Penny Sleuth22 Oct 2010 00:12
There are plenty of larger than life characters in the penny share world, but few can match David Lenigas.
David’s language is colourful, his opinions take no prisoners, and he certainly could not be accused of understatement. ‘Vatukoula Gold,’ he roared as I walked into his elegant office in Jermyn Street ‘is the cheapest gold share in the world!’
‘For 72 years it has been producing an average of 11 grams per tonne’, he explained. ‘That is more than five times the average grade of the world’s known gold resources – and it has got the reserves to produce at 13g/t for another 43 years.’
Originally a mining engineer, David is now Chairman of four AIM listed companies, LONRHO (LONR), LONZIM (LZM), LENI GAS & OIL (LGO), and SOLO OIL (SOLO). He is also chairman of the ASX-listed LONRHO MINING LIMITED (ASX:LOM) and on the board of the music company ZEST GROUP (ZEST) and VATUKOULA GOLD MINES (VGM). He doesn’t mince his words.
Having favoured me with his opinion of the world’s best gold mining investment, David then produced a plastic fish wrapper from the top drawer of his desk. ‘We have had six products listed for the US market – no easy task,’ he said, turning to the fortunes of LONRHO. ‘We are going to be sending containers of hake from African waters over to Costco. This is going to be huge. All the retailers have been under massive pressure from Greenpeace, and there is enormous demand for sustainably caught fish. I love fish fingers,’ he revealed, ‘and now the supermarkets are going to be able to sell fish fingers with proper fish in them and not the usual processed rubbish. The mums will love it!’
Food processing is the foundation of LONRHO, which also flies aeroplanes, runs hotels and manages a host of other services across southern Africa. Results due in early November should confirm that this is a good diversified way of investing in Africa’s renaissance, but I was really with David to hear about his venture into the oil business.
Where black gold could start spurting next
LENI GAS & OIL was formed in 2007 to apply modern techniques to oil and gas assets in ‘the sort of place you would like to take your family on holiday’, meaning in this case Spain, the Gulf of Mexico, Trinidad and Malta.
David’s theory is that oil fields are ‘like diamonds – they don’t like being lonely’. So if you find one parcel of diamonds or oil another is likely to be nearby. LENI GAS is developing Spain’s largest on-shore oil field – not that this says a lot because the little oil that Spain has is mainly off-shore. But David believes that LENI GAS can boost oil production from under 200 barrels per day to 1000boepd.
How? By opening up nearby fields and stimulating the flow rate from the existing reservoirs where ‘there is no fizz in the champagne bottle&#
Sign In
Follow the stocks
