re: News: Argonaut Presentation - Lumwana Wes... Good to see a...

re: News: Argonaut Presentation - Lumwana Wes... Good to see a bit of marketing by ARE ... And a bit of press in today's Australian by Barry Fitzgerald below :-

ARGONAUT Resources has been as intrepid as they come in the search for a company-making project.

At yesterday's share price of 5.7c, the company's enterprise value was all of $2m ($14.5m market capitalisation less cash of $7.5m and listed investments of $5m). So it is safe to say Argonaut's search - which has taken in communist Laos, copper-gold in South Australia and zinc/copper in Queensland - has yet to deliver.

The company is still cycling through targets in Laos and is coming up with some interesting results, as is the case at the Alford copper-gold project on SA's Yorke peninsula. And given the group's leverage to a discovery at its current market price is extreme, those ongoing programs are worth watching in their own right.

But it is Argonaut's excursion to Africa and, more specifically, the copper belt in Zambia that now holds out some real hope that the company-making project is just around the corner. Argonaut itself is as keen as you can get on its Lumwana West copper play in the so-called "Domes Region" in the central African copper belt that cuts through the landlocked nation and its neighbours.

So much so that the company's currently Laos-based exploration director, Lindsay Owler, won't talk about anything else. He reckons that Lumwana West has the potential to host a world-class, bulk-tonnage copper deposit not unlike those being found and developed elsewhere in the Domes Region. The location looks right, with Lumwana West in the same region as Barrick's Lumwana mine (acquired through the $7.8bn takeover of ASX-listed Equinox) and First Quantum's Kansanhi-Trident projects.

Drilling at the Nyungu prospect on the Lumwana West ground returned some good early encouragement. Best results included 176m grading 0.55 per cent copper and 0.04 per cent cobalt and 90m at 0.46 per cent copper and 0.7 per cobalt from a depth of 12m in another hole.

More to the point is that Zambia's dry season starts this week. So Argonaut will be back out in the field doing all of the reconnaissance work necessary to define targets for a drilling program due to kick off in July.

It will be a bit of a wait until first results are reported back, say October-November. Given that Laos in particular could cause some interest before then, the wait might be worth it. Having said that, being Africa there are some things to watch out for, most notably the High Court of Zambia action in which Argonaut seeks to put to rest any doubts about ownership of the Lumwana West area.

It seems that Equinox last year claimed it had lodged a retention licence over the area even though such "holds" on ground were abolished by the enactment of new mining laws. Zambia has also messed in the past with its revenue take from the industry but hey, Australia is hardly a shining example of stability on that score.