Thor Energy Share News (THR)

Thor Mining, digging for gold in Western Australia, is asking investors for £2.7m to help fund exploration and evaluation of the Dundas project and evaluation of new projects.The company, currently valued at just £¾m, wants half the money from a placing at 0.7p a share, a discount of 33% to last night's closing price, and the other half from an open offer at the same price. There should be £2.5m left after fees if all the shares are taken up.It's estimated costs, including the A$100,000 initial payment for the 51% stake in Dundas, plus exploration and evaluation of the project, will be between £1m and £1.5m in the year to 30 June 2011."Based on current forecasts, the directors believe that, assuming full subscription, the placing proceeds alone will be sufficient to undertake the proposed exploration projects and for the company's general working capital requirements for at least the next 12 months," read a statement Wednesday.Thor's chairman Mick Billing recently told ShareCast that Dundas, just to the east of the spectacular 700km long greenstone belt that includes the massive Kalgoorlie mine, "is where investors will get a bang for their buck in the short term". Dundas lies in the Albany-Fraser Province which had been largely ignored due to its perceived unfavourable geology, very poor outcrop, and in part, burial under younger sediments. But the discovery of a huge 5 million ounce deposit at Anglo-Gold Ashanti's Tropicana mine changed all that, sparking a new gold rush that's led to a number of other discoveries of economic potential. "Now there's no vacant ground in this belt," Billing said. "The market right now is not giving us a lot of upside, but a few good results could make quite a difference to our market cap. It could be a monster." "We're aiming for a resource of over 1m ounces within a few years and deserve a market cap well in excess of where we are now." "We've only spent a few tens of thousands of dollars on the project so far," he points out. "Soil sampling is still needed, but we're confident we'll be in with a drill rig before the end of the year. We need more sampling to provide extra targets, particularly in some areas where we didn't know there were anomalies before."