Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Turner Pope is very pleased to host today's Orosur Mining Inc. webinar, which is being presented by the Group Chief Executive Officer, Brad George. Good afternoon, Brad, or I guess where you are, it must be good evening right now. Is that correct?
It is. It's getting on a bit, but yes, we'll work on your time zone, Barry. How are you doing?
Okay. Good. Well, Brad will shortly be working through a slideshow presentation covering Orosur's new lithium joint venture in Nigeria. Right now, of course, lithium is a mineral of significant international focus, and investors are keen to understand just how the group intends to prove it up and then monetize the opportunity. Now, towards the end of the presentation, Brad will also touch on Orosur's other projects, they're in Latin America, of course, before moving on to a question and answer session. Now, I need to remind everybody that throughout this presentation, investors will be on listen-only mode. An exceptional level of interest in Orosur's already been demonstrated through Turner Pope receiving a large number of pre-submitted questions since first advertising the webinar, covering a range of topics, it is true that a good number of these will be answered through Brad's presentation.
In a number of specific areas, these have been consolidated into a number of principal topics, which will then be worked through one at a time, and that will hopefully satisfy all investors. We are, of course, somewhat time-constrained this afternoon, but Brad should be able to go through everything in fair detail. Let's imagine at the end, during the discussion, you consider something else requires still further explanation. Well, that's okay. Turner Pope will be delighted to receive your feedback and to view, review what you send us, and forward it to Brad and his board, for their response where it's appropriate. With that in mind, let's get things moving. I'll now hand over to Brad to work through his presentation. Brad, it's all yours.
Okay. Thanks, Barry. It's as you mentioned, I'm going to present tonight predominantly about Nigeria. That's not because we're trying to move away from South America, it's just that is the new project. It's obviously a new continent, new country, so there is going to be some confusion, some information to pass on. The other projects in South America are moving along as before. I would like to think that we're in a position with those to have their own commentary in the next coming days and weeks. It'll be largely Nigeria with a bit of the other projects at the end. The front page hasn't changed much in terms of the staff. We're still a very small company, largely six staff spread around the world, so that hasn't changed.
The share price, of course, is not what it would be or not what it should be. We are very cognizant of that and all I can say is we are working very hard to try to turn that around and we hope that this project is the beginning of, you know, what could be an exciting time. Cash-wise, we are still doing quite well. We are now sub $3 million, but we've still got plenty of cash and certainly have the cash to carry on with this, with this project. The investment case is somewhat similar. We've still got three good projects in South America. In fact, three excellent projects in South America. We feel that adding the lithium project really rounds us out to a nice rounded company.
We always had a plan to be precious metals and, for want of a better word, battery metals, and lithium was always on our radar screen. It's just taken us quite a long time to get to where we want to be or to find a way into that sector in a way that we felt was more affordable. I think we're now at a point where we've got you know four excellent projects spread around very prospective terrains in countries that we certainly feel we have a substantial advantage in. In terms of the investment case, nice cash in the bank and four projects at different stages and different commodities that we think are you know positioning ourselves well for moving forward. Sorry, just a hand chart here.
The new company that we're forming in Nigeria, I think I mentioned in the previous commentary last week and in the announcement, it's being run through a new U.K. subsidiary called Lithium West. That gives us some flexibility to move around various parts of the world. We're not specific to Nigeria. Nigeria is just the beginning. The first JV in Nigeria is very similar to other JVs in South America. It's a 5-year term that allows us to earn 70% of the projects, but spread into two stages. The first stage, we get 51% by spending $3 million over 3 years, or at least a maximum of 3 years. We can always go faster. Stage two, we go to 70% by $2 million over 2 years.
The key point of the JV is that we're on the ground now and we are making use of pre-existing local team, staff, machinery, equipment, and infrastructure. We're not adding any people. We're not adding any additional cost. We're not increasing our overhead. We're simply making use of things on the ground on a contract basis, so we can hit the ground running quickly, but we can also turn things off quickly. It's a very efficient way of doing things rather than the usual substantial entry cost that a company might incur in moving into a new country for the first time. A reasonably standard JV in industry terms, 70-30. You know, run in a way that we think is very efficient. I won't go into great detail about Lithium.
I'm always somewhat annoyed by company presentations that have 20 slides about a commodity and then the project at the end. Lithium probably doesn't need much introduction. It's had a long history as a metal and for various applications, but now is almost exclusively, at least in the growth stage, a battery metal. I have to confess, I was probably somewhat slow to become a fan. I saw lithium at the beginning. I felt that perhaps it was not going to be long-lived. I was wrong. It then, of course, in recent years, went through a quite substantial price peak, which is very exciting for those who have lithium, but it makes it very difficult for those trying to enter the sector.
When you get prices that they were last year, it really makes it impossible. We sort of held off for a while, but it's now come back, I think, to probably a more long-term stable price point or getting close to that. The growth forecasts are now looking very strong. We are seeing you know very large uptake of EVs. If we apply a you know sort of base case of 20% growth per year, we are going to be seeing very substantial deficits in coming years. There's a lot of material, a lot of projects that are being developed now and coming online or at least being filled out.
In order, on the basis of the work being done by the forecast companies, in order for demand to meet supply, almost every single product on the books has to be developed on time, on budget. That's never happened before. It's looking likely, in the absence of some major change, that we are going to be entering a supply deficit in the near to medium term. In that sense, it's certainly a very firm, comfortable market for us to be getting into. As I said, it's always been a very difficult market to enter because of this excitement and competitiveness making the entry cost very high. Which then I guess begs the question of why Nigeria?
