Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Mineral Resources Investor Presentation following today's announcement of MinRes off-market takeover offer of Norwest Energy. Shortly, I will hand over to Chris Ellison, managing director, before opening the line for analyst and media questions. A little bit of admin before we start. Please be advised that today's webcast is being recorded. The presentation contains forecasts and forward-looking information. You should carefully read the disclaimer at the back of the presentation. A copy of the presentation is available on Mineral Resources website under the Investor Presentation page at mineralresources.com.au. A copy of the webcast transcript will also be posted on the webcast later today. If you wish to ask a question via the phone, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad.
If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type your question into the Ask a Question box. I will now hand over to Chris Ellison.
Thanks, Sam. Good morning, everyone. Welcome for, welcome to MinRes webinar. Thanks for joining. I'm Chris Ellison. I'm Managing Director of MinRes. I'm joined by Executive General Manager of Energy, Shelley Robertson, sitting up to the side if we need to pass any questions to her. We've announced this morning off-market takeover bid for Norwest Energy. I'm gonna try and give you some details around the offer, talk a little bit about the benefits that I think that we can bring to the Norwest shareholders, and what we can bring overall as a benefit to the state of Western Australia. At the end, happy to address any questions that anyone's got.
I think personally, I think in MinRes, and a lot of the community, we see gas as a natural transitional fuel. We think that, certainly in the MinRes business, I wanna eliminate diesel and coal-fired power wherever I can and as quick as I can. I need to go to alternate energy fuels to be able to do that. I'm certainly using a lot of solar power and we've also started installing wind power, which generally only works for us sort of during the day in sunlight hours. Sadly, we still need to use fossil fuels in a lot of areas. I think that gas is gonna be just that. We acquired a lot of land up in the Perth Basin around 2015.
We were up there working with a small junior, and they weren't successful in what they were doing. We acquired their land. We become the largest landholder, not just in the Perth Basin, but also up in the Carnarvon Basin. We're generally partnered in the Carnarvon Basin with Buru Energy. We're probably gonna spend close to about AUD 200 million over the next 18-24 months on our gas exploration and gas development. Getting ready to start developing. I'll talk about that a little bit off. The offer from MinRes this morning, we're offering 1,367 Norwest shares. We'll convert into a MinRes share. That was about a AUD 0.06 equivalent to the Norwest shares.
I think the market's moved somewhat this morning on the MinRes and on Norwest Energy, but I think it's a fairly compelling offer. It's about a 33% premium on where the Norwest Energy share price has been trading in recent times. It gives the Norwest Energy shareholders about a AUD 403 million market cap. I think importantly, it's an opportunity for the Norwest Energy shareholders to join the forces of MinRes and to be able to move into development. I've previously announced that MinRes as a business is probably gonna double over the next two years. We've been able to demonstrate our growth over a long period of time.
We've got a combined business of both gas mining services, iron ore, lithium is also a big, big part of where we're heading. It's a good opportunity. MinRes has been around for 30 years. We did 16 years as a public company. Prior to that, a little bit less as a private organization. We started as a very small business, AUD 10,000, operating out of my lounge room. Today, over 5,500 employees, we're spread across a range of commodities and services. We've got horizons out there that are gonna last us beyond 50 years if we do nothing else, which is not in our DNA.
Today, we're sitting about number 25 to 26 on ASX, about an AUD 16 billion market cap, and lots and lots of future ahead of us. We've aggressively grown the business over that 30-year period. I mean, we generally go out, we'll acquire an asset, and we very quickly get the asset into production. That's because we come from a poor background, and we understand how critical it is to get cash flow coming through the door. We're very quick at being able to develop them. We have been backed by a huge number of great people in this business over the years. We probably have, without doubt, the best collection of people I've seen for a long time sitting here in MinRes.
I think the important thing, too, is that we've got a really strong track record of acting in the best interest of the shareholders and of the MinRes business itself, which is one and the same. We've got a world-class portfolio and iron ore assets we're developing and lithium assets. We're exploring opportunities for a lot of downstream. I believe very strongly in downstream processing, and we're looking at across the board, particularly through lithium and gas, which I'll talk a bit about. The gas is gonna be playing a big part in our future plans. We've been exploring and doing a lot of work, particularly in the Perth Basin for the last five, six years.
We're sort of in the, in the seat where we're ready to start turning it into production. I think our track record in MinRes has been reasonably impressive. We've got a great balance sheet. It took us a long time to get to where we are, but we've got it. We got there with that balance sheet because we made sure that the return on any dollar we invested is gonna come back to us in the form of +20%. We've been consistent in delivering 21% return over the last 16 years, and we've averaged 20% per annum dividend growth. Total dividends were paid to date, AUD 9.56, which is not bad. More than half of that were paid in the last five years.
We've got the best total shareholder return, or sorry, second best, on the ASX since 2006. As I said, we'll double the business over the next two years, and that's simply on the back of the Ashburton Iron Ore Project and the growth that we've got mapped out and we're actually doing now inside the lithium business and the mining services business, of course. I mean, it doubled from 2019 to 2022, and it'll probably do that again from 2022 through till about late 2024. Well set up for growth in the future. The business has been structured around growth. I've restructured the way we operated over the last 12 months. I think it's reasonably well known. I've split it down into four operating pillars.
