Gold price drives junior exchange

Vancouver — Junior resource stocks started to make a comeback over the holiday-shortened week ended Aug. 6 as economic uncertainty deepened in the U.S. The TSX Venture Exchange composite index closed up 16.10 points, or 1.6% of its value, and finished the week at 1030.42.

ECU Silver Mining was the week’s volume leader, with 2.8 million shares crossing the floor. The company’s issue dropped 3 and closed at 5. ECU Silver owns the Velardena silver mine in central Mexico, which has a resource of 2.4 million tonnes grading 269 grams silver and 2.80 grams gold per tonne.

IBI remained flat at 6 with 2.4 million shares traded. The company owns and operates a vermiculite mine in the Mbale region of southeastern Uganda, near the Kenyan border. IBI recently inked a deal for to sell $2.6 million worth of its medium grade vermiculite. Weekly shipments are expected to begin this month.

Pan Asia Mining closed flat at 3 with 938,000 shares crossing the floor. The company is exploring four parcels of land in the southern part of the Shandong province in China. These four targets are dubbed the Songjiazhuang, the Xizoquanzhung, the Beishangzi and the Shiquo areas. The junior is now planning a work program that will consist of further soil sampling, high-resolution magnetic and resistivity surveys, and, if warranted, pitting, trenching and drilling of the most favourable sites.

Odyssey Resources closed up a penny to 31 with 850,000 shares traded. The company is in a joint venture with BHP Billiton, which will identify, assess and acquire potentially huge copper-gold porphyry targets in the prolific Tethyan orogenic belt in eastern Turkey. The properties acquired during the “first phase” of the venture will be funded on a 50-50 basis. BHP Billiton retains an option to increase its interest in each property to 65% by incurring all subsequent expenditures required to complete a feasibility study. The major can increase its interest in each property to 75%, by incurring all expenditures required to take it to commercial production.

Diagem International Resources finished the week at 20, up 2 on 821,000 shares. The junior diamond explorer recently announced that KWG Resources and joint-venture partner Spider Resource, who together hold a 38.9% interest in the Wawa diamond property in Ontario, have recovered 167 diamonds from twelve 15-kg regional rock samples. One of the samples yielded 59 diamonds, including 22 macrodiamonds. To date, the joint venture has recovered a total of 639 diamonds from this project, including 68 macros and 13 commercial-size diamonds.

Antoro Resources added 4 to its value and closed at 44 on a volume of 750,000 shares. The company completed its Phase 1 exploration program on its Montalembert diamond property in Quebec. The results should be released in mid-September 2002.

Anooraq Resources closed at 84, up 4 on a volume of 687,000 shares. Last month, the company announced that the critical Platreef rocks that host platinum-group-metal/nickel/copper deposits in the region, have been intersected in the first two holes of drilling on its Rietfontein farm in South Africa.

Majescor Resources tumbled 9 and closed at 43 with 565,000 shares traded. The company recently closed a private placement of 1.7 million flow-through common shares at a price of 60 per share for gross proceeds of $1.02 million. The net proceeds of the financing will be applied to Majescor’s diamond exploration projects.

St. Jude Resources added 5 to its value and closed at 67 on 533,000 shares. The junior announced bonanza-gold grade intersections at its South Benso concession in Ghana, West Africa. The best intercept cut 12 metres averaging 78.71 grams gold per tonne and included a 1-metre section that assayed 567 grams gold.