oil shale in qld to be outlawed, page-3

mgm

not sure if IRC's farming out of the oil shale was foresight about sovereign risk, or just cutting away a bit of the pie to help with exploration and development costs. in this circumstance it sounds like IRC now have shares in Xtract and poor Xtract can't move on what they paid the shares for, poor guys.

this decision definitely is a minus for the julia creek project, in that IRC can't hit up Xtract for any further exploration/development cash, which i think might make things a bit tougher to get this mine started, but in no way stops anything. uranium mining is banned in several states and i think federal labor still has a three-mines policy, but anyone whose mine has uranium in it is still allowed to dig, so long as they don't sell the uranium. it would be the same for oil shale.

the Julia Creek project all hinges on getting together a cost-effective chemical process to improve the ore grades (julia creek's grades are not the best out there), which it seems is being stymied by lack of laboratory capacity worldwide currently. hence Dr Ruane looking to start a lab inside IRC, likely cost a few $m (which we got or can lay our hands to, if need be by selling some RWD shares). once this lab has done as much as Julia Creek needs, it can always be turned into a revenue stream or sold off (which, given how stretched laboratory capacity is, should make a nice premium).

if this process gets worked out, IRC has the potential to produce all the worlds vanadium requirements for about a century (though about 70% of vanadium production is a by-product of iron mines, i think magnetite like AXO/MXR are looking to do). regardless it would be a multi-billion dollar company (in a few years). it can't get taken over compulsorily as Dr Ruane owns 30% of it, but perhaps an offer of a few hundred mill from Xtrata or Rio or a South African vanadium miner or Evraz (Russian vanadium miner) might swing him, which would be kindof a shame- each 25c share today gets you an inground value of $16k of vanadium and molybdenum.

if IRC fails to get this process worked, the company has RWD shares and a laboratory (it currently is only being valued on the RWD shares anyway). it may well grow into a mini-Campbell Brothers.