Each pillar has secured a range of different opportunities and projects that they're working on and they're gonna bring to fruition over the next one to four years. They operate standalone. They've got their own management team. Each one has got a strong team sitting inside them, and we support them out of the MinRes central services and with shared services, with management guidance, funding, all of those sort of things. The mining services business, it's the heartbeat of MinRes. It's where I started. It's a very important part of the business. It gives us agility. We act and behave like a contractor. We're productive. We keep our costs down to a minimum. They are most projects that we develop. They, in fact, do the design and construction on all of our projects in-house.
Lithium, it's a huge part of MinRes at the moment, and it will continue to be for a long time to come. We got more than 50 years of dirt in the ground in our mines. We're a world leader in hard rock. We produce about 29% of global supply out of our two deposits for hard rock. We're doubling Mount Marion right now. That's probably gonna come on a little later than we expected, probably around March of next year. It'll be coming into full production. We're running two trains at Wodgina. We're probably to come somewhere during the course of next year, and that's subject to getting the final approvals and the tails and the like in place, which is going well.
We're also expanding into hydroxide, so we hope to have some news flow on that over the next couple of months. Iron ore, of course, always been a big part of the MinRes business. It's the backbone of any major mining company out there. The biggest mining companies in the world have always had that long-term annuity stream of cash rolling in from their low cost operations, and we're trying to replicate that. I think Ashburton will be a very low cost. There's several billion tons of iron ore in that region, so look, got a lot of future down the track. Energy overview. Our energy business has been the enabler of our continued growth.
Low cost, it's secure, it's a cleaner fuel than the fuel that we're burning out there now, both in our business or anything that we tap out of the WA power grid. It presents a lot of opportunities, and it's the opportunities that really interest us the most. I mean, we want to be able to use the gas that we develop for long-term downstream processing. Again, we think there's a great future in urea only because we're gonna be the lowest cost gas producers, us onshore organization. That will be the lowest cost in terms of producing urea, ammonia, another great opportunity. Our hydroxide plants that we wanna bring back into Australia over the next three or four years.
magnetite, we think that we've got opportunity with magnetite, and we wanna be able to use energy to turn that into a very clean feed for the for the mills. Pelletized magnetite is sort of what we're thinking over the next three or four years. It's the key to decarbonization. It's displacing all of the things that I've said. It 's very important for us to be able to transition. We've got a very broad target of reducing our carbon by 50% out to 35. We can achieve that much, much quicker than that with the use of use of gas and the elimination of some of the other nasty fuels that we've been using.
We're focused on doing that, and I would suggest we're probably gonna be five to six years ahead of that target. We're already the largest acreage holder in both the Perth and Carnarvon Basins. Lockyer Deep is possibly Australia's largest onshore discovery, and we're looking at trying to get that into production over the next two to three years. The, as recent as yesterday, around gas consumption for WA. The base case shows that domestic gas demand in WA is gonna continue to grow, and they're predicting it's gonna tighten towards the end of this decade. We think that the Perth Basin is part of that solution to being able to bring some more gas on stream and be able to support the, that shortage, in fact, eliminate the shortage.
We think it's also important where we can bring new industry into WA, whether it be our downstream processing or others. We're gonna shut down the coal-fired power stations in WA, so we need a fuel source for that, and the only logical one for that is gas. A lot of jobs are gonna be created over the next four or five years out of the Perth Basin. There's a lot of players in the Perth Basin. I mean, they're slowly reducing, but there's been an awful lot of small players out there, and they've spent more time mining the stock market than they have drilling holes. They've been sitting on their hands for decades. There's a number of new players that have come in over the last five, six, seven years.
We've started putting holes in the ground, and we've started to prove up that it's a great region for very clean, loose gas. None of the gas requires fracking. We have no intention of being one of those. We want the clean, loose gas. We've got a record of fast project delivery once we've secured an asset. It's our intention we're gonna get that gas out of the ground by latest 2025 and get it into production. Perth Basin overview. I think everyone kinda knows it's been around for a long, long time. It's about 1,300 Ks north to south. Our permits were acquired in 2025. We're the largest land holder.
We've spent a fair amount of money up there so far, but we're really gonna up that significantly over the next couple years. We are working pretty hard at the moment to try and secure a drill rig. We're very close to getting one. We hope to have it up there in the new year. We're probably running about three months behind where we would like to be on that, but these big rigs are extremely difficult to get. That, coupled with some new rules that the WA government have brought in, again, has slowed that process, and they were unexpected. We're working through that. Shelley and the team have worked through that, and we're getting close. They got a lot of work to do up there too on stuff like seismic.
We've done a lot of work around making sure that the owners of the properties up there we're working on are fully engaged with us and supportive. Another great job that Shelley and her team have done. Very important to us as community relations and making sure that everyone shares in the success of what we're doing. Lockyer Deep, it's near Mingenew. It's only about 15 Ks from the main Dampier-Bunbury trunk line. We own 80% of Lockyer and Norwest, as you know, owns the other 20. The drilling program commenced in 2021. We went down about 4.25 Ks. Confirmed our expectations. Large, high-quality conventional reservoir, extremely high gas flow rates and excellent porosity. Low impurities of CO2, so less than 4%.
