glitter could return soon to chesser's gold

Glitter could return soon to Chesser's gold
Richard Hemming
May 14, 2012

LIKE many gold exploration plays, Chesser's share price has been heading south, to the tune of 20 per cent in the past six weeks as investors desert higher-risk stocks in the face of global uncertainty.

But Under the Radar's followers should look out for a big announcement any day now that could boost Chesser's fortunes.

At 50¢ a share, Chesser Resources (ASX: CHZ) has a market cap of $70 million. This is a miner that could end up being many multiples of this.

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Chesser is coming out with its much-anticipated ''resource'' in the next few days.

A resource is a big deal, and is basically a calculation of the ore body (measured in tonnes) multiplied by the average grade of drilling samples. It's an even bigger deal in the type of epithermal gold system found at Chesser's Kestanelik project in Turkey.

It has similar geology to Andean Resources' principal asset, Cerro Negro, located in Argentina. Andean never produced an ounce of gold. It drilled for six years and produced a resource of 3.1 million ounces, and was taken over by Canada's Goldcorp in 2010 for $3.6 billion.

The indications are that Chesser's initial resource could be in the region of 500,000 ounces, which is based on only seven of the 80 veins of gold that it has identified.

The company continues to drill and is aiming to put together a resource of 1.2 million ounces by the end of the year, which could support a 100,000-ounce-a-year mine for 10 years.

African miners are also ones to watch.

As I mentioned in last week's missive, watchers of West African miners are in for a feast of drilling data that is long overdue.

One is Castle Minerals (CDT), which is known as a gold explorer in Ghana. Last week it announced some good results on the gold front, showing strong intercepts, but on Wednesday it also announced some very good graphite drilling results.

Every digger and his dog is on the lookout for a graphite deposit, in the wake of a price that has more than doubled in the past four years.

Its usefulness is being appreciated by the Chinese, among others, for industrial applications. Graphite explorers Talga Gold (ASX: TLG), Syrah (ASX: SYR) and Archer (ASX: AXE) are all five to 10 baggers so far this year.

After the graphite music stops and graphite's price stops climbing, those that remain will be the deposits with high grade and are of sufficient size to justify production.

Castle Minerals is reviewing work done by the Russians in the 1960s and it could well be that this one ticks the economic box.

Bassari Gold (ASX: BSR) also announced some interesting drilling results at its Konkouto prospect in Senegal. It is very early stage for these guys, though, with a market cap of just over $30 million. Still, you have to be in it to win it.

Richard Hemming ([email protected]) is an independent analyst who edits The Fortnightly Newsletter.

undertheradarreport.com.au.