Re: STB - South Boulder Mines
Bolder prospects
A junior miner will grow quickly when its golden opportunities in Western Australia and Bolivia are realised, David Haselhurst reports.
We've reluctantly solda couple of our portfolio stocks to make way for a low-priced junior with an active field program looming on nickel, gold and uranium targets in Western Australia.
South Boulder Mines (ASX code: STB) is a bit of a misnomer because it has nothing to do with Kalgoorlie's twin city of Boulder. Its chief asset is a block covering 2250sq km of exploration tenements over much of the Duketon greenstone belt, beginning some 400km north of Kalgoorlie and 100km north of Laverton.
This is elephant country, with the greenstone belt hosting both the BHP- Falcon Minerals Collurabbie project and the Falcon-Newmont- Regis Duketon project. Both are nickel sulphide-copper finds with associated platinum group metals (pgm). Falcon, with a 30% interest in the first project and 20% in the second, carries a market capitalisation of $67m. On the southern trend of the greenstone belt is the recently revived Windarra nickel project and Niagara Mining's 100%-owned newer discovery of promising nickel-copper-pgm mineralisation. Niagara carries a market valuation of $87m
South Boulder has been overlooked so far. With 40.2 million issued shares, it carries a market capitalisation of $8.8m. It has $1.5m cash plus $1m in tradeable securities in various companies, either held or due to be delivered by the end of the year as part of farm-out deals. Falcon floated in 2003 after spending a year acquiring much of the ground on the Duketon belt that had previously been only lightly explored by mainly gold prospecting companies such as Newmont, Normandy and Croesus. South Boulder then executed a farm-out to Independence Group in 2004 on the nickel potential of the 2250sq km block, which will earn 70% by completing a bankable feasibility study within five years. South Boulder will be free-carried to that stage.
Drilling is due to begin this week on the first of two priority targets within identified ultramafic targets that extend along 100km of strike. It's estimated only 15% of those sequences have been subjected to modern exploration. One target to be drilled has yielded, from a single surface rock-chip sample, 0.9% nickel, 2.3% copper, 0.7g/t platinum, 0.7g/t palladium and 0.4g/t gold. Recent electromagnetic surveys revealed strong buried conductors with a signature consistent with nickel sulphide.
South Boulder has retained 100% of the gold potential within the large block. That includes a current resource base of 383,000oz, mostly contained within the Famous Blue deposit on a 12sq km area in the north-west of the tenements. This ground was acquired from Sub-Sahara Resources. Ownership is in dispute, a "plaint" being lodged by a local prospector and an appeal due to be decided by WA Resources Minister John Bowler before the end of the year. This is the only event, apart from an unlikely collapse in the share market, which potentially endangers South Boulder's performance.
South Boulder's managing director, geologist Liam Cornelius, confirmed drilling is due to start next month on the company's Riccaboni gold prospect, 6km north-east of the disputed Famous Five, where drilling in August hit high-grade gold. Best intersection was 4m at 30.1g/t from 20m below surface within a broader zone of 8m at 16.3g/t. The company also held a gold project in Bolivia. It has farmed that out to Toronto-listed Luzon Minerals and the Australian-listed Republic Gold for $300,000 in cash and shares, plus a free-carried 10% interest.
The company has also farmed out 65% of its uranium prospects to Goldstream Mining and its spin-off Uranex for shares and cash, including an area thought to contain up to 15% of an adjoining deposit assessed by BP Minerals in 1977 to contain 15 million tonnes of non-JORC compliant uranium oxide grading 400-800g/t. South Boulder shareholders will get priority in the float of Montezuma Mining, a spin-off to hold the group's Pilbara gold/base metals prospects.