It's a very clean gas that we've got. Program snapshot. Look, we're still evaluating it. We're probably going to do a lot more than what we're saying on this snapshot. We're going to make sure that we've defined the rig gas around Lockyer as much as we think is necessary, and then our true style before we get there, we'll probably start development and start building a plant. We're working those exploration drilling campaign. We're running that in conjunction with the development, and we're starting the approval process now. We're looking at a whole range of other opportunities across the Perth Basin and up in the Carnarvon Basin. We're going to be starting work in Carnarvon soon.
It took us a while to be able to get the title to that, but we've got all that locked in now. As I've said, we're in partnership out there with Buru Energy. We plan to drill a couple of holes out there by 2024. Between now and then, we've got a lot of work to do on seismic and making sure that we get or that we're working again out there with the landowners. We're working in partnership with them. As I've said earlier, if you have a look at the track record of MinRes, I can clearly demonstrate to you that taking script is way better for you than taking cash. We'll get this thing into production very quickly.
You'll join up with a business that's got, we are one of the top five lithium producers, and we think that's got decades ahead of us. The iron ore business is gonna be a great cash generator. What does all that mean to you? It means that if you have MinRes instead of cash, you're gonna be way better off. If you have a look at the value generation, I mean, we've got four examples I've put up for you. The top two, Polaris Metals and Mesa Minerals. I took over Polaris way back in about 2010. The shareholders took MinRes stock. If they hang on to it, that for each AUD 1,000 they traded for shares would worth AUD 19,370 equivalent in shares they've received and dividend.
Mesa Minerals about the same time done something very, very similar. Didn't work out quite so well for all the shareholders. We ended up, I think from memory, with about 73% of Mesa. There was a few that hung on to the end. That didn't work out very well for them at all, which was sad. We kept the bid open anyway. We ended up with that. If you had AUD 1,000 worth of shares, and look, I still get messages from people out in Toowoomba that had quite a shareholding in that and they're all incredibly ecstatic. Fundamentally, I mean, if you swap your shares, if we can get beyond 80% of Norwest, everyone gets rollover relief.
If I offered you cash for it, you would probably have a tax bill. If you're gonna pay tax, you might pay something like AUD 0.30 on the dollar, depending on how you're structured. You're left with AUD 0.70, and then you got to go and find somewhere to invest it. If you can find somewhere better than MinRes, well, I mean, over the last 16 years, we're up there in the very top on return on investment, and we've got a line up of what's ahead of us. The next two down, AW and Atlas Iron, unfortunately for them, they didn't understand this sort of scenario, they didn't take the offer. They took cash instead.
You can see had they taken the shares, the sort of return they would be expecting, and if they kept that invested going forward, we're predicting future growth, significant growth, subject to the world staying the way it is. I think the slide speaks for itself. And the reason why I've offered shares instead, I think most of the shareholders want to stay on the journey and, you know, if our share price continues to strengthen, then our offer continues to increase. I think not a lot more there. Logical opportunity for the North shareholders, I think it is to join with join with Minres, stay on the journey, be the be part of any other upside that we may have out there in our own Minres tenements, which is substantial.
Be part of the growth story in lithium, in iron ore and our mining services, which we're very strong in. We've got a great leadership team that are gonna go find us some more gas up there from led by Shelley. Not a lot more to say. We've got a very good board, obviously, and thanks everyone for their comments on Justin coming on board. We can see that you understand that we're on a mission to make sure that we support our people, and we keep driving that culture in our people, because that's the real thing that's developed this business. Good to have Justin and Colleen Hayward both coming on board and joining us. I mean, that's exciting for us going forward.
Look, I think we've got a fairly proven track record around the management of the business. I think that we've been pretty good at picking the right people to make sure we can drive the business forward, continue the growth on where it's going. As I said, I mean, the balance sheet we've got is substantial and we've got a lot of levers to pull if we need to go raise capital. I think it's a bit of a snapshot. It's why we're doing it. I think it's logical why we're trying to bring it into the fold. It makes that much tidier for everyone. I think, as I said, the opportunity sitting out there for the Norwest shareholders, I think is substantial. That sort of wraps that up.
If you've got any questions, I'm really happy to field them.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question via the phone, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type your question into the Ask a Question box. As a courtesy to others, please limit yourself to two questions at a time. If you wish to ask further questions, you are more than welcome to rejoin the queue to ask. Your first question comes from Kate McCutcheon with Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi, Chris. Good morning. Great project. I'm just wondering what the rationale is for not doing an offer conditional on getting to a 50.1% stake, say. Are you happy if you end up with a minority stake? Just your thought process there, please.
No, you know, I think I'm never happy to be in a minority position. But look, at the same time, I'm happy to accumulate whatever shareholding I can in Norwest, but I didn't want to make it complicated. I think the audience that we're playing to, I think they're very simple people that just want a fair shake. I think if I get the majority of them on board, I'll be happy. If I end up with a minority, I'm still okay.
Okay. Understandable. Understanding that you need to confirm the size of the project, and you've given us some more color today on the further drill hole locations, have you commenced discussions with the Government around potential for export via the North West Shelf? Or perhaps how do you see export approvals playing out?
