|
Explorers' League, Vol. IV; No. 8 : JOHN PROCHNAU, TAKE TWO
Published:
December 25, 2008
by Nrtadmin
 | JOHN PROCHNAU, TAKE TWO |
What makes our XL-ers so successful? And how is it that the same individuals keep finding and developing deposit after deposit, while most others in the industry have none to their credit?
We brought you the first installment of our fascinating interview with John Prochnau a few months ago, and now here’s the second part of our enjoyable meeting with him. After getting the latest on some of his other companies, we dive into a thorough discussion about what separates him and our other XL-ers from most mineral explorers and developers, and to what he attributes his own success. We think you’ll enjoy hearing from John as much as we did, and come away with a strong sense of why the Explorers’ League follows his career...
Explorers’ League: John, let’s start with one of your newer companies, Empire Mining.
John Prochnau: First of all, the companies with which I’m associated shouldn’t be characterized as “my” companies. I only act as a technical advisor, although I’d like to think I have some influence on operational-level aspects of their management. As for Empire, it was a CPC [Capital Pool Corporation] that was formed by myself and several associates in Hidefield and Columbus 2 or 3 years ago. We have now established a business plan focused on the Tethyan Mineral Belt, a continent-scale metals province passing through Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia particularly characterized by porphyry-related base and precious metals systems. The CEO is an old friend of mine, David Cliff, who had a career in Rio Tinto and was their general manager in Europe for the last 20 years. We’ve also been joined by Richard Hazleton, another ex-Rio Tinto geologist, and are working with a number of highly experienced professionals in Serbia and Albania where we’re currently operating. So Empire has extremely capable and professional management, largely attracted to us through Dave, on both the corporate and operational side. We’ve just implemented an initial drilling program at the Bursa project in northwest Turkey, where limited past work by – you guessed it – Rio Tinto identified three potentially important porphyry copper-gold systems. The program is designed to confirm and expand two of these occurrences on which past holes intercepted long intervals (50-250 meters) grading 0.35 to 0.40% copper.
XL: I saw the news release that EMC purchased a chromium property in eastern Albania.
JP: Yes. Empire has just acquired a 135 km2 prospecting permit which covers most of the Bulqiza ultramafic massif in eastern Albania. The permit surrounds the famous Bulqiza chromite mine, currently operated by a Russian-Austrian group, and covers hundreds of other dormant mines, prospects and showings throughout the massif. The Bulqiza district was the third largest producer of chromite in the world before the collapse of the communist government in the late 1980s and has produced about 20 million tonnes of high-grade ore averaging 35-40% chromite. The remaining resources are generally believed to be on the same order of magnitude. The Empire prospecting permit grants exclusive conversion rights to exploration licenses and ultimately mining permits, and the company is currently working through our Country Manager Dr. Lirim Hoxha, and a group of experienced local chromite geologists and engineers, to evaluate the extensive historic exploration and production data and prioritize targets for conversion to exploration licenses and near-term resource development.
XL: I don’t know a lot about chromite, but I assume the demand is there?
JP: Chromite is an important component in stainless steel and a commodity critical to the steel-making industry, and consequently is currently experiencing high demand and commanding high prices. I’m not prone to following commodity prices on a daily basis, but Bulqiza lump chromite, because of its exceptionally high grade, has recently been selling in the range of $300-400/tonne. This demand and price run-up has obviously created the Bulqiza opportunity for Empire, but, on the other hand, one is rarely unique with a good idea. The current situation has also created a “gold rush” of activity at Bulqiza with a large number of small miner exploitation permits granted in the past year. These permits, dozens of which have been granted, provide mining rights to limited areas around historic workings, normally a few hundred meters of strike and tens of meters up or down dip. While the real upside for significant resource development remains below or adjacent to these small permit areas, we are actively pursuing access and/or joint operating agreements with a number of these small miners. I might just add one more comment about chromite demand: Empire has had more inquiries about our chromite initiative, largely from steel industry groups seeking sources of raw material, than any of our other more conventional gold or base metal activities.
XL: That sounds exciting. And then there’s Alto Resources.
JP: Alto is managed by Mike Koziol. Mike’s an ex-Cameco gold guy with a long career in gold exploration in the Canadian Shield, Québec and Ontario, where our activities are focused. Mike is a prudent manager and a pragmatic explorer. I wish I could boast of having attracted Mike to Alto but that credit belongs to Rick Mazur of Forum Uranium.
