The energy sector, unlike the precious metals sector, is a necessary part of life. We can’t operate our current lifestyles without energy, cheap energy, but we can operate without precious metals. Mining, plays a significant role in the cost of both precious metals and energy.
The mining industry has been suffering over the past several years, pretty close to a decade, from a lack of capital. Capital inflows have been depleted and when there is a smaller pool of investment dollars something has to be sidelined. Exploration, research and development have been the victim and this is now creating issues with the major mining companies like Barrick. It is also creating problems within other areas of the resource sector as well.
Barrick mining, in September 2018, acquired Randgold in what was called a “mega-merger”. Two of the largest mining operations in the world coming together seem to be a signal that the mining industry was really beginning to suffer. Now we see Barrick coming back for more and attempting a hostile takeover of Newmont gold mining, another major mining company. Does this mean that Randgold doesn’t have the material Barrick thought they had?
This is one of the signals, in my opinion, that drives economic laws. Barrick didn’t wake up one morning and decide they needed to acquire these major mining operations. These decisions were based on economics, profits and continued operations. This is where the exploration, junior miners, come into the picture. The high quality exploration mining companies are doing the heavy lifting and should be rewarded for their efforts in the coming 2-3 years.
The high quality exploration companies are another one of the signals of economic laws. These exploration companies are not finding the mega mines of the past, some are finding large mines, but for the most part the precious metals mining explorers are finding much smaller mines than just a couple of decades ago. This is going to create more stress and, ultimately, it should create rewards for those involved.
This leads us into other areas of the resource sector. Today we are going to look at uranium, and more specifically, what is happening with energy, nuclear power and the “green new deal”. Also, what is happening with energy in China, Mackinder’s Heartland and even oil rich nations like United Arabs Emirates (UAE)? These nations are all building new nuclear power plants – all of them.
We sat down with Nico Cacos, President and CEO of Blue Sky Uranium to get his thoughts on the mining industry, what’s happening with uranium and this newly discovered world class – possibly the world’s largest – uranium property he is developing in Argentina.
Argentina is home of the world’s largest undeveloped silver discovery. Mr. Cacos was overseeing the team that was responsible for this discovery. Mr. Cacos is now overseeing a different team that has discovered the Ivanna property.
This is a great interview and provides a great insight to the potential of the next decade in energy and the precious metals. Without mining we have very serious problems with energy and for us stackers we have serious problems with being able to acquire the shiny at these depressed acquisition cost.