Yeah, good question. Look, have we spoke to the government? No, we haven't. Not in a hurry to do anything along those lines. I'm a lot more focused on trying to bring long-term projects into WA. I mean, I've got all of my people are here in WA. If I can get to and from a project in a day, that means I can control it. I see the long-term value in the gas and being able to convert into products like urea, using it in-house. Look, I've already said that over the next three to four years, I wanna bring as much of our hydroxide production back into WA. I want a pellet plant in WA. That gives me much better energy.
That's a way better investment for me over the next 40 or 50 years than going for a short-term sugar hit. Not saying I wouldn't do that. I mean, if the opportunity was there, yeah, I'd love to do that. My ultimate goal is between now and four or five years down the track, is to be able to close those long-term downstream projects. Look, I mean, with the cost of gas in WA, we're well-positioned to be the lowest cost producers in the world.
Yeah. Okay. It just seems like you've got a lot of gas in excess of what you need, which is a good problem to have, I guess. Just a final question. What's the strategy with the order of drilling? Is the priority to confirm continuity over default or the extent down dip? When can we expect news flow from the drill program?
Okay. Our priority on drilling, these drilling rigs are extremely difficult to get, so our priority is to get a rig on site and get it drilling. Once we do that, it's gonna be a bit of a suck it and see, but our expectation is that we're gonna kick our drilling program out more than what we've been thinking over the last six months. We're gonna have a mixture there, resource development, and new ground that we want to explore. We've got another little plant that's been sitting idle out there for some years, and we're gonna put some holes down near that and see if we can bring that little plant back to life again and put some more gas back into the WA grid.
Okay, great. Thanks, Chris. Good luck with your majority stake.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question is a webcast question from Winton Gibson who asks, "Good luck with this NWE bid. It seems to make a lot of sense. Further to our brief discussion at the AGM about directors' skill set, could you please provide some more insight into how you see Justin Langer adding value to the board's effectiveness?
Yeah. Look, thanks too for the comments from Review. I always enjoy reading them. The basis of bringing Justin on board is people. My greatest success in MinRes has been around the people and that I've had in the business, their work ethic, the way they go about being motivated. I mean, got plenty of people, and I know that a lot of people won't get this. They will given time, I've got a lot of people that can read a balance sheet or they understand geology or mining or how to dig pits and how to count. To do all of that, the most important thing I've got to do is I've got to make sure that I've got the best quality people.
Once I've got them in the business, I got to make sure that I get a lot of longevity out of them. The MinRes business is becoming quite a machine. We've over 5,500 people in it now. We have, in terms of our training and bringing kids on board through uni, through training programs, through whatever, I have to make sure that we've got a reputation for making sure we look after our people and we treat them with respect. The culture is good, and that does not happen on its own. That's got to come from the top, from the very top of the business. I've been driving that on my own for quite some years now, and you can see the results that we've achieved.
Look, as a group of shareholders out there, if you want more of the same, I have to be able to grow the culture in my people, and I have to get my people to pass that down the line. I need help to do that. None better than Justin Langer. I think that I don't know a lot about cricket. As you know, I'm more of an All Blacks person, but I can tell you the culture that makes the All Blacks the most winning team of all time, exception of the last year, of course, is that they have a culture in there that's unique and it's quite well known. I think the era that Justin come through with all his cricketing mates and had a very similar culture. They still have that culture today.
Justin gets that culture and, you know, I have to have people driving my business. I mean, look, I could talk all day about that, but I think, we're unbelievably happy and privileged to have him on board. He will make a difference.
Thank you. Your next west-webcast question comes from Sean Smith. Any thoughts on the Fed's intervention in the energy market? The price cap won't affect you, but the code will.
No, I don't have a lot to comment on that. We, that's why we're living in WA. I mean, we're without doubt probably the best mining region on the planet. There's none better. Anything that comes out of WA is an ethical commodity. I think that WA's been incredibly well run. The, the government in WA have made sure that you can't drill rods in the ground. We don't like fracking over here, but we can go out and explore and make sure that we've got sufficient energy first to supply WA going forward. I like the idea of what the government's done some years back when Alan Carpenter brought that, and I thought he'd done something really smart. Look, we've got adequate gas for WA, and we've got adequate opportunity going forward.
Thanks to all the past people from out east, they didn't want to put a pipeline across WA. We're grateful for that. It's probably uneconomical to ship in gas. Yeah. Look, I'm happy to be in WA, and I really don't want to make any comment on how the politicians run the states on the East Coast.
Thank you. Your next phone question comes from Nick Evans with The Australian. Please go ahead.
Okay, Chris. Just, wonder, Chris, if you could sort of give us a bit of a timeframe in terms of your thinking on moving sort of downstream in gas to urea and perhaps, you know, as you said, I think a bit further on, down to ammonia. Is that sort of, you know, two years, five years? How quickly do you see, do you think you're moving? Have you put a team in place that is actually actively looking at that kind of thing?
Yeah. Look, we've actually been running a rule over that and looking at that for about the last 12 months, Nick. It's a logical step to take when you think about it. I mean, we've exported the likes of, you know, iron ore and spodumene, all of that stuff over the years. WA has been really good at being able to give that off and let everyone pick up the value on the downstream. I mean, I wanna create long, long-term businesses. You know, selling gas offshore, you know, a good sugar hit out of it. I see the real value in just building these plants in WA.