XL: It sounds like there’s good management in all these companies.
JP: Yes, there is. We have really capable management and operators in all the companies with which I’m fortunate to be associated. But I think we’re lousy promoters. We don’t get a lot of market recognition considering the capability of our management and quality of our projects. Alto, for example, has three very good projects, all 100% owned, with a collective one million ounces of gold based upon historic drilling and our own more recent work. The Coldstream mine in NW Ontario and Oxford Lake in Manitoba, which I bought from Newhawk and Newmont before the current run-up in metals prices, contain potentially significant but non-43-101 compliant gold deposits largely outlined in the 1980s by Noranda. And Alto’s core property, Despinassy in northwest Quebec, has a promising starter resource of about 100,000 ounces which has been drilled to 43-101 standards. However, this is typical Abitibi-style gold mineralization in veins, which are relatively narrow with short strike lengths but potentially very long plunge lengths. As a result, development of resources in this setting is expensive and painstaking and makes it difficult to reach a resource threshold that commands market attention. So, management and solid assets, while necessary for eventual commercial success, have to be promotable as well. I’m just an engineer and prospector and frankly don’t have a formula for the promotion part.
XL: Isn’t it true that deposits are getting harder to find, or are more difficult to get to, with some in hotbed political areas to boot? If that’s true, to what extent has the easy gold been found, making some of these smaller deposits more meaningful?
JP: It depends on where you’re operating. I think you can say that historically productive gold regions like Nevada, Eastern Canada, Western Australia, South Africa and to a certain extent West Africa, are very mature. You have exploration histories in these areas of 150 years. That’s why I say there’s tremendous opportunity in Southern Argentina where Hidefield operates – by contrast, it has only a 15-year history. In Nevada, for example, Tonopah and Goldfield were discovered in the early 1900s, 40 years after Comstock and 60 years before Carlin, putting Southern Argentina somewhere back there in the discovery cycle. So, yes, the easy ones in Nevada probably have largely been found, but in Argentina we have years of conventional outcrop prospecting, as well as the more esoteric stuff, ahead of us on our 225,000 hectares of land at Don Nicolás.
XL: What do you think separates you and the other Explorers’ League honorees from other geologists? It’s fairly obvious the same guys keep finding deposits over and over again.
JP: Because we must be so much smarter than the others! (laughs). Seriously, that’s a really good question and you’re absolutely right – success seems to repeat in our business and generally starts early. I had an early corporate career and worked for two major companies before I dropped out and started my own business at about age 40. I began with Selection Trust, a grand old London mining finance house, where my financial connections were established in London – rather than Toronto or New York – and my business personality was molded through exposure to discovery and success with group operating companies in Canada, Australia, South Africa and the U.S., where I was General Manager. I then had a short but interesting and professionally rewarding career with Billiton.
XL: BHP?
JP: The company was just Billiton back then, an old Dutch tin mining group that was acquired by Royal Dutch Shell in the 1970s, when all the oil companies went through their “diversification phase” and acquired or started mining divisions. So I left Selection Trust following our discovery of the Alligator Ridge gold mine in Nevada and joined Billiton in The Hague [city in the Netherlands] in 1979. Even then, as a 30-something with all the ambition and ego that goes with that age, I seemed to recognize that my interests and capabilities were at the front end of this business – opportunity identification and early-stage evaluation – and not project development and operations. That’s the point at which I go elsewhere and is why I left Brancote at time of the Esquel discovery, and where, frankly, I had been looking for a way out since our development of the Mt. Cuthbert copper mine a couple of years earlier. Anyway, to address your original question, we had all sorts of statistics in these large companies, especially Billiton, about the cost of finding a mine. One figure that sticks in my mind is $30 million to find a porphyry copper. That’s rubbish, and you simply can’t generalize the cost of discovery. Some companies historically spend infinitely more with little to show for it, while others spend a lot less and repeat success. Look at my current associates, Cordex; I think the collective exploration expenditure over its 40-year existence is $30-$35 million and yet they have 7 or 8 discoveries. The overall exploration expenditure under my management during my career is probably about the same.
XL: How do you guys do it? There are hundreds of geologists that never find one deposit, so what do you attribute your success to?
JP: Well, it doesn’t necessarily have much to do with brain power or geological intellect. In fact, I’d almost go so far as to say, with no disrespect to deep thinkers, that cleverness sometimes gets in the way. Really bright guys sometimes tend to outsmart themselves. In this business, there are always a dozen reasons to say no – and you’re usually right when you make that decision. So risk-taking, without fear of failure or unproductive hindsight when you’re wrong, may be one of the characteristics for success in our business.