It certainly, you know, reading the commentary of last week, came as a bit of a surprise for a company that had up to that point been South American-focused to start galloping off to Africa. We concede that. The reason that we explained, of course, is that one, that's where the geology is. That's where the lithium is. And it's a country where both myself and Louis Castro have quite some substantial historical experience. Louis was a CFO of an oil company there for quite some years, and I was first in Nigeria in 2017 when myself and my business partner, that large hairy man just there, were involved in the initial beginnings of the Nigerian DIMET projects in 2018.
You know, we ran our small consulting company that began some of the major country-scale mapping and sampling projects across Nigeria for the government of the World Bank. I'm quite comfortable in Nigeria, as is Louis. We don't have any great issue with working there. Importantly, that comes about because of our local partners. We have a very good local partner there, very well established, lots of excellent geologists, equipment, machinery people. You know, we're able to work there in a way that other companies simply are not, and that gives us a very significant competitive advantage. As a country, we think it's geologically outstanding, certainly in the lithium space. Operationally, we find the place quite easy to work.
It has challenges, of course, but the challenges really are related to the fact that it's gone from nothing to a thousand miles an hour in a very short space of time. This is. Nigeria's historically been an oil country. While it's been trying to develop a mining sector from scratch in the last 4 to 5 years, it's been quite slow to begin, and then suddenly it's gone mental. All of the things that an established mining country has, staff, infrastructure, laboratories, so on and so forth, these all take decades to develop, as the mining industry pays for these things. Nigeria's had a week to get it going, and it's. You simply can't do that.
You've had the bureaucracy, you know, the government departments, the cadastre, the mining department, doing outstanding work, but they've gone from, you know, getting two phone calls a week to suddenly having everybody kick their door down. They are, you know, running fast to meet the demand and they're doing their best, but it is putting great stress upon these departments. They're doing, you know, quite an excellent job with the resources they have. Obviously, the market perception, mention Nigeria and eyebrows are raised, and that's historically been the case. In the lithium space, however, now that's no longer the case. The number of companies now in Nigeria actively working or actively looking is really quite substantial.
Mostly private, a couple of public companies, and we certainly expect to see a lot more companies in there in the very near term. That perception issue is certainly going to go away quite quickly. You know, going at the bottom of that list, just the communities themselves, the local people out here in the bush, this is all coming as a bit of a shock. It's that suddenly you had these companies arriving, drilling holes everywhere. It does. You know, they are getting or becoming accustomed to what's happening and that again does take some time. It's not something that overnight these local people could come to terms with. There are some, I wouldn't call them challenges, just issues to deal with.
They all relate to the fact that Nigeria's gone from a low-level activity to suddenly very busy in a very short space of time. These are more challenges related to capacity as opposed to any major problems and they will be resolved in time. Importantly for us, they're issues that we have resolved now. Every single one of these we can deal with. We have dealt with already, and again, that gives us a substantial competitive advantage. The main point, of course, is you go where the rocks are. We wouldn't be in Nigeria if there wasn't lithium. I think I've made the point before that if we go back to the point before the Atlantic Ocean opened, Nigeria and Brazil were joined together as one landmass back in the days of Pangaea.
All of the lithium that we see in the Lithium Valley, so-called in east-northeastern Brazil, is replicated through Nigeria in exactly the same way. It really is just a mirror image. We can simply take some of the learnings across from Brazil and transpose those into Nigeria. There are some local differences. There are some local geological differences, but by and large, the same rocks, the same age. We can apply some of the same techniques that have been used to great success in Brazil. These belts are new for Nigeria, but they're not new in a geological sense.
The issue, of course, however, as I've mentioned, it's now become in a very short period immensely competitive in Brazil, in Nigeria, sorry, as it was in Brazil about a year ago. We're probably lagging South America by a year or so, but Nigeria is catching up fast in terms of competition. We've taken four licenses to start for a total of about 320 sq km. We've got two or three more that are currently in negotiation, and we feel quite comfortable about those. Not signed and sealed yet, but we would hope that they're going to be settled in our favor, hopefully in a week or so. We'll see how those go.
In contrast to the projects in South America, rather than having one bunch of projects in sort of one contiguous block, we've intentionally decided to spread the projects across the country somewhat that cover several different major structures. As we look at the bottom picture, Nigeria is covered by this sequence of sort of southwest to northeast countrywide structures that we refer to as the schist belts. Now, these run all the way through Nigeria from south to north, and these are the main controlling structures for most minerals, for the gold that we see there and certainly for the lithium. Rather than putting all our eggs in one basket, we've spread our licenses across several of these schist belts. This is largely to give us a foothold in three different belts.
We certainly, as I mentioned, we are negotiating for more land in the area. Rather than just having one point of negotiation, we've now got three points of negotiation. We hope to establish these sort of three exploration hubs, and that will give us a catalyst to then expand in those particular areas. All of them are certainly based upon very sound geological study that we've put in over the last 12 months. They're not just slapdash and whatever land was available. These are very intentionally positioned on major structures with the right rocks in the right place where we are seeing lithium activity at the artisanal levels, or we are seeing the right pathfinder relevance. We've very specifically chosen areas that we think are going to be centers of exploration in the future.
It also comes down to the local communities. In Nigeria, there is a slight nuance in the license structure in that we get an exploration license from the cadastre, but it requires the consent of the local community. We also like to spread our eggs across several communities, again, as a risk mitigation issue because, you know, we don't want to have all of our projects being under the control of one community. It gives us a little bit of a risk mitigation issue. As I pointed out, we're starting with quite a large land package, and we hope to potentially come close to doubling that in coming weeks, but we'll see how we go. In a targeting sense, as I mentioned, we didn't just grab any old license that was available.
We've had people on the ground there, my old partners and old friends and locals there for the last 4 to 5 years. Really fundamentally involved with these regional government programs, mapping and sampling all across Nigeria. Most of these schist belts are also the primary gold structure. A lot of this land has been examined for various commodities, understood quite well. The formation of the pegmatites here are a little bit different to what we might see in, say, Australia. Rather than being simply a granite intrusion with the last pulse being the pegmatites, these are older granites that have been partially remelted as a result of reactivation of these main schist belt structures.