It's gonna take us, look, we think optimistically we might be able to get some gas being produced around late 2024, but you know, realistically, it could run into 2025. There's a few headwinds around on all of the changes on approvals out there now and the issues that have come out of Juukan Gorge. I would say that by the time we get 12 months from now down the track, we'll have a real good handle on being able to understand what we're gonna build. We will build up. I think we'd like to be thinking that we'd be able to pour concrete somewhere around about 2024. That would probably be about the time set.
With the, with your lithium hydroxide and a few of the other things, the magnetite, well, magnetite's sort of separate. With the lithium hydroxide and a few other things you've done, it sounds like you're really pushing to build a real chemicals business here. I mean, you know, quite a substantial one over time. Is that a fair assessment of where your sort of thinking is?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you think about it, why should we go and give away that opportunity and that value in the supply chain, and then run around and just keep digging rock out of the ground? I mean, we can do a lot better. Look, over the last three years, I've sort of shut down everything that we were doing offshore, up in China, our procurement up there and fabricating. We've pulled all that back to WA. We're making a lot of stuff here in WA now. We're gonna continue to do that. We're building more workshops. We're encouraging manufacturing companies down here, like the big road trains, to open up on Mason. I mean, the future here for us in WA, first and foremost, over and above cost, is surety of supply.
We need to be able to make sure that we can get the right products within the right timeframe so we can keep developing. Look, if we can, very easy for us to pull back hydroxide into WA. I mean, we've got strong government support to do that. We've got a very skilled construction and engineering team sitting inside the MinRes business. All of the things we've ever developed, we've done it and we've done a huge amount of volume out there for some of our good customers, FMG, Rio Tinto and the like. We've done design construct for a number of organizations. We're capable of getting it done on the ground at the right capital cost.
It's a pretty easy way, if I can connect some raw material in the ground, if I've got 40 or 50 years supply, and connecting that up to downstreaming and selling a, an end product, I think that it's, it is a good business model, and I think, we can make it work easily.
Thanks, Chris. I'll pass it along. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Hayden Bairstow with Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Yeah, morning, Chris. Just a bit of a follow-up on Nick's question, I guess. Just on the gas plan, if we start factoring in magnetite and, you know, a hydroxide plant or two in WA, I mean, how much of the gas do you think you'll actually use yourself, and how much of it becomes an opportunity to export or become a separate revenue stream?
I think the long-term answer to that, Hayden, is that we'd probably wanna use all of the gas either ourselves and whatever amount that we need to support WA. Look, supporting WA would be supplying all of those downstream plants that I'm talking about, and I mean, just super opportunity to do that. The more I can... I mean, look, if we're probably still gonna be exporting, only in the sense if we make urea, we'll probably be putting a lot of, most of it on a ship and sending it out. If we can do ammonia, I mean, a lot of that's probably gonna be exported anyway. What we are doing is we're creating that value downstream where we get it here in WA.
We get maximum value out of raw materials rather than giving that opportunity away. You know, for years, I mean, we were sending out spodumene, and we were sending it out at, like, AUD 400 a ton, guess where all the benefit ended up? You know, we've got nothing to show for it. But we will shortly.
Okay. Just, I might have missed it on the start of the call, but the timing of the next well, I mean, when is that in terms of getting confirmation of how big Lockyer Deep might actually be?
Yeah. Shoot me now. I mean, the drill rigs have been an issue. I mean, supply of drill rigs, I mean, it's something we're working really hard on frantically daily. We were hoping to be drilling now. We're hoping to have a drill hole in the ground. That combined with a new set of rules that the mines department brought out, probably program that you've got to do to a drill rig that comes in, has not been helpful to us. Nevertheless, we've dealt with that, so we're hoping to have a rig on the ground probably late January, early February, and we're gonna try and maximize the use of that going forward.
All right. Great. Thanks. I'll leave it there.
Thank you. Your next question is a written question from Gail Coners. Can you please discuss the engagement MIN has with the NWE board to date, i.e., is this the first approach? Was contact only just made today? The stark contrast between information released to the market today by MIN and NWE suggests it was not prepared.
All I can say, let me tell you this. I think it's a great opportunity. Norwest. I've just had discussions that I have, privately, I'm not sure what value I can offer anyone if I, if I go down the path of sharing any of that information. I think the offer that we're making for Norwest is a very logical one, and I think shareholders.
Thank you. Your next question is a written question from Nikki Lester. Is MIN looking at expanding its control of the Perth Basin by taking STX or WGO?
I believe this one is Norwest Energy. If taking more control of the Perth Basin is making an offer to bring Norwest Energy into Minres, probably yes. I'm not commenting on any of the others. I mean, I'm focused on this and other parts of my business.
Thank you. Your next question is a written question from Sarah Yuen. Will accepting shareholders be eligible for the upcoming MIN dividend to be cleared in February?
If they get in quick, absolutely. They'll all be entitled to it.
Thank you. Your next question is a phone question from Matthew Frydman with MST Financial. Please go ahead.
