Letter from the President
posted on
Sep 30, 2009 07:40PM
Pele Mountain Resources is focused on the sustainable development of a rare earth processing center in Elliot Lake, Ontario, at the same location as its Eco Ridge Mine Rare Earth and Uranium Project.
As a new shareholder I thought this letter worth reprinting here:
September 10, 2009
LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT:
Dear Fellow Shareholders:
With the natural resource markets showing renewed strength, and gold flirting with its all-time highs, I’m writing to provide you with an update on what we’ve accomplished so far this year and what we intend to do over the balance of 2009. In our most recent Letter to Shareholders, contained in our 2008 Annual Report, I stated that we were “…redoubling our efforts to realize the considerable value in our gold projects.” I’m pleased to report substantial progress on that front, as we continue advancing our flagship uranium project at Eco Ridge.
At our Ardeen Gold Project, we recently signed an Option and Joint Venture Agreement with Australian-based Coventry Resources Limited. Coventry has since launched a 4000-metre drill program, focusing their efforts near the historic mine area in three zones where Pele drilled several high-grade gold intercepts in the late-1990s. Coventry must spend $1.5-million within the first 18 months to earn a 50-percent interest, and another $1.5-million by year-end 2011 to earn a 75-percent interest. At that point, Pele can elect to maintain a 25-percent interest in a joint-venture with Coventry or may elect to have Coventry continue to solely fund the work, with our interest converting to a 2-percent NSR royalty upon their completion of a feasibility study. We are very pleased to see this high potential project reactivated and look forward to news flow from Ardeen through year-end.
At our Highland Gold Project, recent exploration efforts have resulted in a high-grade, near-surface gold discovery at the Lone Ranger occurrence in the eastern portion of the property. This discovery, along with other zones exhibiting strong potential, has greatly elevated our prioritization of Highland. We are prospecting, mapping, and sampling at several East Highland locations in preparation for drilling this fall. We successfully extracted a 10,000-tonne bulk sample from East Highland’s Markes Zone in 1999. The sample was processed at Hemlo, resulting in positive cash flow at a time when gold was trading at just US$300 per ounce. We are excited about the new discovery at Lone Ranger and the opportunity for others, not only for their potential to build significant gold resources, but also for the possibility to generate revenue from near-surface production, as we did at Markes. With outstanding local infrastructure including three nearby modern gold mills, we believe there is excellent potential to once again establish revenue generating operations at Highland. We’ve concluded that the optimal approach for advancing our Highland properties at this time is to divide the project into two smaller projects, West Highland and East Highland. In 2005 & 2006, we made considerable progress at West Highland, with high-grade gold and base metals intersected in drilling at Farquhar, Bowmore, and other occurrences, primarily surrounding the Gutcher Lake Stock. Recent compilation in late-2008 and subsequent field work focusing on structural controls for gold during 2009 has continued to confirm the excellent potential of West Highland. With our recent success in pursuing high-grade, near-surface gold occurrences at East Highland, we are increasingly focusing our exploration activities there, while adopting a strategy to advance West Highland by engaging an exploration partner.
Meanwhile, we remain committed to the advancement of our Eco Ridge Mine uranium project. As detailed in the Project Description, which was submitted to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and the Federal Government’s Major Project Management Office in September 2008, Pele has proposed underground uranium mining at Eco Ridge, to be processed through a combination of underground bioleaching and surface heap leach extraction. With a NI 43-101 compliant resource of 6.4 million pounds of “indicated” U3O8 (5.68 million tonnes grading 0.051-percent U3O8) and 36.1 million pounds of “inferred” U3O8 (37.26 tonnes grading 0.044-percent U3O8), we believe that Eco Ridge offers exceptional leverage to uranium. We are convinced that the long-term fundamentals for uranium are robust and that we are well-positioned to provide a safe, secure, and reliable long term supply to the resurgent nuclear power industry. A wide-diameter drill program was concluded at Eco Ridge last month, with resulting core bound for the labs at MIRARCO (at Laurentian University in Sudbury) to monitor progressively larger micro and bench-scale tests simulating various biologically mediated heap-leach scenarios. The study will provide detailed information on long-term mineralogical, geochemical and microbiological studies, assisting in uranium and rare earth element recovery optimization and the preliminary modeling of costeffective, low-maintenance closure strategies. We are also working with SRK Engineering on economic modeling studies to optimize operating and capital costs. We also continue to engage in constructive and friendly dialogue with local communities and governments on our progress at Eco Ridge.
At this time, the market for junior resource exploration and development companies, particularly those with significant gold exposure, is rapidly improving. We believe that our stock has been seriously undervalued in recent months and that an investment in Pele presents a compelling long term opportunity. On behalf of the Board of Directors, I would like to again thank you for your support.
Please feel free to contact the Company at any time to discuss our progress, our outlook, and our plans.
Yours truly,
Al Shefsky
President