That remelting differentiates a lot of elements, and we get the lithium pegmatite. It's the same source rocks but a different process. But a process that we understand very, very well. We, you know, without wishing to be too pompous, I would certainly regard our teams and our people in Nigeria as probably being the best and the most knowledgeable geological teams in the country. I mean, really, without any sense of hyperbole. We have all of the data, we have all the knowledge, and we've been working there for the last. Well, they've been working there for the last five years. We have a very sound understanding of how these things are formed and as a result, a very good sense of where to look.
These licenses were picked on the basis of what we thought were really quite exceptional targeting criteria. We will see how we go with that. As I, as I've mentioned, in the announcement, we actually have mobilized crews already. We have two crews in the field. We began last week, so we have no desire to muck around. We want to move fast. One of the things I didn't mention is that most of these licenses are within driving distance of the capital city of Nigeria, which is Abuja. That's useful for many different reasons. It's good for security. It's just logistically easier. We can base in small towns and be back and sending samples back to Abuja on a daily basis. It really just makes things a lot easier.
We've done all of the regional targeting to get these leases, but now we're moving down to the more detailed project scale for direct targeting. Now that the field work begins immediately. The communities, of course, have to be informed. Nigeria is a very populous country, so all this area is farmed and there are local communities. We like no surprises and nor do they, so we need to keep them on board and that's a very important thing. We're starting with basic mapping and sampling at various scales. You know, we understand what to look for. We're mapping the soils, we're mapping the outcropping pegmatites. You know, we are seeing activity in the region that gives us, you know, substantial faith that we have the right ground.
We hope to have results very soon. Importantly, which makes a nice change when you're not working in gold, is that you don't have to send samples to the labs. You know, we're dealing with lithium results which are 1, 2, 3%, and therefore, these can be measured at least to moderate accuracy with handheld systems rather than laboratory analysis. We don't use an XRF. We would use a LIBS, which is more of a laser-based system, but think of it as potentially a lithium XRF machine. We have one of these, or our partners have one of these in Abuja. This means that we can be getting assay results back in days and weeks rather than months like we've seen in the past.
I mean, a lot of our longer holding shareholders would remember the horrendous delays of assays coming out of South America during COVID. Months and months. We're not going to face that problem here. We can get numbers back really quickly, and that's good for us. It's good for our ability to understand what we're seeing and to adjust the programs as we go. It's good for the market that we're going to see a much more regular flow of news coming out of here. Nigeria has wet seasons and dry seasons, so we're just entering the dry season now. We've probably got six months before things begin to get wet again. We certainly plan to hit that pretty hard.
We have two crews in the field now, and that may increase. They should cover most of the licenses fairly quickly in the next couple of weeks, or at least the next six weeks, to give us some indications of the next step. Going well, we hope to be drilling, if that can be done early in the new year. These projects, by virtue of their geology, as you can see, much nicer or much easier to get around terrain than Colombia, it just makes it a lot faster. We don't have to do all the preparation work of Colombia. We're not waiting for laboratories. This is able to move very, very quickly.
You know, this is, I guess, one of the factors of the timing of the announcement was to get it all done immediately the dry season began. We gave ourselves a full season to move forward. You know, we're quite excited by this and I certainly will be heading down there as soon as I can, probably in December to, well, not supervise, but, you know, to really get my hands dirty and we're looking forward to some very exciting results coming out of Nigeria in the very near term. That doesn't of course mean that South America is off the radar screen. In fact, quite the reverse. South American projects remain business as usual. Nothing changes. We're not stopping South America. Nigeria is in addition to, not instead of.
It's as I mentioned in the announcement, we've been looking at lithium for three years and we just simply were not able to afford the entry cost for South America. Nigeria was a place we like geologically and it's just taken us this long to add that final piece to the puzzle. It's a project that we have the capacity to operate and we feel comfortable that we're not stretching ourselves, and we think that the two things complement themselves quite well. Largely because of the history that Louis and I have in these countries and we're not. We don't feel we're moving too far away from our roots.
Yeah, we understand that this is now dragging on far beyond what I would have liked or far beyond what the market certainly has liked and the share price reflects that. The project remains very exciting, but we're at a point now where we've been negotiating the move to phase two on the joint venture now for some months. That's progressing. It's not progressing in a way that we can talk about. We can't run the negotiation in the public sphere. It's a very slow process. As I've mentioned before, it largely stems from changes to Colombian tax rules that meant that the original plan we had envisaged at Anzá no longer worked and therefore we needed a whole new structure. That took time. The politics in Colombia have not worked in our favor.
We've got a government at the moment that is, I wouldn't say antagonistic to mining, but certainly not particularly favorable. It's well down their list of things to do and all companies have great difficulty just getting any government to get anything done. The bureaucracy has seized up where, you know, we're just not seeing anything happen that needs to happen to allow projects to move forward. It's not being as favorable as it was. We expect that will change, and yet we are seeing signs of improvement, but it's a fair way off. In the meantime, Agnico and Newmont, both of those companies are now very substantially different companies to what they were when they first joined.
Newmont particularly is almost three times the size now and is just beginning the process in the last couple of weeks of digesting its fairly major acquisition of Newcrest. Both companies now have far more options on their plate exploration-wise, and I guess Colombia's is just not as sexy as it was a couple of years ago in light of all the new projects, in light of the politics. We've certainly made it clear to them, and I've made it clear to the market that we would like the project back. Being a smaller company, we are more nimble. We can do things that they can't do. We're not so concerned about politics. We have proposed to them some. I won't say plans or
Some ideas that we thought could work for us to get the project back as the majority owner and allow us to begin to take control and work the project. Those were met favorably. I would like to think that that's the direction that those chats are heading. It's just that we can't right now talk about it too much. I think we are getting closer. We certainly are ticking off things every week in terms of due diligence, in terms of companies being formed. The companies have been formed now. We're negotiating shareholder agreements and, you know, we're going through the paperwork. You know, again, that isn't the news the market wants to hear other than the fact that we are closer than we were last week and next week we'll be closer again.