Sure. Thanks. Morning, Chris and Shelley. A couple of questions. I guess, firstly, following on from the discussion around, you know, where this gas goes ultimately, and you've spoken about your desire to obviously use as much of it domestically, you know, either internally or for satisfying WA's deficit. In terms of how you arrived at a fair valuation for your bid today, I'm just wondering, you know, what was the concept that underpins your valuation in terms of size of, you know, developing this field? You've previously talked about potentially a 250 TJ a day development. You know, is that the kind of size that underpins your thinking?
How do you achieve that in a specified timeline, given that potentially you're only seeing big deficits in WA from 2030 onwards? Thanks.
How do I arrive at the valuation? Well, I think you guys probably give me a valuation of somewhere between AUD 0 and AUD 200 million for our 80% share of Lockyer.
I may be high, Chris, but we won't quibble on it.
Look, I mean, Billy's king. I've used a lot and something like this together. I sort of looked and I thought 6 is probably about the number. let's get the ball rolling and I think, you know, a 30% premium on where they're sitting. How much gas is down that hole? We don't know for sure. We don't know if it's depressurized or we're gonna find out with the next few drill holes. Look, we know that we've got gas down there and sufficient to build a plant, and to be able to probably run for the next 20 or so years. What we wanna find out is can we get a little greedy and build the plant bigger? We've got plenty down there to do that. Look, no real science.
I think that, you can analyze this thing to death, but I think the premium that we're offering, I think the bigger premium for the shareholders is when they, when they join up with MinRes stock. It's where they, where they're gonna be in two years from now and three years from now.
Got it. Okay. Thanks, Chris. Then secondly, you spoke a little bit earlier about the board construction. Can I ask you about the capacity to execute on an energy project, I guess, across the business from the top on down, and maybe some opportunity for Shelley to comment here on the team that she has in her division. You know, I guess the context of the question is, you know, at least at the board level, you previously identified, I guess, a bit of a need for more energy experience at the board level, obviously looking to have Kevin Gallagher join the board, which obviously didn't come to pass. You know, is your view that you need to bring in more experience internally?
Do you have enough within the team already? Or even, you know, do you need a partner to develop something, you know, as complex as Lockyer? Thanks.
Yeah. Look, I don't wanna overcomplicate this thing that, I mean, all we're gonna do is we're gonna build a gas plant to process the gas. I mean, I've got an in-house construction team that can do that. I mean, they can build, pretty much any plant. All you've got to do is follow a set of drawings and we have suppliers that'll, you know, we can go buy a plant literally off the shelf. What we're gonna do out there, it's probably, I don't know, plant number 73,000 that's ever been built, so nothing complicated with building it or operating it. We certainly will probably have to add some more people around the operations, those sort of things. I mean, do I need any more bench strength than what we got to build? Not really.
I mean, if you go back in 2016, there was no one out there that knew how to design or build a hard rock lithium plant. I mean, we did it in-house. We built Mount Marion. I think a number of people on the call would have done the visit up to Wodgina. We designed and built Wodgina in-house, and we built everything that's inside. There was no one in the world that had the capability of doing it. They didn't have the experience, and they still don't. We have more capability in lithium. You know, when I first bought Mount Marion, if you asked me in 2010, that's the very same question you just asked me.
We have the capability to be able to manage any type of project in MinRes, and we have the capability to go and secure whatever expertise we need to add to the recipe when we're putting something together. Not a big deal for us to go develop this thing.
That's good to hear. Thanks, Chris. Obviously, there's some neighbors next door in class that might be having a bit of a harder time with things, but I guess it remains to be seen there. Thanks for taking some questions.
Yeah, just let me follow that up a little bit more. Yeah, you get... Have a look over the last 10, 15 years at all the construction companies that were around Australia, and have a look at them, how many of them are left. The behavior between construction companies and clients has left us in the mess that we're in. I mean, to go out and get someone, literally, just to build a project is fairly difficult. If we go out and get an EPCM contractor to help us on board, that's not the MinRes style. In MinRes, we believe that we can get more than AUD 0.90 on the dollar on the ground on our projects. If we go down the other EPCM type route, I mean, you'd get less than AUD 0.40. I mean, it's that simple.
I've got an engineering construction team we've built over 20 years in MinRes. I mean, we can pretty much either design anything or we can subcontract out and get a design done, and then we can go build the thing. Look, this is not a complicated thing. This is simply a little gas plant that's gonna clean up very clean gas and put in a pipeline.
Good to hear. Thanks, Chris.
Thank you. Your next question is a written question from Lucas Garrett. MIN share prices is currently at a high with a great recent run. Given a possible recession next year, is it foreseeable that MIN share price could drop to approximately AUD 60? At this price, the offer would reduce to AUD 0.045 per share. That is the current price before the offer. Do you expect that the NWE shareholders will take up the offer with this outlook?
Not an outlook. I mean, that's just, that's some idiot sitting out there trying to ask something relevant. The business of MinRes, is it gonna drop in value? No one knows that. Is there a tsunami coming across here from Europe? We're pretty sure from everything I understand that WA is gonna have little effect. In fact, probably no effect. In turn, inside the MIN business, I mean, we are building. We're going from 20-55 million tons of iron ore. We are doubling Mount Marion in terms of lithium, and we are, we've got two trains running at Wodgina. We'll probably have a third one running next year, and we've got the fourth train on the drawing board. Mining services in MinRes will probably increase by about 50%.
