Trading Summary (August 06, 2002)

The gold issues led the S&P/TSX Composite Index 17.31 points lower to 6,519.16 points on Tuesday. The move brought the TSX, which missed a down day for the markets on Monday, in line with the U.S. markets. The golds dropped 3.29 points or nearly 2% to 163.87, while the metals and mining index slipped 2.67 points or 2.3% to 112.61 points.

Aurado Exploration shot up a nickel or 23% to 27 after inking a deal to pick up a 90% interest in the Liman block, a of 6,459-sq.-km exploration and production license in western Kazakhstan, from Oil Capital Ltd., for 200 million shares. The shares will come out of 600 million Aurado is proposing to issue to OCL under a previously announced deal for the rights to a petroleum concession in Turkmenistan. Aurado currently has about 105 million shares outstanding. Aurado saw nearly 16 million shares change hands displacing Nortel Networks as the most traded issue on the TSX.

Kinross Gold managed to end unchanged at $2.79 on a volume of about 2.7 million shares to take third spot on the top ten traded list. Other miners to make the list were Alcan, off $1.02 to $40.97, Placer Dome, 75 poorer at $13.35 and Barrick Gold, down $1.08 to $23.90.

Most of the country’s remaining gold miners put in similar performances. Glamis went against the grain posting a 12 gain to $12.95. On Tuesday, Glamis reported second-quarter earnings of US$3.4 million (or 4 per share) one revenue of US$20.4 million, compared to year-ago earnings of US$1 million (1 per share) on US$14.5 million. The increase is thanks to a 25% increase in gold production. Cash costs fell to US$161 per oz. from US$171 per oz.

The base metal issues were awash in red ink. Inco dropped 85 to $25 on just more than 1.1 million shares to come in behind Alcan. Swedish miner Boliden fell a quarter or 5.3% to $4.50.

On Tuesday, the National Post reported Spanish media reports that said Boliden plans to appeal Spain’s E45 million fine related to a tailings spill from the Los Frailes lead-zinc mine in the south of Spain in 1998. Boliden’s Spanish unit Boliden-Apirsa, which has sought protection from creditors, operated the mine at the time of the accident. Last year, a Spanish court cleared Boliden-Apirsa of any criminal responsibility in the spill.

Falconbridge shed 38 to $15.90 in thin trading. Reuters reports that Falco plans to reopen its nickel smelter in Sudbury, Ontario, on Thursday after a month-long vacation shutdown. The company hopes to resume normal levels of production.

The TSX Venture Exchange composite index lost 6.67 points, or 0.64%, and closed the day at 1030.40, with 20.7 million shares traded.

IBI Corp was the day’s volume leader with 1.3 million shares changing hands. The company owns and operates a vermiculite mine located in the Mbale region of south-east Uganda, near the Kenyan border. The company recently inked a deal for to sell $2.6 million worth of its medium grade Vermiculite. Weekly shipments are anticipated to commence this month

Pan Asia Mining closed at 3, down a penny on 436,000 shares. The company has the right to acquire 50% contractual interests in four Sino-Foreign joint venture companies located in Shandong Province in China. The joint venture companies own a diamond mine, two diamond exploration properties, and a copper and gold exploration property.

Chesapeake Gold closed at $1.80, up 2 on 325,000 shares. Chesapeake Gold is a Randy Riefel spin-off company. As a result of the merger with Glamis Gold, each Francisco share was converted into 1.5 shares of Glamis and 1 share of a new exploration company called Chesapeake Gold.

Diagem International Resources closed up 3 to 20 on 245,000 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. Of these, one sample yielded 59 diamonds including 22 macrodiamonds. To date, the joint venture has recovered a total of 639 diamonds from this project that include 68 macrodiamonds and 13 commercial size diamonds (one dimension greater then 1.0 mm).