We are moving forward, and I'd like to think that in the near term we'll be able to give some positive news. All I can ask is for some more patience. The other two projects are continuing, but they're continuing as they always did. They were always designed to be slow, low burn, low cost projects, very intentionally. El Pantano was very early stage but from what we're seeing geologically, very exciting. You know, we are intentionally just working very slowly. It's a part of the world where there is no real historical data or there's no high-resolution government data, so we have to really start from scratch. We've just been slowly mapping, sampling, doing ground mag, all very boring stuff, but necessary to move the project to the next stage.
We began work there again about two weeks ago, just mapping, sampling, ground mag, and we will essentially cover the project with all of those probably in November, and that will get us to the point where then we can begin to look at what happens next. What happens next is, we would like to think, looking at drill targeting maybe in the new year. We've also been submitting the permits for to allow us to drill, environmental permits, and we'll have those in probably November. We'll have options again there toward the end of this year. Whether we do it ourselves or do it with a partner remains to be seen. There are other things need to fall into place. That's certainly presenting itself as a very exciting, very large epithermal system.
I would love to go and drill that in the new year, but we have to make our priorities as things evolve. We'll see how we go with that. Ariquemes is the tin project in western Brazil. Again, very similar to Argentina, moving slowly. Huge area, 3,000 square kilometers. Our first job really is to just cut that in half. That's just too much land and the cost to hold that if it was all granted is quite prohibitive. Regional sampling, focus down on the main areas, and then once we've done that, focus down again on the main prospect. We've been doing sampling at one of the prospects there, and I made the point in the last announcement that we had some assay issues.
This is sort of a common problem with alluvial resources, that the assay system or the assay process is very different to hard rock. We've had to go away and do some laboratory work to just nail down exactly how those assays work and to get ourselves a more reliable process going forward. They're all coming in now as we speak and I think in the next week or so we'll certainly be able to have a much better idea of how to move forward with that. The assays, we think, are probably looking quite positive. Once those are all assessed, we can talk again in a week or so. Just going back to Colombia, as I sort of made the point, just rehashing an old slide.
The reason that we've made it clear to our JV partner we want the project back, not only is it because it's a really large piece of a major structure, all of which we're seeing is mineralized from the geochemistry. That's the bottom slide, which is large but entirely untouched. You know, we've got 20 kilometers of strike. Apart from a few kilometers of Anzá and a couple of meters of Pepas, 18 km is absolutely untouched drilling-wise. At Pepas, if you recall, the first 3 holes there were nothing short of spectacular. Subsequent holes were disappointing. Now, my view about that and the point that I made to the market is I think that without being sort of harsh, the drilling was in the wrong direction. I mean, this is sort of.
Sadly, it's the ambiguity you always have when you drill the first holes into a new project. You can never quite assess the orientation. Normally what you do is move the drill rigs to different directions and drill into the ore body from different directions. That's hard to do in Colombia. It's a very rugged terrain. I guess a punt was taken. They moved toward the west. I guess they guessed wrong. Our view, certainly from what we've seen from the later geology, is that we think that deposit or at least that mineralization tips toward the east. For us, that simply gives us a walk-up drill target. The first thing we would do if this...
If and when this project comes back to us, is to move the rig to the east and drill into that thing from the eastern side. That we think would give us the ability to move that forward or to advance that quite quickly. That would certainly be our first start, and then move up and down dip and begin to advance. For us, this project, if we can get it back, would be given back to us in a far more attractive condition than we gave it away. For a junior company to have access to this project of this quality would be quite exceptional. You know, I'm certainly anyone would suggest that we're trying to sort of walk away to Africa. No, we're not. We really want this back. It's just that we
You know, it's not within our gift to do that. We have been negotiating on that basis now for over 6-8 months. You know, we think we're getting really close, but that certainly is objective to get our feet back on the ground there. Again, I ask for patience and we'll leave that there. I think we're at a point now with the beginning of work in Nigeria that you will be hearing hopefully more from me in the coming weeks and months. Thank you.
Many thanks, Brad. That was a very comprehensive work-through. We're gonna take just a few seconds to review the pre-submitted questions that have already been received by Turner Pope. I should also like to remind everybody that a copy of the slideshow and a recording of today's webinar will be made available on both Orosur and Turner Pope's websites in due course. Now, I'm looking, scanning over the questions submitted. There's been a good number of them. I would say that in many respects, the presentation that Brad's just gone through has touched on these areas. Let's go through the questions to make sure that everyone is provided with the answers and the details that they're actually focused on.
I'm gonna start with the first one, and the first one says, "Nigerian lithium has recently become a very big talking point, and that's both for explorers and investors. Yet the potential scale of the country's high-grade opportunity was highlighted several years back through the National Integrated Mineral Exploration Project." The question is, why has the territory trailed other countries, and I mean like Australia, like Chile, Argentina, and of course China, to such a degree? And in that respect, is it still possible to grab a lithium bargain there?
It's a complicated question, and obviously every country is different. I probably the general sense is that miners are lazy. If a mining company wants something, they'll go to the low-hanging fruit. That just makes perfect sense. You know, if we look, for example, at the world's biggest and best lithium deposit, which is Greenbushes in Western Australia, that's been mined for tin and tantalum for over 100 years. Lithium was there. They just didn't know what to do with it. They couldn't give it away. It only became a lithium mine a couple of years ago when they found it was full of the stuff. That's the obvious thing to do. If you look at the brine lakes in South America, again, you can see them from space.