That's all happening. They're done deals. We're just going through that development stage. If I'm gonna add all of that to the business just to get my shares to go down AUD 30 a share, I mean, who in their mind could come up with a question like that? Got anything else that you could ask me?
Thank you. Your next question is a phone question from Alex Ren with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Morning, Chris, Shelley, and team. I know your plan is to build your own gas plant. Just wondering, is there any potential thought to maybe tie some volumes into existing plants nearby to just to speed up the market entry? First production from FY25 seems very tight. Have you started ordering the long lead items for the plant yet? I'll come back. I'll circle back on the second one.
Just to give you a little clarity and, you know, to follow on with that long drawn answer about the plant. We secured Wonmunna iron ore from when we decided to build it, the first ore on the ground. Generally speaking, if you're talking any of the major iron ore miners out there, fast track for them, three years. Normal, about four years. 10 million ton plant, five months to first ore on. That's I mean, it may seem quick to the outside world, but that's when you're unfettered and you have all of the tools at your fingertips, I mean, we don't get any distractions. That's not actually a fast timeline. That's just what you're using with, you know, one of the multinational oil companies.
For us, again, I'm gonna say, this thing's about 350 Ks from our office. It's onshore. It's a very, very small plant. We can get at the thing 24/7. You know, it's not the norm that you're used to. Hence the reason why. I mean, it's a very low cost operation.
Yeah. Understood. That Wonmunna development does still amaze me, and until today. Second question is, what's your view on, like, the long term WA domestic gas price then? I know recent deals have been done at around AUD 6, and the Warrego bid seems to suggest an implied value of AUD 8. Just wondering what's the price range that was considered here to come up with this AUD 0.06 a share valuation for, for this bid.
Okay. The opportunity for us, as I've said, is to be able to develop our own downstreaming. To do that, we wanna bank some gas. We don't wanna have interference with minor shareholders. We wanna be able to go out there and develop it in our own way. We wanna be able to use a lot of that gas internally, and we're gonna build a business out on downstreaming. I mean, it's really, really simple model. There's no secret to what we're gonna do. That way we can control it. We control the capital cost on what we're building, the products that we're going to be able to produce. There's no doubt a lot of them will be export products, but they'll all be made right here in WA. It's not a complicated model.
Bringing Norwest into-- I mean, I just looked at it. If I was a Norwest shareholder, I would rather be sitting inside holding MinRes shares and going along for, what I set out to do, to find and develop gas in the Perth Basin, but be part of it and be part of, the returns that we've been able to give our shareholders over, 15, 16 years. I mean, you'd be nuts not to.
Yeah, makes sense. That's it from me. I'll pass it on. Thanks, Chris.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Glyn Lawcock with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Chris. Chris, if I heard you correctly earlier, it sounds like you haven't had any engagement yet with the Norwest board. I guess, is that the intention going forward now? Is that the next step? I'm just reading the release. I don't see the word is this is not your final offer, I guess. It's not stated in the release.
No comment on any of that. Look, I mean, what I said earlier was that if we have any discussions with any of our partners or the like, I mean, I'm not really up for sharing that. I mean, that's sort of confidential, for no particular reason. I mean, it's just, it doesn't add any value for me being able to stand here and talk about that. I think the offer's awfully compelling. I mean, you know, it has a value to us, and beyond that, it doesn't. I can't say a lot more than that.
I guess, Chris, you just sit and wait for the board's response, I guess, until you can see what it is and then make your next move.
I'm more interested in the response of the shareholders. They'll probably figure out what they wanna do with their shares, and, you know, we're open to accept them immediately. It's really about the shareholders, I think.
No, no, makes the perfect sense. Chris, just can I ask, you opened the door in your presentation. You said there's been a slight delay at Mount Marion. Can I just ask what's happened? Is that a labor issue or equipment supply issue? Just why has there been a slight delay at Marion?
No, look, it's supply chain issue. It's a worldwide thing. I mean, you know, building companies are going bust because they can't get materials and the like. It's a combination of the tail end of COVID. I mean, we're ambitious in trying to have that done by the end of December. We're gonna have part of it done by the end of December, but the rest isn't gonna come online till, you know, like February, early March, which it's disappointing in a sense, but it's about simple things. I mean, putting stuff on out of Europe and China, and they're supposed to be in WA in three to four weeks. You know, 12 weeks later, they're sitting on a port somewhere 'cause someone else has offered them more money for the damn ship.
You know, getting containers is still not as difficult as it was, you know, depending on what port you're coming out of, you just get all those supply chain issues. It's painful, it is getting better.
Yeah. That'll be when you can start ramping up to 900, or you think you'll get there then, Chris?
Yeah, no, we'll probably ramp up between March and June. Yeah. We've had some reasonable success down there. Look, we're doing a lot of work down there, not just on the upgrade. We've looked at some other things that are kinda clever between Wodgina and Mount Marion. You gotta remember, I mean, there's only been one hard rock plant that's been operating sort of as it was a by-product originally of tantalum. So there's no real, no real history around, or there's no engineering on what actually happens with these plants. Look, we're gradually getting our recoveries up. We've got some really great plans. It's probably another year down the track, but we're just gonna do some more stuff on both of them, on recoveries and a few other smart things.
