Where are the hot and cold spots around the world for resource investors? The stampeding bull market in commodities has investors reaching for new ideas. Highly respected newsletter writer Lawrence Roulston of “Resource Opportunities” favors Canada, Alaska and China for investing in mining and energy companies.

StockInterview: Let’s get the cold spots out of the way so investors are forewarned about which countries to avoid.

Lawrence Roulston:
A lot of the (mining) companies that went overseas in decades back are recognizing the political difficulties with dealing in some jurisdictions. These include places like Indonesia, Columbia, and several of the African countries, such as Congo, Sudan and Eritrea. All of those places where there are great geological prospects, but are more and more risky to deal in. I think some of that mining is coming back closer to home, which is right here in Canada.

StockInterview: So Canada is on your “favorite countries” list?

Lawrence Roulston:
At the very top of the list would be Canada. As of right now, taking into account the geological potential, political situation, infrastructure and all the other issues, I would (highly) rate Canada and British Columbia. They have had decades of work. But for the last decade, there hasn’t been very much going on. The companies are just coming back and picking up with what’s been going on. Similarly, Ontario, Quebec – tremendous geological potential – and it’s been kind of ignored for a long time. Canada is now the most important place in the world for diamonds, representing 50 percent on exploration spending for diamonds.

StockInterview: Is there a specific mineral or metal that makes Canada especially appealing?

Lawrence Roulston:
It’s the whole gambit. Canada has always been one of the top metal producers, and it’s coming back to life. Of course, gold is at the top of the list, but also base metals and uranium. The Athabasca Basin in northern Saskatchewan is far and away the most important area to be looking at, geologically. It’s currently the biggest source of uranium and contains the highest grade deposit. There are other uranium prospective areas in Canada that are just emerging. The Thelon Basin in the Northwest Territories, north of the Athabasca Basin, is very similar, geologically, to the Athabasca Basin. It had some work done in the 1970s, and it’s been pretty much ignored until very recently. Going a little further north to Hornby Basin, it is a similar kind of situation. In Labrador, the central mineral belt is just emerging as a very important place to be looking for uranium.

StockInterview: Do you have any favorite companies, which you are following and which have good prospects?

Lawrence Roulston:
NovaGold Resources (TSX: NG; Amex: NG), for example, with the Galore Creek. It’s a billion ton deposit with enormous metal content. (Editor’s Note: Galore Creek has been called one of the largest and highest grade undeveloped porphyry-related gold-silver-copper deposits in North America.)

StockInterview: What is another of your favorite areas, which has gone largely undetected during this bull market?

Lawrence Roulston:
Nevada would be at the top of the list of anywhere in the world to be working and Alaska right behind it. There is huge potential in Alaska. Mining companies have only scratched the surface of exploration up there. Two of the largest metal deposits in the world are in Alaska. These are both discoveries going back decades, but work over the last couple of years has brought them to the point where they’re now recognized as among the largest metal deposits in the world: Donlin Creek, a 25-plus million ounce gold deposit, and the Pebble deposit, held by Northern Dynasty (TSX: NDM). The Pebble deposit is significantly larger than, and of comparable grade to, Ivanhoe’s (NYSE: IVN) Oyu Tolgoi (copper-gold) deposit in Mongolia. (Editor’s Note: The Donlin Creek project is a joint venture between NovaGold and Barrick Gold.)

StockInterview: Anywhere else in the world where you can find a great, but still “new” resource investment opportunity, in light of how hard the commodities bull has been stampeding the past few years?

Lawrence Roulston:
Often the better value to be had, or the better opportunity, is in being a little bit out of step with the crowd. One of the areas offering some outstanding opportunities is China.
China has done a tremendous amount of geological work, over the last few decades, but all from the perspective of finding, and then quickly developing, small deposits. There has been very little effort devoted to taking a bigger picture type look at China. The companies that have been able to take a kind of bigger picture look at China have begun to develop what I think are going to be some pretty spectacular results over time.

StockInterview: Isn’t it tough, though, doing business in China?

Lawrence Roulston:
There is still a perception out there that China is a difficult place to do business. Most people from the west walk into China cold and try to do a deal. It would be impossible for them. But, for western companies that are able to team up with groups that are well established within China – so that they’re able to find their way through the system over there – then there are outstanding opportunities. There are mountains of geological information – all in Chinese, of course. You’ve got to be able to work within that system and get the information, know how to put the deals together.

StockInterview: What do you mean by “knowing how to put the deals together?”