These are massive salt lakes. They're obvious places to go. You always do the easy stuff first. China's different because there are 1.5 million geologists in China, so they have the more internal demand process. You go to the easy places first. Nigeria certainly is a country that's been historically seen as challenging, and probably deservedly so. That's, you know, substantially improving now. As you said, however, the NIMEP projects began in the beginning of 2018, and I was actually involved in some of those in the early stages. As part of that process, well, there were several things. There was the NIMEP projects, and they were geological mapping, and they were sampling, and they were doing various things. There was also some capacity-building projects to really, you know, advance and improve the bureaucracy.
For example, when that began, there was no digital online cadastre, you know, licensing system. Now you can go onto the MCO website in Nigeria and see all the licenses. Everything's there. When that began, it was bits of paper in drawers. Getting a license in Nigeria in 2018 was a really hard job. I mean, it just wasn't in the modern world. That also advanced as part of this, these geological programs. It's just been, you know, it's taken 5 years to be an overnight success. I would also argue that the part of the NIMEP project, and this was quite a good decision that they made, was that they knew where the high-priority areas were going to be from just historical work. They were embargoed.
They just put huge blanket bans over all these areas. Nobody could peg that. That only recently began to be relaxed to a certain extent. You know, they didn't want people jumping in and advancing and grabbing land and then waiting for the data to be released. They didn't want to have this major bidding war. Really it's a question of, you know, miners going to the obvious and easy places first, and just Nigeria being a bit further down the line, and they've got there eventually. They got there at the same time that all the Nigerian government work, excellent work, is now beginning to be released. The time...
The two timings, I'm not quite sure it was part of a cunning plan, but the two things have worked together quite well. Now we're at a point where Nigeria's kind of crazy. There's people everywhere looking for licenses, and there's created this huge speculative bubble with licenses changing hands, which is a healthy thing. I mean, we're seeing commerce at work. We've lots of new companies. We've only got two public companies there now, which is ourselves and Thor Explorations. They're London and Toronto. But I could rattle off another dozen more that are there looking. We've got a reasonably good jump on those guys in terms of getting the best land first and getting it at a reasonable price. That's, you know, a long answer to a short question.
The other question is, can you get land in Australia or Chile? Yeah, but you've got to pay for it. You know, the reason we didn't take any deals in South America was everything was $1 million up front. That was where we began. You know, $1 million just to get the data. It was just not a price that we were able or prepared to pay, and that hasn't changed. If anything, you know, yes, we had a bit of a lithium lull maybe last year, but now it's probably crazier than ever. Getting access to good lithium anywhere in the world now is really becoming quite hard.
You know, I'm quite thankful that we probably more luck than design got into Nigeria when we did, because it's gonna become more difficult from now.
Very, very good. I think, in fact, you might have asked part of the next question.
Oh, sorry.
Let me give it in its entirety in any case, just to make sure that the detail points are covered. The question says, "Lithium should undoubtedly be part of a diversified explorer's portfolio." I think actually, yes, we're all agreed on that. "But having historically been focused on LATAM, Latin America, why has the board now chosen to enter a JV in a different continent?" The question goes on and says, "What exactly do you expect Jurassic Mines Ltd to bring to the party?" It also ends up by saying, and I think you've mentioned this already, "There are also a good number of well-documented lithium opportunities in Latin America," of course, Chilean brines, Brazilian pegmatites. Are these definitely off of Orosur's radar for the time being?
No, they're not, and we'll continue to look. We have to be honest with ourselves and, you know, we go where the rocks tell us to go, and we go where we think we have the ability to obtain large pieces of prospective land. Now Chilean, Bolivian, Argentinian salt lakes, they're off the market. I mean, they are. They, like I said, you can see them from space. Every salt lake has been pegged. If you want to come in there, you've got to have very deep pockets. That one, that's probably gonna be too hard for us to move into. The pegmatites in Brazil? Yeah, we are looking at pegmatites in Brazil. That's. It's a big country. Again, the obvious ones have gone.
We can't replicate the same process we have in Nigeria in Brazil. We don't have the expertise. We don't have the data. It's a very different place. We are looking, but you know, the prices there are. Well, the prices there are high, but then Nigeria's becoming pricey as well. These things are. You know, it's all now sort of leveling out, is that Nigeria's lower cost, I think, is starting to thin out and that the two will be somewhat equivalent. The question of why we've galloped across to Africa, I'm always conscious that when you go, this is, I guess, a rule of thumb. If you
When you move into a new country to explore anywhere in the world, you could probably say it's gonna be half a million dollars just to get going. When you work out the cost of multiple trips to go there, finding lawyers and accountants and getting land, it's just a half million dollar setup cost. Then you think, "Well, then how do you run it? Do you speak the language? Do you know how it works? Have you got to hire local people?" It's you know it very quickly becomes very expensive if you go to a country where you've got no background, no contacts, no operating experience. Everything we did in South America, we did on that basis. We were in Colombia. We're already there, fine.
We went to Argentina because our geologists, Ernesto and Jeronimo, are Argentinian, so that was easy. We went to Brazil because, again, Louis and I have a history there. We have people we know there, and we were able to operate in a way and get moving in Brazil for very low cost, essentially nothing at all. We just hire consultants and, you know. Again, no setup cost. Nigeria was the same. Now, I'm not gonna go to Ghana, which is next door, because I don't know Ghana. I don't know any. You know, I've been all over Africa, but I don't have the same level of contacts or expertise that I have in Nigeria. You know, and that was again, just luck. I worked in Nigeria when the NIMEP began. I know our partners there very intimately for a couple of years.