Look, the short answer is that coming into March, we'll have that upgrade done, and we'll be sort of, within 900,000 tons a year of mixed product. It might take us a month or two to ramp it up. You know, beyond that, we've got a couple of other things we're incorporating into Mount Marion that we've only recently discovered, so we're doing a different kind of separation on a portion of the ore body. In other words, we can pull barren material out up front, and discard it, and then we can put more volume in the mill that's got higher quality content, if any of that makes sense. Those sort of things too, you know, better ideas. You know, the price, the price is still up there.
I mean, it's quite ironic that Pilbara Minerals is selling spot for [audio distortion] and the share market, I think they took, like, AUD 400 million or AUD 800 million off our share price yesterday because it moved from AUD 8,300 to AUD 8,200. I mean, get your head around that one.
Yeah. They're projecting forward and getting nervous. Look, Chris, thanks very much for your time. Merry Christmas to you and the MIN team. All right. It was cool.
Yeah, thanks very much for that. Thank you, and same to you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Jon Bishop with Jarden Group Australia. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Chris. You've been asked a couple of times around how you arrived at the valuation for the proposed takeover of Norwest Energy. I guess the look-through based on today's offer is around AUD 2 billion for the 100% of the Lockyer Deep asset. On the pre sort of takeover metrics in the basin, I guess it looked to us that Lockyer Deep was pricing in somewhere around 1.3 TCF of 2P reserve or 3 TCF of resource. I guess my question is not so much around the valuation side of things, but why have you gone now and not post the North Erregulla Deep- 1 well?
It's convenient to do it now. I mean, look, there is no particular reason. It's my decision [audio distortion] and bring it in-house, and it'll make it easier for us going forward. I mean, how much gas we've got there, I mean, that's why we're gonna spend, it's about AUD 15 million a hole to try and find out how much is there. We really and truly don't know how much gas is there until we put down three or four more holes. I mean, and you gotta note, I mean, a couple of others up in the basin have been a bit bullish on what found two of the bigger guys up there, and they've had to pull back.
I mean, I don't want to be in a position of creating false expectations to pump our share price. I mean, I just want to tell the news as it is. Look, we really don't know until we can get these drill rods, cranked on it. You're always scared. I mean, we got some great news, first hole in the ground. Woopie, we got gas. We've been around long enough to know that, as we progress anything, I mean, you're going to get some bad news some days as well. There's no particular reason for the timing other than I decided to... now was the time. I thought, you know, it's Christmas time. We'll give the Norwest Energy guys the ultimate present, MinRes shares wrapped bow. They're hard to get.
Merry Christmas to them, and they need to get in before Santa comes.
Yeah. No, I appreciate it 'cause I guess that's kind of my point, though. If I look at Norwest Energy, it feels like the market's already priced in the best-case outcome for the field size. As you said, you know, Mother Nature's fairly fickle. You could have a situation here where one hole was exceptional, but the next one could be a duster, and hence there's significant downside risk to that total volume. Yeah, I'm just, I'm intrigued. I just wondered whether it might have been better off kind of confirming the volume and then going, 'cause I'm not sure there was too much upside in Norwest as a consequence.
No. Look, the real value to me is getting rid of the nuisance value. I mean, we like to be in control of what we're doing. I mean, look, we're great joint venture partners with a whole range of them out there. In this sort of environment, we just wanna be able to basically do our own thing. I mean, yep, it does give the, that thing out there, that one hole, it gives them capital AUD. As I said, being able to do things the way we want is value to us. It's probably a little overpriced. I don't think I'm gonna get that attributed to my share price or nothing like it.
You know, these guys have gone, they've gone from about AUD 12 million to AUD 400 million on the back of Shelley putting one hole in the ground. That's why I said merry Christmas to Norwest Energy there.
Okay. One quick question then. Just given the rig delay, and given that Lockyer Deep was drilled on 2D seismic and there's significant structural risk here, is there not the temptation just to wait for the 3D seismic season and shoot 3D and then drill more optimally?
Look, progressively, they're working through doing all of that at the moment. I mean, we think we've got enough information to do what we want. In fact, we're pretty comfortable with the information we've got on those drill targets we're gonna put down. You know, give it another three or four months. I mean, they're generating, getting this information. It's just a time thing. You know, you've got to go out there, do the seismic, and, you know, it just takes forever to get that interpreted. It's, it's coming out on a, on a weekly basis. You know, we're growing our knowledge fairly quickly, but I don't think there's too much risk in what we're doing. I mean, plus, I think we feel a bit bullish.
I mean, so far, you know, one out of one, we've got a 100% success rate on drilling. I've just told Shelley, "Don't wreck your reputation."
All right. Thank you very much for taking my call, and merry Christmas to you and the team.
Yeah, no, pleasure and thanks to everyone out there. Look, I think we're gonna cut it off now. I mean, it's sort of an hour, and I'm due on another call. Merry Christmas, everyone. Thanks for your support, if you've been giving support. Thanks, Rearview, for your view on how I should run the business. I mean, I've done okay so far, so happy to let you spend a week in my seat if you want. Thank you. We'll wrap up.