XL: So, no 6th sense involved? Your sniffer doesn’t perk up when you get close to an area of mineralization? [chuckling]
JP: I don’t know what the 6th sense is, but whatever it may be to some people, I can’t see that it would have anything to do with business success or in our case ore discovery. Luck maybe, that always plays a big part, but no special sense or mystery insight. I just think success can usually be attributed to a combination of common sense, good judgment, an appreciation of reality, and of course support. One of the reasons Cordex has been so successful is simple longevity – the ability to attract and maintain support all these years. Small, publicly traded exploration companies typically appear on the scene in times of strong metals prices, thrive for a while on hope, but mostly disappear with the cycle – but Cordex just keeps plugging along, staying focused in a geographical area they know better than anyone, and exposing themselves to that unique good sample or drill hole leading to discovery.
XL: I assume you mean investor support?
JP: Yes, but in the case of Cordex, a private company, and myself through most of my business life, it’s been industry rather than investor support. They’ve always operated privately through incentive-based grubstake arrangements with incentive in the form of mine production royalties rather than, say, share options based upon frequently transitory market performance. That’s also the way I operated for years before Brancote, which was formed privately but forced to go public when my financial partners could no longer fund it because of a setback in their core business activities. This led me to the world of small publicly supported companies, which I frankly find not terribly suited to my personality, but I keep trying to adjust.
XL: Geological understanding and capability is critical to all this, too, but –
JP: –Yes, but everyone who has survived in our business has a reasonable level of geological understanding and fundamental capability. The application of economic geology to mineral exploration is not exactly rocket science. I think we sometimes make it more complex than it is. In my experience, which is largely with gold, there is seldom serious argument as to how a prospect should be tested, especially in the early exploration stages when understanding is necessarily imperfect. The evidence is generally pretty clear and you prioritize on the basis of the highest-grade mineralization, the most intense geochemical or geophysical anomaly, the strongest alteration or whatever feature it is you’re testing, and you start there. The Alligator Ridge discovery was really just that simple. We found a small ore-grade outcrop about the size of this table [a small restaurant table built for two people] out in the middle of gravel cover, so we collared the first drill hole right on top of it. Then we stepped out 200 feet in each direction to get a sense of geometry to the occurrence, if any, and 4 of those initial 5 holes had 200-foot intervals of 0.2 opt Au [ounces per ton gold, or 6.2 grams per ton]. That was the Vantage 1 orebody and the Alligator Ridge discovery. Very simple once we found the ore outcrop!
XL: Is that the most exciting part of this, finding gold?
JP: It’s a tremendous reward, but there’s a lot more to it than that. One of the frequently repeated lines from Robert Service, the Klondike Era poet, goes “Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting so much as just finding the gold.” And that’s really true with me and, I expect, many of my associates. People in our business really like what we do – it’s challenging, exciting, and just a lot of fun. Maybe that’s what keeps so many of us active in the business at an age when others are tending gardens or watching daytime TV. For me it’s the opportunity identification, evaluation, deal-making and very early-stage exploration leading to the discovery or failure point that I like more so than the routine testing, development or mining. People frequently ask me to name my discoveries; that seems a simple and straightforward question, but it’s really a rather complicated one since true discoveries – say, the first sample off an ore outcrop – are rare and the process leading to them is very much a collective effort. Going back to Alligator Ridge, I directed the effort, but the well-known Nevada prospector Lyle Campbell, whom I grubstaked for years, led us there; geologist Les Bradshaw found and sampled the Vantage discovery outcrop; geologist Steve Sutherland drilled the discovery hole; and the Selection Trust organization enabled it all with long-term support of our programs through failure and success. That was a true grassroots discovery through collective effort and one with well-deserved distributed credit. Most of my personal success, however, has been the result of deal-making – commercial as opposed to outcrop discovery. The involvement in the Choquelimpie mine in Chile, for example, was a matter of putting the Northgate Group, which was grubstaking me at the time, together with the two owners – Shell Chile and Citibank – who needed the operating expertise of Northgate. The deal was done and the mine was built. The Mt. Cuthbert project in Australia, a small copper mine developed by Brancote before the Esquel discovery, involved buying the project at low cost out of bankruptcy. That success had everything to do with opportunity recognition and nothing to do with discovery through exploration. So success in our business comes through all kinds of formulas.