My old business partner from Australia is living there. He's been there for five years, and he's doing all this work. I have contacts and knowledge and people in Nigeria that I don't have elsewhere. Again, that just reduces all, you know, the barrier to entry for us. We can go there quickly, easily, and cheaply in a way that another company just simply can't do. Yes, it's not the same continent. Yes, it will require a different flight. It's a country that we are very comfortable that we can work and operate very easily. For me, it's great because they speak English. That's a nice change.
You know, I know that it's, it does raise some eyebrows. I can assure anyone who want to go and have a look that Nigeria's open for business, and if you're prepared to just understand its nuances, and every country's a bit different and as they're entitled to be, it's rapidly becoming quite a good place to do business. You know, we're very comfortable with it. We're very excited by it, and we don't see it threatening us at all.
Very, very good. Yeah. Thanks very much. The next question is on a sensitive issue, money. That is always sensitive.
Yeah.
It goes like this. It says, "Given your current balance sheet, can you outline Lithium West Limited's anticipated spend over the coming 12 or so months? Based on this and other continuing commitments, does the group still have a 12-month or so forward runway?" One other question, which is an interesting one. "Lithium West has been incorporated as a U.K. subsidiary. Why is that? Is there a particular reason?
Well, first thing. I mean, anyone with half a brain can see that we've got commitments now on JVs of over $10 million, and we've got less than $3 million in the bank. That doesn't add up. What's happening there? Well, what I would say is that, you know, these are not liabilities. These are contingent commitments. We want to spend that money, but only as we pass certain hurdles. You know, every project that we've got is broken into stages, and we take small steps, spend some money, do some work, ask a geological question. If we like the answer, we move forward. If we don't, we move away. Every project progresses in a way where we do work and we add value, and we move forward in a slow measured way.
Yes, we do have. Look, the money in Nigeria is not being taken away from South America. At the moment, South American projects are funded. They're moving forward. We're not diverting the funds. This is funds that we had spare that we don't need at the moment. We're gonna move them to Nigeria because we think Nigeria offers an exciting opportunity for us to get into an exciting space in an exciting place and add value. I'd rather do that than just slowly bleed the money on overhead over the next couple of years. That's our thinking. Do we need money? Eventually, yes. If anybody thinks that we can just. It just grows on trees, then maybe they're investing in the wrong sector. Mineral explorers need money.
That's just the nature of the beast, and I'm not gonna apologize for that. The question is, when do you want it? What do you want it for? And what does that money buy? And that's our view is we're not gonna raise money to pay ourselves or to have long lunches. When we come to the market, and there's no immediate plans, we will do that to raise money to spend on specific projects, to answer specific geological questions, and the market can understand what those answers mean in terms of prospectivity and valuation. Yes, we are gonna need money in the future, but, you know, we all do, so no one's surprised. We haven't raised. We last raised money in late 2020. So it's been three years. We're not. We're hardly serial capital raisers in that sense.
I think we're probably one of the best in the market in terms of. I'm sure you brokers hate us. You're not getting any fees out of it. You know, we're not in a hurry, but yes, the time will come. The question of London. Well, there's several points here. London is certainly. London and Nigeria work well together. There's a massive Nigerian diaspora. Nigeria was obviously a former British colony. Common law works. There's common language. There's great sort of movement of people between both countries. There are some legal protections that being in London offers us in terms of security of tenure. We have some recourse to the courts if you know, things don't work. The accounting works well. There are tax agreements in place.
The two countries work together well legally and financially. There's also a question. This is not necessarily a plan, but it's just an option, that if this progresses well as we hope geologically, does this then turn into a new company that we spin out? That's, again, that's not a plan. There's no date for that. It's just that we want to have that option if that's what the market is telling us. That if this becomes a substantial lithium company, is it better by itself? If the answer is yes, then where's the best place for that? Our view is the best place for that would be in London. That again just gives us.
We're just positioning ourselves in a way that, you know, the options are there next year, depending on how things work out. That's the long answer, again.
Yeah. Very good. Thank you. Let me get on to the next question. Your presentation suggests Lithium West may produce its first exploration results within weeks. Should investors expect the Nigerian prospect to advance more rapidly than Orosur's other early-stage opportunities, obviously in Argentina and Brazil? And is there a chance that based on pleasing data out of Nigeria that near-term expenditure could be diverted from Latin America, or is that simply not on the cards?
Well, I just made the point that it hasn't been so far. Will it in the future? Well, who knows? I mean, we're not. We don't run the company by locking in things for five-year timeframes. You know, we're always going to adjust the spend depending on how the results come forward. So if we get amazing results in Nigeria, then yes, we're going to accelerate as we would do in South America if the same were true. So, you know, we're not locked in stone here. In terms of acceleration. The projects in Brazil and Argentina are slow. They were meant to be slow. They will remain slow for the moment, largely because they're at a much earlier stage in the exploration process. Yeah. El Pantano is very grassroots.
We're just moving slowly because that's just how long it takes. We want to just move slowly, get the data, and maybe accelerate next year, but that's slow. Brazil's a bit more advanced, but again, the same idea. Let's just do the regional work, go slow. They are going as fast as they were always going to go, and they're not changing. Nigeria, as I said in the presentation, can go faster because it's an easier place to work. It's for me like working at home. It's flat and open and dry, and you can drive trucks everywhere. We're not climbing bloody mountains in Colombia. Moving around and doing things is just a much easier, much faster, much cheaper process. We can go faster because we can go faster.
Add the mobility to the fact that we can get the assays back from the libs rather than the lab, then it's just an easier beast. That in that sense just means we can. If we get, or if and when we get Colombia back, then that might change because then that suddenly changes the dynamic and we would want to go and drill something in Colombia. For the moment, unless, you know, while that currently remains in negotiation, Nigeria is going faster because it just can. We'll get the results back in weeks and months, and then we'll just adjust as we go. And, you know, without wishing to be cynical, you know, we adjust in a way to what the market demands.
