Resources round-up: Rare Earths, Egdon, Angel, Minco

Egdon Resources has been granted permission for an an exploratory borehole near the UK village of Westerdale through its 40 per cent-owned licence in the area. The Westerdale-2 well is planned to evaluate the Ralph Cross/Westerdale gas discovery in an area near the Ralph Cross-1 well, which previously flowed gas at a depth of 1,040 metres below surface. Company evaluations have indicated the potential for between five and 38 billion cubic feet of gas in place, with a most likely case of around 18bn cf. The firm had previously drilled a well in the Westerdale area in 2006. This well did not find commercial gas reserves and the site was subsequently restored to farmland.

Rare Earths Global, a mining services group, has exercised its option to buy up the remaining 39% of Pingyuan Sanxie Rare Earth Smelting from Grace Coast. In July 2010 the company acquired a 60% share in Sanxie, a rare earth separation and refining business. The stake will be acquired by the issue of four million new shares and a further $10m in cash, paid in three installments by September 15th. The total consideration is around $31.06m. The initial tranche will be funded out of the company's internal resources with the subsequent tranches funded out of negotiated facilities.

Angel Mining's Nalunaq gold mine in Greenland is projecting revenues of $44.5m over the next twelve months, subject to receipt of the permit for partial pillar extraction. The firm is also considering a joint exploration project with Nuna Minerals to determine whether there are other gold deposits in the same mountain as the Nalunaq mine. Grades at the min have been below expectations, but this is expected to change once pillar mining commences and production should then be within the target range of 1,500oz to 2,000oz gold per month.

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Minco has started drilling on the Lundberg base metal project in Buchans, central Newfoundland, Canada. The programme has a budget of CDN$1.0m and will cover around 50 holes and 7,300 metres over a period of around four months. The current inferred resource within the Lundberg conceptual open pit is estimated at 17.28m tonnes with average grades of 1.63% zinc, 0.69% lead, 0.40% copper, and 5.96 silver.

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