XL: Anything else you’d attribute your knack to?
JP: Another attribute that sets people apart in this business is the ability to act quickly and avoid over-analysis ahead of action. An example of this is when I managed a prospecting syndicate in Nevada during the ‘80s for several companies in the Northgate Group. During this phase of my business life we became, I believe, the biggest claim holder in Nevada.
XL: Really? In the entire state?
JP: Yes. But our strategy was to concentrate on the generative part of the business, which we were good at: identifying promising prospects, staking them, building enough value in them to develop simple straightforward targets, and testing those within our financial capabilities.
XL: So, just how fast do you mean by “react quickly”?
JP: If you’re prospecting and find a prospect that judgment and experience tells you is promising – well, the typical procedure might be to sample and map it, send the samples for assay, and if the results are encouraging, go back to stake the area. We never went through that process; we followed the policy, “stake first and think later.” You can always abandon a claim, but if you don’t stake and someone comes behind you and preempts you with a claim, you’ve lost the opportunity. It doesn’t matter how clever you are in getting there first and identifying the prospect – you’ve lost if the competitor stakes first. There is no reward for having the idea first; the reward only comes through possession.
XL: What do you look for when you think you want to stake something?
JP: Experience, common sense, judgment and a little geological understanding of the environment in which you’re working naturally guide you. More specifically, in Nevada, you quite simply look for hard rocks, the silica or quartz with which almost all gold mineralization in Nevada or throughout the world, for that matter, occurs. So when you hammer an outcrop and your pick bounces back, put a claim in it!
XL: It gets that simple sometimes?
JP: That’s maybe an oversimplification, but that’s the general idea. You were out at Columbus’ Bolo project and saw the jasperoids, those hard, outcrop-forming, brown or reddish silica deposits. Well, gold deposits in Nevada are typically associated with these rocks. They rarely make orebodies themselves, but they frequently occur near them and are good indicators. Jasperoid with weak gold mineralization led us to Alligator Ridge, the Vantage deposits, and 3 or 4 satellite orebodies – we just kept prospecting around them until we found the little table-sized outcrop that was the surface expression of the original Vantage ore discovery. Esquel was even more simple, with massive epithermal quartz veins, 10-15 meters wide and high as this ceiling and without a pick mark on them. The idea that massive veins like Esquel could have gone unnoticed until 1997 was an eye-opener and led to our simple “gaucho” prospecting strategy in Southern Argentina: show a piece of quartz to the local gauchos and ask them where they’ve seen similar rocks. That’s my kind of geology.
XL: Speaking of that, I bet there’s one more discovery story you could tell us.
JP: Well, since we’re talking about Esquel... I was actually evaluating another prospect in the area, the well-known Huemules vein deposit, when I was led there by an Argentine prospector I’ll call Guillermo for this conversation. While mapping Huemules, Guillermo gestured east to the Cordon de Esquel and said, “When we’re finished here, I’d like to show you a prospect in the next mountain range.” This is not an uncommon situation and we’re always interested in seeing something new, so I decided to carve out a few hours on our last day in the area. Well, he took me to this little ranch with the curious name of Puesto Siberia. There was a small creek flowing by the ranch full of boulders of beautifully banded epithermal quartz, and on the other side, up a gentle hill, were massive outcrops of what looked from a distance like the source and turned out to be the original discovery outcrops on the Natasha vein system. Anyway, Guillermo pulled out a little notepad and showed me a list of six samples, not an assay report but just handwritten notes, with gold assays running from 3 to 14 grams and averaging about 8. I said to Guillermo that those were pretty good numbers and that we’d better go up to those outcrops and collect a few more samples in the short time we had left. Well, I took six more samples off those outcrops and 10 days later got results back that almost mimicked Guillermo’s. Four or five years and many rounds of drilling later, Esquel turned into a 4-5 million ounce vein field averaging maybe 8 grams per tonne gold. So maybe there is magic in our business. Anyway, we immediately advised the local prospector of our interest in his single license while we staked the entire Cordon de Esquel. That’s just a small part of the Esquel story but is an indication of where my interests and skills lie. I like to call myself a prospector, but I’m really just an engineer and personally not very good at the art of prospecting, which requires more patience than I have. However, I can recognize opportunity and react quickly and maybe those are a couple of reasons I’ve been so fortunate and lucky in this business.