Lawrence Roulston:
If I was to go over to China and try to do a deal to get access to a coalbed methane property, I wouldn’t have a clue about how to begin. On the other hand, I could walk into the Petroleum Club in Calgary, and meet a half dozen guys and talk to them. I could build on my leads, and probably in a day be talking about a deal. When you go into China, unless you have somebody on your team that can get into the system and deal with the people, because of language issues, cultural issues and just having access to the information and knowing what sort of terms that they might be looking for… It’s a different culture from every perspective, and not the least of which is a different way of doing business.

StockInterview: In your April issue, you recommended one company, which overcame those hurdles, meets your criteria and already has a coalbed methane deal in China.

Lawrence Roulston:
Pacific Asia China Energy (TSX: PCE) established connections in China. They can draw on their contacts and their network. They can get into see the right people, where they can actually talk seriously about doing deals, and have an enormous leg up over somebody that walked in cold and tried to establish and build contacts and put a deal together. I think it is an absolutely outstanding opportunity that they’ve seized on.

StockInterview: There are many coalbed methane opportunities in Alberta. Why look to China?

Lawrence Roulston:
One of the things that makes China interesting is the entry cost to get into a coalbed methane (CBM) play in China is fairly modest. For example, to go to Alberta, or anywhere in the United States, and get access to the exploration rights, or exploitation rights, is enormously expensive. In China, they walked in and, for a fairly modest up-front commitment, obtained a control position in a CBM prospect.

StockInterview: How does Pacific Asia China Energy’s coalbed methane property in Guizhou, China rate against other coalbed methane plays?

Lawrence Roulston:
I think it’s an outstanding opportunity. Chinese government agencies have done an enormous amount of work at delineating the coal. To be able to step into that amount of data as a starting point to build up their CBM resource? The bottom line is that they’re not out there looking for coal. They know exactly where the material is, and they’re able to quickly start defining the issues like recoverability. They’re drilling in order to establish the basic physical parameters of the flow rates and the content within the coal. I think the companies which are able to effectively exploit the CBM technology in China are going to be the pioneers in that area.

StockInterview: To Americans, any business in China might appear to be “pioneering,” since most of still think of China as a third world country.

Lawrence Roulston:
I’ve been to China many times and I’ve been to parts of China where most people, as tourists, would never get anywhere near, because I go there to look at mineral exploration projects and mining projects. I’ve been to every corner of the country as well as the major cities. What I see happening everywhere I go is a pace of development that I’ve never seen anywhere else in my life, anywhere in the world. That is, 1.3 billion people are going from a basically rural farm-based economy to a modern industrial economy at a pace that has just never before been conceived.

StockInterview: How do you quantify that?

Lawrence Roulston:
This is a number that most people won’t get, and you won’t get until you’ve been over there and have seen it. There are 300 million people in China that are already well into the middle class. By middle class, I am comparing (the Chinese middle class) to the same absolute standards as we would apply in Canada or the United States in terms of dollars in your bank account, value of your house and your car, and everything else. There are 300 million people that have already achieved that status, which is more than the people at that status in North America. There are another 1 billion people who are busting their butts to get to that level.
(more…)

A recent report published by the Cohen Independent Research Group, called Wall Street’s #1 Independent Research Firm, rated Pacific Asia China Energy (TSX: PCE: Other OTC: PCEEF) a Buy. The 68-page research report set three wide-ranging valuation levels as price targets for PCE shares for the company’s coalbed methane concessions in China. Considerations such as the wide range of the Guizhou’s abundant gas reserves, expected prices of natural gas during the research firm’s forecast period, and discounting factors, such as the stock price’s high volatility, were included in their price targets.

PCE shares, which closed at C$1.16/share on nearly 131,000 shares trading hands on June 19th, were given long-term fair market pricing of C$1.96/share by Cohen Research. This pricing was under the most pessimistic scenario. The low-case scenario included a natural gas price as low as $275 per 1000 cubic meters, and included a discount rate of 25 percent on the stock price. Cohen also reported, in the report, that at the current market price, PCE is “grossly undervalued.”

Cohen Research wrote, “As per our Base Case scenario estimates, the NAV of PACE’s resources falls in the range of C$5.31 – 7.83 per share (with a discounting factor of 20 percent).” Under the most optimistic pricing, assuming natural gas at $375 per 1000 cubic meters, Cohen targeted PCE shares at C$11.56/share. Cohen Research used the Net Asset Value (NAV) based method, which is one of the most accepted methods to value mining companies.

