed to assign an Inferred Resource of 65Mt @ 4.2% THM from 27 holes drilled, which formed the totality of their contribution to the JV. Meanwhile, RIO contributed an Exploration Target of between 7.0 and 12.0Bt at a grade ranging from 3 to 4.5% THM between Mutamba and Chilubane. The JV should have been 99% RIO lol. The JV release goes on to say "over 80,000 metres of drilling has been carried out by Rio Tinto’s affiliate producing over35,000 samples from approximately 4,000 reverse circulation, sonic and auger drill holes todefine heavy mineral-bearing sand units that vary in thickness from 15 to +70 metres."
RIO was happy to hand over half of their projects for a meaningless lease and terms that “Savannah will operate the combined projects and can earn up to 51% of the combinedMutamba/Jangamo Project in stages by undertaking scoping, pre-feasibility and feasibilitystudies". To sweeten the deal "Rio Tinto will be providing access to its existing camp, facilities and equipmentassociated with Mutamba to the Mutamba/Jangamo Joint Venture which will help with a faststart to our work.” If that wasn't enough encouragement to entice Savannah to take on the best two mineral sand projects RIO discovered from their extensive work in Mozambique, RIO also agreed to "purchase of 100% of the productionof heavy mineral concentrate (“HMC”
products from any mine that may bedeveloped in the Mutamba/Jangamo Project area." (Not Chilubane notice...).
http://www.savannahresources.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/news-items/2015/RioTintoJointVenture.pdf
Savannah haven't done much/anything since the May 2017 Scoping study, which isn;t really surprising when you dive down into Mutamba's economics. What would be incredibly surprising is if RIO, after managing to give away half of Mutamba so long as they didn;t have to spend any money on it, suddenly wanted into Corridor with a far worse assemblage of only two thirds the recoverable in-ground value. It makes no sense on fundamentals obviously. RIO happily walked away from Mutamba and Chiubane... dropped Linhuane of course, and I can't imagine them coming back in a very long time, if ever.
So instead of a Mutamba style project attracting JV interest from a cashed up major wanting to get in, it turns out majors are keen hand over 51% just to get out. Sofala handed funding responsibility for Corridor off to MRQ while picking up a nice slice of the company. On results to date I honestly can't imagine who would step up to take the bag off MRQ. Looks like they're stuck with it to drill it and kill it, or make a considerably higher-value and well located discovery. You are correct MRQ is an exploration company, but IMHO you are wrong that the probability of exploration success cannot be well estimated from good research.
Good luck
(20min delay)