The next focusIR Investor Webinar takes places on 14th May with guest speakers from Blue Whale Growth Fund, Taseko Mines, Kavango Resources and CQS Natural Resources fund. Please register here.
Tony, Colm and Hugh taking up most of their entitlement - IMHO - has to be good news,
It being non London this is another way of getting the good Dr in, but $13m, has to be allocated somehwere else other than just the 10 MW!
It will be interesting to work out just how close he is getting to 49.9% control post this raise if he picks up all avaiable shares.....
Given the cost of a gas pipeline, and the relative cheapness of poles and wires with the modular gensets they will be installing, my bet is that Orapa will take an electric feed from Mamba. Wires are now shown on one of the presentations and Colm commented that he's expect a wire delivery if it happened. For the ESG commitmnets of DeBeers, this has to happen at some point, and they can't get the gas from anyone else at the moment.
My actual question & reply from the company;
I saw on the "cleaner energy" slide that the link to Orapa is shown under "transmission network" I would interpret this as an electrical connection, rather than a gas pipeline. Was that the intention, or could the slide need amending for clarity?
Orapa tendered for gas supply but there is an option to submit alternative options including direct power supply. We are interested in both options but this will come down to discussions with Orapa. I think that ultimately power supply is a more feasible option.
Still a way off I would think, but re-assuring that talks are ongoing. (although it would be nice to have news in less than a year- seems reasonable I would think)
On the subject of Orapa supply - whilst the tender was originally for gas, via a pipeline, I believe (and have had it confirmed by the company) that discussions may have moved on to supply via wires. There is a slide on the website showing a wire rather than a pipeline and I queried that. Given the cost of a pipeline vs generators and wires, it makes sense, also keeping Orapa working on diesel whislt adding clean gas energy to support Debswana's ESG credentials makes sense given the overall lack of power in the area. Still up in the air and under discussion, but with the pipeline possibly costing $1m per kilometer vs wires, I can see why they might think again.
Doesn't sound like the drilling has quite started yet, but not far off. Good update from Colm.
https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/1007101/tlou-energy-hard-at-work-on-huge-undertaking-in-botswana-1007101.html?viewSource=TwitterUK
Interesting the poles and wires will be done by mid year - Hopefully the substations being finished "early next year" is a pessimistic estimate too.
Just for a bit of fun, having seen the prices of Gas in South Africa recently, I thought I would see what value the Tlou resorces (at 3,000 Billion cu ft) in USD. The price I found was 133 Rand per Giga Joule. A gigajoule of Natural gas is 35.5m3 or 900 cubic feet.The RAND fx rate is about 17 per $. 3,000,000,000/900 = 3,333 333,333 gigajoules of gas. That's valued at 443,333,333,333 Rand or 26,078,431 USD. YES, $26 BN. vs a market cap of $16m. When they get it out of the ground and finish surveying,....we could have some upside.
I wish I'd just invested here, as I think we're on the cusp of a final breakthrough, but I've been saying that for 7 years so wtfdik....I can't see the Bots govt having the balls to push this out further given the power situation and the way the world is moving away from dirty power.