Become a Member

Stalin’s Lost Oil

By Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe, April 23, 2010

The teaser ad that has been buoyant enough to float to the top of the tank today is a good one for a Friday File treatment — it’s a stock that trades in low volume and has a low market cap, and I always worry about writing about such stocks when sharing things with the broader Stock Gumshoe audience on the free site (not that I don’t do so sometimes) … but for you, the few, the proud, the Irregulars, well, there’s not too much risk that we’ll drive a stock crazy just by discussing it among ourselves here, even if it does sound kind of interesting for a nibble.

So what is it?

We’ve had some mixed experiences following the far-flung resource ideas of Christian DeHaemer, from the collapsing Range Resources (the Australian company, not the big US gas company) in Somalia to the buoyant Dragon Oil in Turkmenistan (one I found very intriguing but foolishly never bought) — which is to be expected, I suppose, when you’re prospecting in dangerous waters as he tries to do with his Crisis and Opportunity newsletter, looking for great opportunities in war zones, political crises, or far-flung frontiers.

And today is no different — another little company, operating in a remote area in the developing world, with a geopolitical “crisis” story behind it. He calls this tease “Stalin’s Lost Oil,” and he helps ramp up our interest by spinning a little tale of Russian/Mongolian history …

“In the post World War II period, Mongolia was a puppet state of the Russians.

“The strange thing is that even though the Soviets knew that Mongolia contained vast amounts of mineral and oil wealth, they inexplicably ignored it.

“Stalin owned Mongolia. He executed a Prime Minister in Moscow for not following orders. He trained the next leader, Tshoibalsan, in his own image.

“Why, then, would Stalin order his Mongolian puppet to run purges of his own and destroy all Buddhist monasteries in the country… but spare a vast amount of oil?”

That oil is the target of several companies who’ve been surveying a lot of long-dormant exploration blocks in Mongolia for the last few years, thanks in part to the nearby Chinese demand … but there’s one company in particular that DeHaemer is teasing us about today:

“Untouched for 57 years, this $0.64 cent company is sitting on $49 billion worth of ...

Sign Up for a Premium Membership

To view the rest of this article (and to have full access to the rest of our articles), sign up.
Already a member, log in.

Become a member

We use cookies on this site to enhance your user experience. By clicking any link on this page you are giving your consent for us to set cookies.

More Info  
5
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x