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Message: A 10+ BILLION TONNE POTASH RESOURCE?

Salman Partners Update Mar 2, 2011
A 10+ BILLION TONNE POTASH RESOURCE?

Upon completion of the drilling of the entire 120km+ strike length of the Cerrado Verde property in Q3, the company is expected to publish an updated potash resource. We believe the magnitude of this resource estimate could act as a catalyst for the shares given the potential size of the deposit. We note that the current 105 million tonne resource published in March 2010 is based on 19 drill holes (total of
997m) located on only two of the 96 tenements to which Amazon has a claim. The company’s 2011 drill program seeks to add an additional 203 drill holes(approximately 10,000m total) distributed throughout the entire Cerrado Verde property. We further note that Coffey Mining Pty Ltd, the consultants who
published the original resource estimate, have stated that based on satellite imagery, they estimate the exploration potential inside Amazon’s claim area to be approximately 15 billion tonnes of glauconite mineralization. If the 2011 drill
program is able to establish a potash resource of anything close to 10 billion tonnes of verdete slate at a K2O grade of ~10%, the implications for Amazon are very positive in our view.

A multi-billion tonne verdete slate resource likely makes little difference to the ThermoPotash story, as the existing 105 million tonne resource is more than sufficient to supply a 2 million tonne per year operation for more than half a
century. In the event that the company successfully develops the Cambridge process, though (see our Quantifying Optionality note of December 6, 2010), and is able to scale up the success it has had in the lab, a multi-billion tonne verdete slate deposit becomes extremely valuable.

The Cambridge process is designed to convert Amazon’s verdete slate into high quality sulphate of potash (SOP) or potassium chloride (KCl). Both of these products would sell for a material premium to ThermoPotash and could transform Amazon from a two million tonne per year player in the Brazilian domestic market for ThermoPotash into a conventional SOP or KCl player with the potential to satisfy all Brazilian potash demand (approx. seven million tonnes per annum) and consider export opportunities via a large-scale open pit operation. The combination of a successful commercial scale-up of the Cambridge process with a multi-billion tonne verdete slate resource is likely to add tens of dollars per share to Amazon
Mining’s NAV in our estimation. As a reference, our Amazon Mining NAV estimate under a Cambridge process scenario with two million tonnes of output per year is Cdn$42.12 per share. Amazon management continues to investigate the potential to scale-up the Cambridge process and plans to issue a scoping study by Q3 2011 in the event it deems this project viable."

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