If the market, you know, the old saying, "If the ducks are quacking, feed them," and that's not. We don't subscribe to that, but obviously if the market at the moment is valuing lithium companies, then why wouldn't you know, give what the market wants? At the moment, I don't understand for the life of me why gold is being unloved. I mean, the gold price is fantastic, and yet gold companies are in the cellar, and I don't understand why.
It's just one of those market vagaries that, you know, the market occasionally veers off and follows some new commodity and that's the nature of the beast. Again, you know, I'm not gonna tell the market what to do. You know, we respond to the pressures from outside. We will make adjustments to budgets and timing depending upon outcomes and depending upon market response and depending on results, and we do that all the time.
Good. Well, thanks. The next one, I suppose it's a question you would anticipate in a forum like this. It goes like this. It says, "The elephant in the room, of course, remains Orosur's potentially giant Anzá project in Colombia," and we have spoken about this obviously during the presentation. The question says, "This clearly remains an extremely exciting opportunity. Nobody has any doubt that Orosur is working very hard behind the scenes to consider all possible next steps with Newmont and Agnico. Understanding the highly sensitive nature of these issues, is there anything further the board can say to shareholders on this front right now?
Look, probably not in great, not in the detail that the market would like. I've made the point several times, we want the project back. We've told Agnico and Newmont that. I've told the market that. We've provided our partners with what we think are some mechanisms as how that might work. But these are very different companies to us, and they think very differently and they have different priorities and different ways of doing things. There's two of them. You know, this is probably the main complication is that when Louis and I have a negotiation with these guys, we can go away and have a chat and decide something, you know, like that.
when you're dealing with a company of this size, every change, every nuance, every decision has to go up the ladder a couple of times then back down again. It just takes. It's like trying to negotiate by post. It's just a very slow process and to get both of them coming together. You know, I made the point that, you know, again, that these companies are now, they're monsters. They're both now more than twice as big as what they were when they first joined us. That gives them a very different outlook on life, and it gives them a much longer list of exploration projects to assess. At the moment, sadly, Colombia is not the easiest place to work politically. Now it's not impossible. There are companies that are doing very well.
For a big company, they have to assess against their other projects, and they've now got many, many more of those, and they're easier. Newmont, for example, is just acquiring Newcrest. That comes with it a massive gold mine in Ecuador, for example. There's an obvious place for Newmont to go. It's much easier for them to add ounces in the country next door where there's already a mine than think about adding ounces in some virgin country in Colombia. It's just mathematics. Is that, you know, these companies right now just think, "Well, you know, is this the best way to spend our money?" They're rationalizing projects. This is business. It's fine. I mean, and I get it all the time.
The difficulty we have, and I think they are sympathetic toward our idea that we get the project back and let us run with it for a while, is it's just the process. It's trying to get two companies together to renegotiate a very complicated joint venture where the rules have changed. As I mentioned, the Colombian tax rules have changed so that the original plan, it just doesn't work. It doesn't work at all. We had to go back to the beginning and start again. There's been all manner of commentary out there in the market about how we should just send in the lawyers and sue them. Look, that's not how business works. I mean, I'm not gonna be going to court with two of the world's largest mining companies. One of whom is our biggest shareholder.
I mean, I'm not suicidal. You know, these guys have done a lot of work, spent a lot of money. We like them, we trust them. We want to continue to do that. We need to move forward in a way that everybody remains professional, and everybody remains on the same page, and everybody has the ability to then come back together again should things change and should we find some success. I'm not in the business of burning bridges just to satisfy the short-term news flow needs of shareholders. You know, these things take time, and anyone who thinks you can do it in a week has never been involved in a joint venture, I can assure you. There's no prizes for being fast.
You know, again, long answer to short question. We, you know, we know what we want, and we've made that clear to the market, we've made it clear to them. We, you know, we think we are moving that direction. I just can't, at this moment, give you a timeframe. Other than to say that we are pushing as hard as we feel comfortable pushing without. You know, we just don't want. We're not in the business of starting a fight. We want to move it forward amicably, and I think we're near the end of the beginning. But as much as I can say.
Right. Well, that's fully understood, and I think good reassurance for investors. Let's get on to the next point. It's regarding operations in Brazil and Argentina. The question is, would you say that these have continued to progress in line with the board's expectations? Are there any surprises, positive or negative, that you might anticipate going forward? Are there any relatively near-term options that could land on the table as far as these projects are concerned going forward as well?
So
that
Yeah, look, there are nothing astounding. Argentina, you know, it's a very early-stage project. We chose that specifically because it just looked like a massive system. A massive epithermal system that had never literally been touched. Never been drilled. Most of it's never been walked on. That's showing up as a very exciting place. When we went there, Argentina was kind of in a bit of a lull. Nobody was really working there. It's suddenly become quite the place to be again. Lithium obviously plays a large part of that up in the Andes. Gold as well is becoming very active again, and we're seeing joint ventures with you know, the major companies in our part of Argentina are obviously Newmont, Anglo just south of us.
Yamana was there, but they've been taken over by, well, by Agnico, who took part of it, so. We're seeing those big companies now ramp up activity. Newmont is spending, you know, half a billion dollars on expanding Cerro Negro. We're seeing Anglo just begin to do joint ventures around the world. We're seeing a very substantial increase in activity by those majors in our region. We've spoken with Newmont. You know, obviously they're a larger shareholder. We have a CA with them on El Pantano. They see the data. They like the project a lot. They've give us some advice. We get access to their mine to see how things work underground. We've had access to their technical people. They're keeping an eye on that project. You know, they're not.
You know, they're just watching quietly from the sidelines and, you know, maybe there's a chat to be had in the future. We're not pushing that. We're not offering a JV and nor are they. That's an option that certainly you know, we're making sure that the major players in the region are aware of us and aware of what we're doing and so that when we get to a slightly more advanced stage then, you know, we can have a phone call and, you know, we'll see where that one goes. Do it ourselves. At least again, the option's there. Brazil's a bit different. There's no major players in Brazil. The mining in the Ariquemes district has historically been artisanal or local cooperative.
