What a shock for the people of North Down! There they were, spading over the flower beds for autumn, when the news broke. Dig deeper in the gardens of the affluent eastern coastal resort area of Northern Ireland and they’d find a load of gold and platinum. No-one is saying how much at this stage.
This is official, not just a tall tale. The news was broken by Economy Minister Nigel Dodds. Irish newspapers and TV gave it top slot.
Well, with gold prices going through the roof, my first reaction was to reach for the kids’ buckets and spades. But, having waded through the flummery in the press, it now seems it’s not so easy. I’ve had to retract my suggestion that Isabel and the family nip over to Ireland for the weekend to see the relatives.
The precious stuff is between metres and kilometres down, the small print shows. The details are all in the report of the Tellus Project scientific survey. According to the Economy Minister, the study of the areas’ mining potential makes Northern Ireland the most surveyed part of the planet.
Since 2004 teams of boffins have been building new environmental data banks in Northern Ireland. They’ve been up in planes doing electromagnetic and radio metric mapping. They’ve collected 31,000 sediment, soil and water samples. They’ve assessed urban geochemistry and checked out pollution.
Out of all of this, one hopes, will come the information that will attract investment. A similar survey did just that in Australia, Mr Dodds told the press conference.
Gold development could bring in as much as £20m
The head of Northland Ireland’s Geological Survey, Garth Earls, was quoted in the papers saying that nine exploration and mining companies want to explore further in the areas the Tellus Project covers. The government apparently believes that gold development could bring in as much as £20 million.
Not that Northern Ireland is short of a bob or two. The country is already thriving and property prices are rocketing. Hence the momentum of panic that built up among local property owners that their ‘des res’ might be torn down by scavenging miners.
Australia is another matter, someone should have told Dodds. There’s a load of gold and other metals near the surface. Plus, there is an established and healthy large scale mining industry.
The local "Greens" are a bit more cynical
The local ‘Greens’ are a bit more cautious and cynical about prospects of a ‘gold boom’. Assembly member Brian Wilson is quoted in The Guardian referring to the chequered history of mining. Foreign companies, he declared, had little or no regard for the environment or local communities.
Ireland has had a gold boom before, back in 2500 BC. Apparently more Bronze Age gold hoards have been discovered in Ireland than in anywhere else in Europe. Recent times have seen the concentration more on extracting golden hoards in the forms of EU grants.
Yet at least two Irish mining companies are chipping away. These probably fall in the ‘fun’ category, like so many of the hundreds of exploration companies around the world. They are what are referred to in the investment trade as ‘penny stocks’. Definitely travelling in hope! Great for tales, but not sure about the pension!
There is little Conroy Diamonds & Gold, listed on London’s Alternative Investment Market. The market capitalisation is a mere £3.7 million. The share price is around 3.5p, although back last November it did reach the heady heights of 5p. Galantas Gold is the other one, traded in Toronto, with the price around 17-21 Canadian cents.
Galantas weaves a very romantic story. It is operating in Omagh, where it owns a mine and sole rights to a 189-square kilometre prospecting license and associated leases. What it talks of doing is bringing its mine into production "as soon as possible". Then it wants to sell its gold as beautiful 18-carat Irish Gold jewellery. Meanwhile it is drilling away to come up with some gold, silver and lead. It managed to raise £750,000 from investors back in April to carry on its work.
Conroy has been exploring since the mid-1990s. It has found what looks like a resource containing as much as 500,000 ounces of gold in the Longford Down area. This is in Armagh.
Larger companies may now be moving in. The small ones that have already secured mining licences are G alantas and Tournigan, from Canada, Belmore Resources, Conroy Diamonds and Gold and Irish Salt Mining and Expiration. Five other unnamed companies have licence applications pending at the Northern Ireland Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment.
What better source of happiness and tales
Big excitement is being created by a story that the huge British company, Lonmin, could be interested. However, those in the mining industry think this would be a nice story — i.e. not necessarily true! Lonmin is the world’s largest platinum producer, it mines mainly in Africa. It is valued on the stock market at around £5 billion. Economies of scale are likely to mean that making profits from an Irish operation would be difficult.
Certainly there has been no announcement from Lonmin that it has Ireland in its sights.
One of our favourite stockbrokers always maintained that every client should have a stock in the portfolio that made him or her feel happy. Especially, one that they enjoyed talking about! On those grounds, what could be better source of happiness and tales to tell in the pub than an Irish gold mine? Or come to that, a platinum one?
Looking at the Irish press, a lot of happiness is building up already along Ulster’s new gold coast. Let’s hope story’s ending keeps the Irish smiling.
Keep digging!
Erin and Isabel
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