Tony Harwood
PRESIDENT & CEO: Montero Mining & Exploration
‘Montero is fully funded to complete its arbitration hearings’
THE Montero share price staged what could be termed “the mother of all recoveries” for an explorer listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange last year when its price took off from a 52-week low of C$0.02 to hit a 52-week high of C$0.34 before pulling back to around C$0.19 by mid-December. The reason for that had nothing to do with the company but rather the successes obtained by two other junior miners in their disputes with the Tanzanian government.
Montero is currently taking legal action against the Tanzanian government through the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) over the loss of its retention licences to the Wigu Hill Rare Earth Project. Montero is demanding C$90m in compensation. In July, Indiana Resources was awarded $109.5m by ICSID in its case against the Tanzanian government over loss of the Ntaka Hill Nickel Project which was expropriated. In September, another junior taking ICSID action against the Tanzanian government – Winshear Gold Corp. – announced it had suspended arbitration proceedings because it had reached a “conditional settlement agreement” over their claim.
Montero shareholders obviously reckoned those decisions indicated their company had a good chance of winning its claim and Harwood underscored that, pointing out Montero was using the “same lead attorney that represented both Indiana and Winshear”. So it was looking good for Montero ahead of its ICSID hearings postponed to early 2024. With Wigu Hill gone, Harwood has refocused Montero’s exploration efforts on Chile where it is assessing the early-stage Avispa Copper-Molybdenum Project located on a major copper porphyry trend in the northern part of the country. Avispa covers some 450km2 of exploration licences.
LIFE OF TONY
With some 40 years experience as a geologist and 36 years in mining there’s no denying that Harwood has been around the block. He is best known in South Africa for his involvement with Placer Dome where he was a vice-president. Placer Dome was heavily involved in the development of South Deep which it subsequently sold to Gold Fields with – rumour has it – Placer Dome executives heaving deep sighs of relief as a result! Harwood’s other South African gig was as executive chairman of Universal Coal from 2009 to 2012. He holds a PhD from the University of Wales, Cardiff.