*************31 Dec 2019 13:20
Last week AIM-listed Inspirit Energy (INSP) released results at no-one-is-watching o'clock, on Christmas Eve Eve. It seems the trick of avoiding ************* scrutiny by releasing bad results the day before good days to bury bad news is spreading, for yesterday – New Year’s Eve Eve - at 4.23pm came interims from AIM-listed URU Metals (URU). Except ************* was watching, always keen to highlight news that companies don’t want you to see. And oh dear, oh dear…..
URU has featured a few times here on *************, under the scrutiny of Cynical Bear. In May 2017 he described it as a company which preferred to mine its shareholders rather than the actual shiny stuff – the share price then was trading around the equivalent (taking into account a 1000:1 share consolidation in November 2018) of £22 a pop. It seems he was right, for they now sit at just 185p. Welcome to the 90% club!
And if mining its own shareholders was not enough, the company yesterday reported on its other mining activities – that of mining shareholders in Management Resources Solutions (MRS) which appears to have hit a few problems (to say the least) and looks horribly like a total loss.
As for actual mining – you know, digging holes in the ground and telling lies, as attributed to Mark Twain – well, we are told:
Zebediela Nickel Project
Good progress continues to be made on the various licensing aspects of the project. An application for a mining right over the Zebediela Project was made and accepted in August 2019. The mining right application was submitted over the portions of the four farms that comprise the Zebediela Project, namely portions of the farms Uitloop 3 KS, Bloemhof 4 KS, Amatava 41 KS and Piet Potgietersrust Town and Townlands 44 KS, totaling approximately 4,661 hectares.
Er….so no actual mining then?
A major component of the mining right application process is the environmental authorization process, which consists of a scoping phase and an environmental impact assessment phase. The public consultation process for the scoping phase ended on 02 December 2019 and a public open day was held on 14 November 2019. Over 103 interested and affected parties ("I&AP's") attended the open day and the comments received were incorporated into the Final Scoping Report which was submitted to the South African Department of Mineral Resources and Energy ("DMRE") for review on 10 December 2019…..
Yadda yadda yadda….in other words this has a million miles to go before an actual mine sees the light of day. But it is all incredibly exciting:
A positive response on the submitted scoping report is expected from the DMRE in Q1 2020, whereby the Environmental Impact Assessment phase of the Environmental Authorisation will commence. This is then expected to take about 12 months to complete. The team remains excited about the progress made on the project and continues to strategically align the project for development on the back of the high nickel and palladi