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Be careful what you wish for.You may well find Colin and Clive being removed and replaced by a Slovenian company with soft connections to Russia.

All very quiet on here today. The SP is showing some green shoots of recovery (appropriate on google finance).

Listened to the interview and read the RNS. We suspected a lot of it already and were hoping for better news. The Slovenian government have already been fined by the EU in the past and should be careful about delaying this further as it could well be construed as unnecessary delay. The EU is also supposed to have sanctions in place against Russia. If Slovenia are showing favouritism toward Russia when they are supposed have the exact opposite in place, with EU sanctions, then they are walking a tight line and could easily be found out. Unfortunately Colin seems to have little influence in the Slovenian government or the EU.

Any upsides from the RNS? The Directors are starting to get less pay. Gas is still being produced and sold to INA. The Strategic Review is still in place and there are still interested companies, even with the IPPC delay. The gas is still there in the ground.

AST is getting slowly squeezed by the Russian influence on Slovenia. Not sure why we are bothering to go through the nausea of Brexit when we could just stay in and play the game like Slovenia is.

The RNS isn't news really. Just puts what we knew and suspected into black and white. The real news is the result of the RNS which is the fall of the SP.

Tony, in that case you misunderstood my post. It was past tense, for what it's worth. We are now in August. In July and previously they met on Wednesdays. They may continue to do so after August, but that would be future tense. Your pedantry is becoming tedious.

Unlikely to be an RNS for AST next week. We are now in August and government business slows down a lot. If Colin couldn't push for the IPPC before the August holiday then the chances are reduced during August. The Permits Committee only met on Wednesdays during normal business months. During August that may have ceased completely.

0.6p was about the placing price in June 2016 when the company was in dire straits. The IPPC had just been withdrawn, we had yet to have the INA agreement (August 2016) and Henderson were virtually holding AST from bankruptcy. This Strategic Review had better be good Colin.

You know what reso? That's exactly what I've been doing. This is not tradeable now though. A stock needs to go up occasionally, as well as down for it to be tradeable.

Difficult to know when folks are joking on a forum tony. And to be honest there's little to joke about with AST. Don't recall 'giving it out' though. Try to have a lighter edge sometimes to remove the depressing environment, but not at the expense of others.

Still have plenty here but would have expected a return much sooner. Could have had a good one last year but expected the SP to rise on selling to INA and the appellant being removed. More fool me.

Actually tony I've been selling some. Opportunities elsewhere. This could take some time and trust is difficult when a BoD doesn't keep investors informed. No need to be sarcastic.

I'm in a nominee account, along with pretty much everyone else.

Sorry too many 'r's in parkeg.

I would agree with you parkreg. However I do believe Colin could have found out from INA that the contract would be confirmed just a few days later. That could have allowed him to do things a little different. I am concerned that he seems to know very little of what is going on with any progress of things he has in play. He really should get better contacts in the government either directly or through the JV partners. That way he would not be as much in the dark as the rest of us. He also has very little affinity with investor sentiment. His podcast interviews showed that as he appeared to be convinced they would bolster the SP, when they didn't.

parkreg was that not RTN who said he'd sold out and then continued to harangue us?

Let's try to keep things civil. Understandable anger here but it doesn't help to abuse each other. I still feel Colin has been trying hard to get this moving. He's been up against a concrete wall that is the Slovenian bureaucracy. Maybe he thought they may wish to expedite the gas but it would seem Slovenia has already been fined by the EU and now err on the side of being incredibly pedantic. They are also so short staffed they only have Wednesday to look at the issuing of Permits. I would call Colin naive. I am also extremely annoyed at an SP that has fallen to current levels when the company is selling gas to INA and has removed the appellant. He really shouldn't have done that placing in October though ...

Believe me I understand the annoyance here. I have a substantial investment in this company. But a knee jerk reaction out of anger is not going to put things right here. It's likely to make things a lot worse for the reasons I have said. We need Colin to give an update on what is happening and how things are progressing and the likely ongoing timescale. I am amazed there has been no information to investors at all on the excuse of confidentiality with the SR. We finance this company we should be kept informed.

We haven't a clue who could replace them. Even when anyone is found they may need to be recognised by Slovenia before they could act for the company. That could take many months and even then a change in CEO may need a resubmission of all applications as the company leadership had changed and the person signing application documents would have changed. We're talking possibly years of further delay before the Permits would appear. I would need to see proof that this is not the case rather than proof that it would happen.

We don't know how Colin has been dealing with the Slovenian government except he has had a softly softly approach. Bureaucracies of this type are prevalent around the world and any changes in company leadership may require a resubmission of the application and everything would start again from scratch. Any new CEO may well need a formal process to recognise them within Slovenia even before a resubmission of an application. Therefore to change the CEO could lead to delays of many months or even years.

What we need is for Colin to keep investors informed and to tell companies involved in the Strategic Review that he needs to keep investors informed of the basics of what is happening, without naming company names or giving out specific information which could undermine confidentiality. This total silence over many months, under the excuse of the SR, is out of order. Understandably investors are getting very annoyed with the very low SP and no apparent end in sight.

My understanding is that Resilience Mining had a royalties agreement with the previous owner when they started to produce. By not doing so and selling it on directly they made better money. SML have looked carefully at the mine and can produce the copper. It would appear Resilience Mining didn't intend to do so as their royalties agreement would penalise them compared to a direct sale on to SML.

The SP fell when the temporary loss of the client was revealed in an RNS. The magnetite may still be there and John Peters has an excellent penalty agreement in place to ensure there is still an income for the lost sales. However the market didn't like it and the SP fell to it's current level.

The downward trend accelerated after the October placing. Colin had stated it wouldn't be necessary and then went and did it anyway. It was also done through Clive Carver's Primary Bid and the conspiracy theorists were then rampant. I chose to believe Colin's reasoning that AST would get no income until January and would still need to raise cash anyway and when the placing happened there was still a week before the INA contract was confirmed. Of course then the conspiracy theorists came out again and said he must have known with just a week to go. The PG11a tool stuck down the hole didn't get told to investors until some time later, at least February as I recall and maybe even March. I tend to go for the cockup rather than conspiracy theory but the conspiracy theory was red meat to the Twitterarti. All badly managed. At that time AST were badly in need of a good PR company.

Yup, all about Cobre right now. The largest client needs to get their Environmental Permit back again. An RNS stating that the client is resuming deliveries from Cobre should push the SP back up a bit in the short term. LCCM is all about next year, but a good progress report from LCCM along with Cobre client resumption should really help the SP right now.