XL: You sure have, John. We’ve greatly appreciated your time, and I’ll talk to you again this fall for our annual Explorers’ League survey.
JP: My pleasure. I always enjoy talking about ore discovery. God willing, we’ll do it again in the fall.
| NAME THE EXPLORER |
John Prochnau told us why he continues exploring for gold... why do some other XL-ers keep up the search? And who is it?
“Even now, people are always asking me why in the world I'm out climbing mountains and worrying about corporate budgets when there's no financial reason to do so. The real reason is that I can't think of anything that's more fun to do than trying to find a new deposit.” Name the Explorer
“I don’t know why anybody who enjoys their work would retire unless they’re retiring to something they enjoy better. And I don’t see it. I mean, if you retire, you go in for golf. Well, all of a sudden, you get so involved in golf that it’s just work. That’s your work, is golf. Well, who wants golf for work? I like deals. And I like people. I like putting things together.” Name the Explorer
“I'm a prospector. I don't know a damn thing about that [future gold prices]. I understand it's important, but there's no point in making things up. I like looking for gold. I look for gold in bad gold markets and I look for gold in good gold markets. It's what I do, and I believe I do it well, whereas predicting the economy or gold prices in the future – there I have no skill set.” Name the Explorer
“I have to admit that, yes, I am of an age at which many people would be retired. I have to say, though, that I am enjoying what I'm doing. I can pick and choose how I spend my time, for the most part. On the whole, I find it rewarding. I find it challenging and it keeps me alert.” Name the Explorer
|
| IN THE NEWS |
Click on the link to read the full press release.
Robert A. Quartermain
Canplats Resources (V.CPQ). continues expanding the Represa Zone of the Camino Rojo project in Mexico, drills intersecting 270 meters averaging 0.94 grams gold per tonne, and a second hole of 264 meters averaging 1.01 grams g/t. A month later, they reported 246 meters averaging 0.96 grams gold per tonne and 206 meters averaging 1.34 g/t.
Silver Standard (SSRI; T.SSO) announced with Q2 results that infill drilling expanded the Measured and Indicated silver resources at its wholly owned Pitarilla silver project in Mexico by 143%, and total project resources by 14% since the company's last update in November 2007.
Ron Parratt
AuEx Ventures (T.XAU) is movin’ on up, receiving approval to list on the TSX exchange, where shares began trading on 7/8/08. Meanwhile, in July, their Long Canyon gold exploration project in Nevada saw gold intercepts of 38.1 meters (125 feet) at 4.59 grams per tonne (0.134 ounces per ton, and then in August they reported 75 feet (22.9 meters) at 0.226 ounces per ton (4.59 grams per tonne).
Robert Dickinson/Ronald W. Thiessen
Detour Gold (T.DGC) took a big jump in Measured and Indicated gold resources at their Detour Lake property, reporting a 125% increase from 4.8 million ounces to 10.8 million ounces. A month later the company reported drill intercepts including 1.83 g/t over 64.0 meters and 1.33 g/t over 78.9 meters in the Gap Zone.
Farallon Resources (T.FAN) keeps growing, drills hitting 20 meters of 10.6% zinc and 1.07% copper at their G-9 deposit in Mexico. Meanwhile, the company signed an off-take agreement for treatment of their zinc, copper and lead concentrates with international metals trading company Trafigura. [see press release for terms].
Lukas Lundin/Duane Poliquin
Partners Almaden Minerals (AAU; T.AMM) and Canadian Gold Hunter (T.CGH) reported an intersection of 64.01 meters grading 1.02 g/t gold at Caballo Blanco in Mexico. Meanwhile, Lukas’ Lundin Mining (LMC; T.LUN) announced the discovery of a new zinc-copper deposit at its 100% owned Neves-Corvo mine in southern Portugal. The new deposit was named Lombador East and contains the thickest, highest-grade zinc intersections ever encountered at the Neves-Corvo mine, including 89.2 meters grading 8.43% zinc.