It's a low small-scale, local, un-technologically sophisticated operations and rather diverse groups who have commercially complex sort of situation. We have it alone by ourselves. That's throwing up. One of the major reasons we went there is that it historically was a tin prospect or a tin region. Along with tin, you're always gonna find other metals. You're gonna find niobium, almost always. You're gonna find tantalum, probably in lesser amount, but the same thing. And you also find a lot of rare earths. Often they're tied up in monazite and other minerals, but they're rare earths. None of that was ever touched. It was always just thrown at the tailings dams and there are some substantial opportunities there, we think, in expanding beyond tin.
That's sort of, you know, we're bringing into the region. Well, technology that allows you to assay. I mean, the old guys never assayed. They just. They would pan the materials. "Oh, yeah, there's tin" and off they'd go. They never bothered assaying for this great suite of unpronounceable rare earths. You know, we're finding there's a lot more there than just tin. That's not a surprise. We sort of knew that was gonna happen. The question now is can we move that forward in a way that and expand that to the point where it becomes a very attractive thing? If that's. Once that's sort of numerically proven, then I think that changes the complexion there quite substantially.
Again, not a surprise, but that's where that one's heading, is being a less of a tin, more of a multiple. Tin dominant, but multi-element province, which was always sort of the plan.
Very good. Very good. We're now onto the final question and. It's quite broad-ranging. It says, "Does Orosur remain acquisitive? Do you expect more acquisitions or joint ventures, for that matter, to be announced in 2024? And if so, where might the board's principal interest now be found?" I think in that respect it means by either territory or by mineral.
Well, never say never. You know, something might wander along, you never know. I'm gonna cool down a little bit now. I think with, you know, Nigeria's been quite a painful process. Not painful, but just it's been a long process to get to this point, and we need to digest. I don't know that the market would want us galloping off to some new place again. I'd also point out that I made this point very early on in the piece when I joined the company. New projects, getting new projects is not as easy as it sounds. Some people seem to think that it's like going to Waitrose and just going to the shop and tapping, "I'll have a gold project," and it doesn't work that way.
You know, our view has always been that any project that might be available for sale or for joint venture, you've got to ask the question, "Well, why is it available for sale or joint venture?" Generally speaking, the answer is because it's crap. You know, without wishing to be too harsh, there's a million projects out there that have been through 5, 10 different companies, and they've all had a crack at it, and there's something wrong with it. Generally, maybe the grade's a bit low or this is wrong or, you know, something is. You look at, there's lots of porphyry copper systems in Latin America that are all running at 0.3% copper. It's just, they're just not gonna work. They're just, they just don't work.
If I don't think I can somehow magically increase the grade, then why would I spend money on working them? My view has always been that, you know, most of what's available for sale, JV is just not worth the effort. Unless you're looking for something to talk about and get news flow. You need to look at things that are new, and this is what the market needs, is it? You know, the market or the industry needs companies to stop just rehashing the old dogs and look at new opportunities. They won't fund that. You know, these are difficult things to fund in a difficult junior market. Nigeria was just such a project.
I mean, it's not new geology, but it's a new province, a new country that's, you know, really exciting and that we got in pretty early when other, well, other companies were trying, but we tried better. Other projects. Look, I'd love some copper, but I've not seen anything compelling. I'd love some nickel, but same answer. I think the answer is, yeah, look, we're always. We always look. Our geologists are always knocking on doors. You never know what might come up. You know, everything, most of what we see, we can very quickly tell within about 10 minutes, "Not for us." You just, you know, you keep kissing frogs and you never know.
I think for the moment, in the absence of something amazing suddenly appearing, we're gonna just sort of settle down for a while and look at what we've got.
Well, that's great. Yeah. Thanks, Brad. It was extremely comprehensive. I think everyone should have got the answers that they were looking for. Thanks also to all those who pre-submitted questions and for everybody's engagement. We have virtually run out of time for this evening's webinar. I do hope the session answered all outstanding questions. If there is anything remaining, please do forward the inquiry to Turner Pope, and we'll review it and pass it on to Orosur's board for response wherever it's appropriate. Finally, Brad, maybe you could just provide listeners with a couple of rapid closing comments ahead of wrapping up the presentation.
Yeah. I guess the closing comments are that, you know, I'm not. I have no desire to make excuses for our share price. It's been a difficult market, but we know we've underperformed expectations in Colombia. Yeah, we know that. Yeah, we know. We said why that's happened, but, you know, hand on heart, you know, we take that hit. We are very comfortable, however, where the company currently sits. Now, that might not be reflected in the share price, but we think the projects that we've got were all chosen very carefully with very specific technical, geological, commercial factors in mind.
You know, we think they are exceptionally good projects, and I think Nigeria is exactly the same vein. I think I would simply just ask our shareholders to, you know, look at these projects on their merits and not on the basis of what they might perceive as the past, you know, not meeting of expectations. I, you know, I'm not gonna make any promises. I'm not going to. I've never told the market to buy or to sell. I've just tried to be honest and to, you know, give our investors exposure to the best possible projects that we can.
I think Nigeria is really, you know, while it might take a little while for the market to digest the new plays, I think very quickly, they'll understand that this has become a very exciting place and, I think we're very fortunate and, I'll say lucky rather than skillful, we're very fortunate to have access to that, to the projects we have. I'm certainly looking forward to a very exciting and hopefully quite enjoyable 2024.
Marvelous. Well, many, many thanks, Brad. I think that brings our presentation to a close. Turner Pope very much looks forward to continuing to follow Orosur's progress and to making sure all investors and other interested parties are kept informed. Good afternoon to everybody. Thank you.