Master Investor

By Alastair Ford It’s not easy to conjure up something out of nothing, as any good scientist will tell you. Yet that’s what Stratex International – perhaps the only true project generator listed on Aim – continues to do. This time round, the project is Muratdere, a copper-gold asset in the northwest of Turkey. Muratdere…

By Amy MCellan Exciting times ahead for backers of ASX-listed Pura Vida Energy, which will be appearing at Oilbarrel conference in London on Thursday. The Perth-based explorer is taking a run at the Atlantic waters offshore Morocco, where sentiment has soured after fellow operators suffered a number of dud wells last year. Pura Vida, however,…

The home page of the African Minerals website makes for rather melancholy reading. On the one had there’s the optimistic bombast of the rolling gif in the top left hand corner which unashamedly trumpets “A World Class Resource”, “Exports on Track”, “Partnering With The Community”, and “A Multigenerational Project with Significant Growth Opportunities”. That slick…

By Amy McLellan Andes Energia has delivered another successful well in the Vaca Muerta shale play in Argentina’s Nequen Basin. This is a play that has rightly been described as world-class: at 30,000 sq km, the Belgium-sized Vaca Merta is almost twice the size of the prolific Eagle Ford Shale in Texas and is unusually…

By Martin Clark Things are motoring along for Canada’s TransGlobe Energy, despite the failed takeover bid that it faced up to last year.During 2014, it was targeted by Caracel Energy, a deal that fell through after Caracel itself was the subject of an offer from mining giant Glencore Xstrata. That all seems a long way…

By Alastair Ford Tough times call for tough measures, and with the nickel price now back to the levels at which it was trading before the Indonesian export ban shook up the market, the immediate outlook for projects like Regency’s Mambare laterite asset in Papua New Guinea looks decidedly mixed. But it’s not the immediate…

By Martin Clark Canada’s Azabache Energy is sitting on a prime location in one of Latin America’s most promising unconventional oil prospects – the Vaca Muerta shale in Argentina’s central Neuquen province – but progress may require a bit of support. The search for a partner to help with the development of the area, now…

By Amy McLellan And they’re off! Rockhopper Exploration has spudded the first well in the six well campaign that will keep those who have long held that the Falkland Islands could be the next North Sea gripped for the next seven or eight months. There have been sporadic bursts of drilling in these waters since…

By Our Man in Oz Minews. Good morning Australia. Your mining market seems to have taken a bit of a battering last week. Oz. It looks like that, but most of the serious damage was confined to a handful of stocks with sharp falls by BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Fortescue Metals dragging the ASX…