Ron Netolitzky
At the Hammond Reef property in Ontario, Brett Resources (T.BBR) reported 3 drill intercepts of 162 meters with 1.23 g/t gold; 1.19 g/t over 102 meters; and 123 meters of 1.40 g/t. Meanwhile, the company acquired 100% of four properties contiguous to the Hammond Reef property, all of which have prospective ground with known gold occurrences. |
| Arnold Armstrong
Arnold “Arnie” Armstrong is a man whose reputation precedes him. He has been a market-mover in the resource sector since the 1960s. He orchestrated the rise of Pyramid Mines, which discovered the massive lead-zinc deposit at Pine Point in the Northwest Territories of Canada in 1965. Pyramid was so widely held that the discovery set off a major flood of investment into the entire resource sector, and started a claim-rush that had every piece of land from Pine Point down to the U.S. border staked.
|
| Ross Beaty
Ross J. Beaty was once described as a "broken slot machine" for his remarkable consistency at making shareholders rich. In 1994, he founded Pan American Silver Corp. (PAA.T, PAAS.NASDAQ), one of the world's leading primary silver producers and currently serves as Chairman. In 2002, Mr. Beaty founded Lumina Copper Corp., a copper development company, and also serves as its Chairman.
|
| Jorge Patricio Jones
Like many great stories, Jorge Patricio Jones' career in mining began with an unexpected turn of events. After studying water resources geology in his hometown of La Plata, Argentina, Jorge Patricio graduated to find the only job available was in hard rock mining in the gold and platinum fields of South Africa. He took the position, and his experiences with Union Corporation and Impala Platinum there gave him a case of mining fever. He's now been in the field for over 35 years.
|
| Dr. Sergey V. Kurzin
Dr. Sergey V. Kurzin, a Russian-born nuclear power research engineer who moved to the United Kingdom in 1990, has played a key role in acquiring and developing several important mining assets in the former Soviet Union. These include Julietta, a high-grade gold deposit in Magadan, Russia, with Bema Gold; Kupol, a high-grade epithermal gold deposit in Chukotka, Russia, also with Bema Gold; and the Varvarinskoye copper and gold skarn deposit in Kazakhstan with European Minerals Corporation. He also played a key role in establishing UrAsia Energy, a uranium producer with mining operations in the Republic of Kazakhstan.
|
| David Lowell
David Lowell may not be the last word on the world's largest copper deposits. But he's certainly the first.
In 1970, David co-authored a scientific report outlining the Lowell-Guilbert model of porphyry ore deposits – massive bodies of once-molten rock that host staggering amounts of copper, gold, silver and other metals. This groundbreaking bit of geological detective work revolutionized the way that exploration geologists search for porphyries. Thirty years later, these ideas are still compulsory learning for geology students.
|
| Lukas Lundin
When Lukas Lundin was ten years old, his father – resource industry legend and X-Leaguer, Adolph Lundin – sat him and his brother down and asked, "Who's going to be the mining engineer and who's going to be the petroleum engineer?" Thus were planted the seeds of his long and storied career of developing oil, uranium, gold, copper and even iodine, in Africa, the Middle East, South America, Russia and Mongolia.
|
| Adolf Lundin
Editors Note: Adolf Lundin passed from among us in September 2006:
Operating from his offices in Geneva, Switzerland, Adolf H. Lundin heads an internationally recognized group of natural resource companies with exploration and development projects worldwide. The twelve companies operated by the Lundin Group are actively engaged in the exploration for and development/production of oil and gas, gold, copper, cobalt, zinc, diamonds, uranium, iodine, sodium sulphate and potassium nitrate.
|
| Catherine McLeod-Seltzer
Catherine McLeod-Seltzer, a recognized leader in the minerals industry, is the Chairman of Pacific Rim Mining, Bear Creek Mining, and Stornoway Diamonds.
After spending the early years of her career working in mining Corporate Finance, both in North America and internationally, Catherine went on to co-found Arequipa Resources in 1993 with renowned mine finder J. David Lowell. Three years later, having discovered the Pierina gold deposit in Peru, Arequipa was taken over by Barrick for $1.1 billion, one of the most lucrative mining industry buyouts in the last decade. In 2003, Catherine and David joined forces once again to form Peru Copper Inc. to acquire the Toromocho Copper deposit. Three years after taking Peru Copper public, it was acquired by Chinalco for $840 million.
|
| Ron Netolitzky
His propensity for success in the face of the most daunting conditions became apparent almost immediately after his graduation from the Masters geology program at the University of Calgary in 1967. At that time, the mining industry was mired in one of its cyclical lows, and Ron came out of school to find that companies weren't exactly beating down his door with job offers.
|
| Ron Parratt
A firm confidence in ultimate success is one of the attributes of any serially successful individual-in any field of business and especially in mineral exploration.