PACE, the acronym for Pacific Asia China Energy and not the stock’s ticker symbol (which is PCE, trading on the Toronto Venture Exchange, or TSX), is fortunate that one of its concessions is in the Guizhou province of China. Estimates describe this Chinese province as hosting more than 20 percent of China’s coalbed methane (CBM) reserves. The country’s total CBM reserves have been independently estimated to exceed 31 trillion cubic feet.

PACE was the first Canadian publicly traded company to participate in China’s granting of CBM concessions. PACE is participating in the Baotian-Qingshan CBM project through its wholly owned subsidiary Asia Canada Energy (ACE). China’s state-owned CBM company, China United Coalbed Methane (CUCBM), granted the 970-square kilometer CBM concession in September 2005 to ACE. The Baotian-Qingshan concession is located in the CBM-rich Guizhou province.

The Cohen Research NAV levels confirm what we anticipated. Earlier this year, we had reported on the assessment by Sproule International on the Baotian-Qingshan property. On March 1st, PACE had released three scenarios presented in the technical report filed by Sproule. The worst-case scenario on the property showed 504 billion cubic feet for three coal seams. The high case volume scenario for seven coal seams reached as high as 11.2 trillion cubic feet. Sproule’s assessment, called the “Most Likely Case volume” estimated 5.2 trillion cubic feet. Some analysts have valued each trillion cubic feet of gas at C$1 billion market capitalization.
(more…)

In two previous columns, we talked about how quality management attracts Publicity, or PR. Nearly every company is constantly trying to attract the attention of the media. What brings the media to a company’s door? That’s what every public relations man or woman would love to know. For this is what PR people get paid to obtain for their clients.

Quality management is certainly a key motivation in attracting a reporter’s attention. This helps persuade the reporter or a radio/TV producer that the proposed interview isn’t going to be with someone who has “nothing to say” or just rehashing a cliché or tired, old story. The higher the title and the better known a company, the greater the “impingement” a PR pitch (that’s what publicity people use to sell a reporter) impacts upon a member of the media. If someone from the publicity department at Microsoft calls Fortune magazine to ask about profiling Bill Gates, the pitch will have major impingement value. Few names have this kind of clout, either personally or corporately.

In any event, the senior editor of the major magazine will still inquire about the story angle. The editor will want to know, “What are we going to talk about?” Ultimately, it is the outstanding story that sells magazines or newspapers, not just the big name. Not all such stories involve a big name speaking or spouting his thoughts for the day. Often, better stories evolve when there is a strong newsworthy angle. Let’s look at two recent stories – one which involves a uranium company and another one about a coalbed methane (CBM) company, which we’ve covered in this column.

On Thursday, Pacific Asia China Energy (PACE) was featured in the Financing section of Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper. Headlined “High-Energy Performer,” the opening sentences told us why the reporter was interested: “PACE holds contracts to help China explore for and develop its coalbed methane (CBM) resources – fuel China needs to help satisfy its energy demands.”

The big story, which drew the newspaper to Pacific Asia China Energy, was China. PACE piggybacked that story because the company may be helping to offer a legitimate solution to the country’s energy mix. Part of the big story is the possible size of the recoverable gas, estimated in a technical report by Sproule International to be as large as 11.2 trillion cubic feet of gas.

Those two items enhanced the reporter’s interest in PACE. China needs alternative energy sources, such as CBM, to improve their energy mix – from a near total dependence upon coal. And, PACE has a potentially huge resource, which could last a good number of years. Such a gas resource could be sufficiently large to make an impact on China. After all, China has proven reserves of a little more than 30 trillion cubic feet. Another 11 trillion cubic feet, should the potential be proven up, would represent a significant increase of available gas in a very large country. By itself, this could later develop into a major international energy story, reported upon by a great number of news media. Another impingement about the reporter is having the satisfaction of reporting upon a good story, well before others write the story.

Chatter in the newsroom:
“Did you hear about PACE’s gas discovery in China, Bob?”
Bob’s Reply: “Oh that one. Yeah, I wrote about it eight months ago!”

Therefore, there are multiple impingement points in this story. Each “draw,” or a reason to attract eyeballs to the story, is another point the story must score, for the reporter and his editor, to overcome the hurdles of being featured in a major publication. China is a draw. The size of the PACE coalbed methane gas resource is a draw. The potential impact upon China’s energy mix is a draw. Writing about it before the rest of the pack jumps on the bandwagon? That’s a draw, too. In this case, four draws sufficiently attracted media coverage for this small CBM development company.
(more…)