Hi, Paul.

PE> Holy smokes Batman!  Whatever happened to NTS?!  BFN.  Paul.

This message originally crossed with my message to you which covered
the details, but there's now an update so I'll reply to it.

Firstly, the proposed meeting with the N.V. government to commence last
weekend did not eventuate, at their request. Apparently some relevant
people from their side were to be out of the country. It's been
postponed to early September. Company executives are still confident
that the outcome will be favourable to NTS. Ironically, one reason is
the significant downturn in the physical copper market; it makes no
economic sense to be constructing a smelter if Cu can be bought more
cheaply on the market which fits in with NTS's view that they don't
really want to spend $40m building one. The chairman intends to request
the granting of an investment licence at that meeting, which is the next
step to going ahead - he expects that it will be granted. There are
other minor positives from the delay, such as their mining laws
(recently adopted based on WA's laws) being slightly amended in the
intervening period, in favour of miners.

You will no doubt have seen the movement today: NTS closed 9/9.6/9, up
1.5 and the options 3.7/4/3.5 (+.6). This is *not* due to what I had
suggested as I mentioned above, but to what looks like it might be a
very significant find at NTS's Three Rivers prospect in NT. NTS are a
40% partner there in a JV with Troy Resources, and TRY's price also ran
today, to close 46/58/59 (+10) after trading as high as 62.

I think we can expect those prices to hold or improve as the market
digests the drilling results (apparently available late on Friday (but
not to me, damn) after the market had closed. Then come early September
we can hope for a further positive outcome from the talks in Vietnam.

Don't sell.

Regards, fIM.

 * * REAL programmers use COPY CON PROGRAM.EXE
@EOT:

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