COMPANY SNAPSHOT: Aureus Mining, Beacon Hill Resources, North River Resources, Connemara Mining, Gulfsands Petroleum, Caza Oil & Gas, Max Petroleum

Mining companies Aureus Mining (LON:AUE) and Beacon Hill Resources (LON:BHR) found themselves under the spotlight this morning after both companies unveiled maiden reserve estimates for their projects.

Aureus Mining today unveiled a maiden mining reserve estimate for the New Liberty project in Liberia.

The company’s initial gold reserve stands at 873,000 ounces, at grades of 3.1 grams per tonne. While gold resources are currently 1.6 million ounces with a grade of 3.6 grams per tonne.

The mining reserve currently provides for eight years mine life with 123,000 being produced annually during the first four years. Cash costs would be around US$632 per ounce.

Meanwhile, coal miner Beacon Hill Resources unveiled a maiden JORC reserve for its Minas Moatize coal project in Mozambique of 42.65 million tonnes (Mt) with potential upside of a further 7.9 Mt.

Total mineable reserve includes a marketable reserve of 23.45 Mt, representing the saleable portion after mining and processing of the resource, of which at least 8.72 Mt is coking coal.

Beacon Hill expects to release the definitive feasibility study (DFS) for the project later this quarter, which will be based on a 4 million tonne per annum run of mine operation producing more than 2 Mtpa of saleable hard coking and thermal coal for the life of mine.

Sector peer North River Resources (LON:NRRP) announced a maiden resource – which is compliant with the JORC standard – of 35,699 tonnes of copper grading 1.36 percent copper in the indicated category for the Malachite Pan deposit on its wholly owned Witvlei project.

The deposit also holds an inferred resource of 26,402 tonnes of copper at a grade of 1.11 percent.

The company has also upgraded the JORC compliant resource at the Koperberg deposit, on its 100 percent owned Dordabis copper project, both located in Namibia.

The Kopperberg resource has been increased to 8,718 tonnes of contained copper at 1.14 percent in the indicated category and 5,863 tonnes grading 0.95 percent in the inferred category.

Both Witvlei and Dordabis are located in Namibia.

Small cap miners Connemara Mining (LON:CON) and Red Rock Resources (LON:RRR) also had news to report today.

Connemara has set up a joint venture with Hendrick Resources, a private Canadian exploration company to explore four of its licences on the Wicklow/Wexford border.

The Mine River licence block consists of a group of four contiguous prospecting licences covering an area of around 130 square kilometres, which are known to be prospective for gold.

Previous exploration has discovered significant gold occurrences in rocks and rivers in the area of the Mine River Licence Block.

Under the terms of the agreement, Hendrick will spend €500,000 to earn a 50 percent interest in the licences and has the option to spend a further €500,000 to increase its stake to 75 percent.

Red Rock Resources has acquired an option over 5.93 million shares in Kansai Mining Corporation at a price of over five US cents per share and 85 percent of the amount of the valuation of Kansai's assets at any time over the next four years.

If the option is exercised, the common shares would represent a 4.94 percent stake in Kansai.

Red Rock now owns or has options over 37.96 percent of Kansai’s issued share capital.

In oil and gas, Gulfsands Petroleum (LON:GPX) has decided to suspend exploration activities within Block 26 in Syria. The halt on exploration will remain while sanctions remain in place.

The company said that since force majeure was declared in respect of Block 26 in Syria, the company and its partner Sinochem had no involvement in any production from the project.

State owned General Petroleum Company, has continued since December 11 to produce oil from Block 26 at the rate of approximately 4,000 barrels per day. Gulfsands and Sinochem have received no payment in respect of this production.

As a result, Gulfsands and Sinochem are owed US$50 million of which half is owed to Gulfsands. This figure, said Gulfsands, will continue to increase “modestly” at currently levels of production.

Other news in the sector included operational updates from Caza Oil & Gas (LON:CAZA), Max Petroleum (LON:MXP) and Tower Resources (LON:TWR).

Caza reported that the Caza McMillan No.1 well has been placed online, all frac fluids have been recovered and production rates are being maintained at 1.13 million cubic feet of natural gas, 45 barrels of oil per day.

The company said the current rates represent the most efficient and effective production rates for the Yegua 9,650 reservoir.

At the San Jacinto property in Texas, the Caza Elkins 3401 and 3402 wells have combined to produce around 15,000 barrels of oil and 23 million cubic feet of natural gas since August 2011.

“I am very pleased with the progress the Company continues to make.  Caza's net production continues to climb as our wells clean up following the completions executed late last year,” said chief executive of Caza Michael Ford.

Peer Max Petroleum (LON:MXP) has started testing the second Triassic reservoir in the SAGW-1 well in the Sagiz West Field in Kazakhstan, flowing oil at stable rate of 430 barrels per day over a 17 hour period.

The company has also started testing a second Jurassic reservoir in the ASK-1 well in the Asanketken Field, flowing oil at a rate of 1,005 barrels per day.

Both wells are connected to temporary production facilities and will be placed on long-term test production for up to 90 days.

In the meantime, Tower Resources (LON:TWR) has started mobilising the OGEC K900 drilling rig to the site of the Mvule-1 well in Uganda.

The well is expected to reach a total drilled depth of about 600 metres within two weeks of spud to evaluate an estimated recoverable resource potential of 80 million barrels.

Today’s appointments included the hiring of Ali Al Hauwaj as exploration manager of Turkmenistan operating oil and gas group Dragon Oil (LON:DGO). Al Hauwaj has previously worked for Saudi Aramco for over 30 years and for the last seven years as manager of exploration department.

Dragon said Al Hauwaj’s skills have been “very critical” in discovering many oil and gas fields in both Central and Eastern parts of Saudi Arabia, including a number of gas fields discovered onshore and offshore.

“This assignment is line with our strategy to build our own exploration team and to grow through the acquisition of new exploration assets similar to the farm-in agreement for the Tunisian offshore permit signed last year,” said chief executive of Dragon Oil Abdul Jaleel Al Khalifa.

Elsewhere in the markets, intellectual property commercialisation firm Fusion IP (LON:FIP) announced that its portfolio company Mesuro, the Cardiff University spin-out which sells RF testing equipment and device measurement services to the semiconductor industry, received orders totalling €1.25 million for RF.

Fusion currently has a 47 percent stake in Mesuro.

“Mesuro is in a transformational year and these sales should be a stepping stone for the company to secure significant sales in 2012,” said chief executive of Fusion IP David Baynes.

“We look forward to working with Mesuro to converting its highly promising pipeline in the coming year.”

In other news, Amphion Innovations (LON:AMP) said DataTern’s patents 402 and 502 have now been reexamined by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)  with positive outcomes.

“The result is another important milestone for the development of our IP program with our new legal partners McCarter & English,” said chief executive of Amphion Richard Morgan.

“We look forward with increased confidence to positive results in the  existing cases and gaining additional licensing revenues from these and other companies using our technology in the future.”

Biotech firm ValiRx (LON:VAL) also announced a patent approval this morning.

The company, which is focused on cancer diagnostics and therapeutics for personalised medicine, said its cancer screening test biomarker called NAV3 has recently received patent approval by the European patent office (EPO).

This means that ValiRx now has a biomarker patent protection within Europe, alongside patents for its GeneICE technology across the world encompassing European territories the US, Canada and Australia.