In his long career, Ron Parratt has led the discovery of three large deposits, and today he believes he can do it again.
|
| Duane Poliquin
Over a period of forty-two years, Duane progressed from field work in isolated parts of Canada to project initiation and management, to investment analysis and decision making, to management of public companies and the discovery of several mines, resulting in profits for long-term shareholders and associates.
|
| John Prochnau
John Prochnau's quiet demeanor belies the fact that he may be one of the most successful resource project finders alive today. How successful? During the 1990s, while managing Brancote Holdings, he assembled a global portfolio of more than fifty exploration to development stage mineral properties in the U.S., Canada, Ireland, Australia, South America and South Asia, all 100 percent financed by industry partners as part of a low-risk, commercial strategy, prior to the breakthrough Esquel gold discovery in Argentina.
|
| Robert A. Quartermain
When Robert A. Quartermain joined Silver Standard as its president, in 1985, its market capitalization was only C$1.5 million. Today, the company’s market cap is literally about a thousand times higher. Not a bad achievement for someone who came from a small town in New Brunswick and started his career with a summer job at the very bottom of his field. That was back in 1976, when Bob helped as an extra hand, cooking food, maintaining motors and boats, drafting, carrying and categorizing rock samples, and even digging latrines.
|
| Simon Ridgway
Simon T. Ridgway is President and Director of Radius Gold, Inc. Unlike the heads of many junior exploration companies, Ridgway is not only known for making deals that profit his shareholders, but for actually getting out in the field with his team of prospectors and making grassroots discoveries.
|
| Robert Dickinson & Ronald W. Thiessen
Robert Dickinson is the Chairman and co-founder of Hunter Dickinson Inc., a Canadian corporation, which since 1985 has grown to become one of the largest and most successful mine development groups in North America.
|
| Roman Shklanka, PHD
Dr. Roman Shklanka may be the least-known of Vancouver's great explorers. This may be because he is soft-spoken and doesn't seem interested in self-promotion. Even when discussing his involvement in some of the world's greatest gold finds in recent history, his manner is calm and almost emotionless-he lets the facts speak for themselves. Who is Roman Shklanka?
|
|
__________________
By using this site you are agreeing to the terms of our disclaimer.
|
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/images/quotes_2a.gif)
0 comments![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/base/copper-d.gif)
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/base/nickel-d.gif)
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/base/aluminum-d.gif)
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/base/zinc-d.gif)
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/base/lead-d.gif)
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.weblinks247.com/indexes/gfms.gif)
![[Most Recent Exchange Rate from www.kitco.com]](http://www.weblinks247.com/exrate/24hr-aud-small.gif)
![[Most Recent Exchange Rate from www.kitco.com]](http://www.weblinks247.com/exrate/24hr-brl-small.gif)
![[Most Recent Exchange Rate from www.kitco.com]](http://www.weblinks247.com/exrate/24hr-gbp-small.gif)
![[Most Recent Exchange Rate from www.kitco.com]](http://www.weblinks247.com/exrate/24hr-cad-small.gif)
![[Most Recent Exchange Rate from www.kitco.com]](http://www.weblinks247.com/exrate/24hr-euro-small.gif)
![[Most Recent Exchange Rate from www.kitco.com]](http://www.weblinks247.com/exrate/24hr-inr-small.gif)
![[Most Recent Exchange Rate from www.kitco.com]](http://www.weblinks247.com/exrate/24hr-jpy-small.gif)
![[Most Recent Exchange Rate from www.kitco.com]](http://www.weblinks247.com/exrate/24hr-mxn-small.gif)
![[Most Recent Exchange Rate from www.kitco.com]](http://www.weblinks247.com/exrate/24hr-rub-small.gif)
![[Most Recent Exchange Rate from www.kitco.com]](http://www.weblinks247.com/exrate/24hr-zar-small.gif)
![[Most Recent Exchange Rate from www.kitco.com]](http://www.weblinks247.com/exrate/24hr-chf-small.gif)
![[Most Recent Charts from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/gold/t24_au_en_usoz_4.gif)
![[Most Recent Charts from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/silver/t24_ag_en_usoz_4.gif)
![[Most Recent Charts from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/platinum/t24_pt_en_usoz_4.gif)
![[Most Recent HUI from www.kitco.com]](http://www.weblinks247.com/indexes/idx24_hui_en_2.gif)
![[Most Recent XAU from www.kitco.com]](http://www.weblinks247.com/indexes/idx24_xau_en_2.gif)
Linear Mode
