Vancouver Stock Exchange Good news from Ottawa for juniors

The federal government’s new exploration incentive program and the extension of the present earned depletion allowance for an extra six months is certainly good news for junior resource companies. The mining industry has finally learned how to lobby effectively and you can’t argue with the results.

The impact of the new program has yet to be felt on the market and probably won’t be for some time. In any event, Vancouver has been in the doldrums for months now and weaker gold prices will probably compound the situation before things turn around. At least one analyst has predicted a drop to the $400(US) level.

American Pacific Mining was a heavy trader at press time with a turnover of 270,000 shares but it was off 10 cents to $4.70. The company operates the El Mochito mine (zinc-silver) in Honduras which at today’s metal prices should be doing quite well. It’s also looking at another base metals situation in Ireland.

Trading heavily again this week was Alotta Resources which climbed 4 cents to $1.34; at last report three drills were operating on its Gagne- Duchesne option in northwestern Quebec.

Over our report period, Delaware Resource Corp. was a star performer, rising $2.37 to $14. The company has been taken over by Prime Capital’s Colossus Resource Corp. which has appointed three members to the Delaware board and apparently controls slightly more than 50%. Colossus hasn’t been doing poorly either. The stock was ahead 35 cents to $4.55 and the warrants 30 cents to $1.70.

Skyline Exploration, which is developing a mine near Delaware’s SNIP project in northwestern B.C., shot up $1.25 to $12.75 while Arakis Mining gained 50 cents to $3.75. The latter recently acquired control of Pacific Rim Container Sales. Obviously a name change is in order here. Gold Texas, which has agreed to sell a quarter of its 20% interest in the Kettle/Kay project in Washington State to Echo Bay for $5 million(US), climbed 47 cents to $5.12. This looks like a producer.

Among losing issues was Continental Gold, which dropped 25 cents to $2.85. The loss might be explained by aggressive promotion tactics. Cornucopia dropped 15 cents to $4.15. Inco Ltd. recently purchased 500,000 shares of the company for $1.8 million. It’s been taking quite an interest in these types of heap leach situations lately.