SEC Company Response from AMERALIA INC (CIK 0000811419) — Jun 6, 2005
AMERALIA INC (CIK 0000811419)
Date: June 6, 2005 · CIK: 0000811419 · Accession: 0000811419-05-000019
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Response to SEC April letter
AmerAlia,
Inc.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
20971
East Smoky Hill Road
Centennial, CO 80015-5187
Telephone: (720) 876 2373 Facsimile: (720) 876 2374
June 3,
2005
Mr. H
Roger Schwall
Assistant
Director
Division
of Corporation Finance
Securities
and Exchange Commission
Washington
DC 20549-0405
Dear Mr.
Schwall
Re:
AmerAlia,
Inc.
Form
10-KSB for year ended June 30, 2004
Form
10QSB for quarter ending September 30, 2004
Form
10QSB for quarter ending December 31, 2004
File
No. 0-15474
I refer
to your letter to this company dated April 22, 2005. We are pleased to tender
the following information in response to the points raised. We thank Mr. R. Baer
for his assistance. For convenience, we reproduce here your questions and
comments.
Engineering
Comments
General
1.
SEC:
We note your assertion that you are the world’s largest and lowest cost
producer of sodium bicarbonate. Supplementally provide a detailed analysis
to support this statement.
In
our Form 10-KSB for the year ended June 30, 2004 under ITEM 1, we state
“Our primary objective is to be the world’s largest and lowest cost
producer of sodium bicarbonate.” Given the size of our competitors, we
propose to delete “largest
and”
from this sentence in the future. However, we believe it is a realistic
objective for us to be the lowest cost
producer.
Traditionally,
sodium bicarbonate is manufactured chemically from soda ash. We believe our
competitors use this process while we recover our natural sodium bicarbonate
using solution mining which we believe gives us significant production cost
advantages over chemically produced product.
Since we
use natural sodium bicarbonate as our source material in a manner that is
relatively simple compared with the chemical process sourcing soda ash as a raw
material used by our competitors, we believe we have a significant production
cost advantage.
2.
SEC:
We note that you have disclosed in press releases that you have the
largest available reserves of nahcolite in the world, and in another press
release that you control over four billion tons of nahcolite. In your Form
10-K, you also disclose that you currently have permits to mine 48,000
tons per acre and in the same paragraph disclose that you have 9,543 acres
under lease. With this information, one might surmise that you can mine
458 million tons from your
leases.
Supplementary
to this letter we are sending to you a copy of a document entitled “Geologic
Framework of Federal Sodium Lease C-0118326, Piceance Creek Basin, Colorado”.
This report was prepared by Rex D. Cole, Ph.D. Consulting Geologist, Grand
Junction, Colorado in March 1983. The lease to which Cole refers is the Wolf
Ridge Lease, now owned by Natural Soda. Since the preparation of this report our
company and its predecessor entities have gained extensive mining and geological
experience with the resource. However, the Cole report remains a credible
general reference on the resource. On Page 3 of “Summary and Conclusions” the
report states “Total nahcolite resources for the lease area are between 6 and 8
billion tons.” We own four sodium leases of which the Wolf Ridge Lease is one;
therefore, our holdings extend beyond the particular lease to which Cole refers.
On this basis, we believe that we control in excess of 4 billion tons of
“in
situ resources”.
In
addition, in a report by Cole, Daub & Weston entitled “Review of Geology,
Mineral Resources, and Ground-Water Hydrology of the Green River Formation,
North-Central Piceance Creek Basin, Colorado” published by the Grand Junction
Geological Society, Grand Junction, Colorado, 1995”, the authors state
“subsequent drilling established that the world’s largest deposits of naturally
occurring sodium bicarbonate (nahcolite) are present in the Piceance Creek
basin” and “the estimated in-situ resources of nahcolite and dawsonite are
placed at 29 and 19 billion tons, respectively”.
We intend
to refer to these reports in future filings as references. We shall also include
information about the BLM approvals the company has to recover sodium
bicarbonate. As we have disclosed in recent Forms 10-QSB, we have BLM approval
to recover approximately 470,000 tons of sodium bicarbonate from our existing
wells. The BLM has also authorised us to recover up to 320,000 tons of sodium
bicarbonate from the new well we are now installing. Therefore, we currently
have approval to recover approximately 790,000 tons from our resource at this
time.
The new
mining permit allows us to mine 220 tons per linear foot of the new cavity which
is equivalent to 48,000 tons per acre. This cavity mines the Boies Bed, the
richest and most economically recoverable bed of nahcolite in the Piceance Creek
Basin. The Boies Bed does not cover the whole leased area and is, in any case,
one of a number of intervals containing nahcolite within our leases. Therefore,
it would be incorrect to surmise that we can mine 458 million tons from the
leases on the basis of applying our allowable recovery from a portion of the
Boies Bed to the entire area of our leases. We will clarify this in future
filings.
The
leases issued to Natural Soda, Inc. cover a total of 8,223 acres. When combined
with the Rock School Lease issued to Natural Soda Holdings, Inc., AmerAlia owns
leases covering a total of 9,543 acres. The only other sodium leases issued by
the BLM in the Piceance Creek basin, covering a total of 7,142 acres, are the
Yankee Gulch lease held by American Soda (now owned by Solvay) and the
Nielsen-Juhann-Hogle lease. Solvay has shut down its operations on the American
Soda lease because it could not economically transport the recovered liquor to
Parachute to produce sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate there and the other
lease requires extensive government approvals before it can be brought into
production. Therefore, we have the largest resource of nahcolite in the Piceance
Creek basin.
Generally,
we seek to avoid the use of the word “reserves” and use only the word
“resources” when we discuss the nahcolite located in the Piceance Creek basin or
available to us through our BLM leases. On those few occasions we have used
“reserves” in our publicly available information that use has been inadvertent
and should have referred to “resources” or “deposits”. Our current practice is
to state “we believe our deposits are unique and capable of producing sodium
bicarbonate and related sodium products for many generations” as we
report in our Form
10-KSB for the year ended June 30, 2004 under ITEM 1 (a). We intend to continue
this statement in future filings.
SEC:
Supplementally provide a detailed estimate of your nahcolite reserves, and
provide supporting information about your reserves to our engineer, as required
by Section C of SEC’s Industry Guide 7. This information should
include:
·
Property,
lease and geologic maps,
·
Drill-hole
maps showing drill
intercepts,
·
Representative
geologic cross-sections and drill
cores,
·
A
description of your procedures for estimating
reserves,
·
Copies
of pertinent engineering and geological reports, and feasibility studies
or operating plans (including cash flow
analyses)
·
Layout
maps of your sodium production units, or at least a layout of your current
well field,
·
A
summary of your operating permits and government approvals, and a
description of how much sodium containing land you have permits to
solution mine.
In
response to these enquiries we attach to this letter the following
graphics:
Exhibit
1
Map
of NSI leased area within State of Colorado
2
Eocene
Basins
3
Saline
Minerals in Green River Formation*
4
Detail
Map of NSI leases
5
Geologic
cross-section
6
General
Stratigraphy (1)
7
General
Stratigraphy (2)
8
Saline
Zone
9
Stratigraphy
of Uinita & Upper Green River Formations
10
Mine
map showing cavities
11
Permit
status report
*
Note the WRN leases shown on this graphic are now owned by
NSI.
In our
supplementary information we also include a copy of the report by Cole and the
report by Cole, Daub & Weston referenced above.
SEC:
Provide the name and phone number for a technical person our engineer may call,
if he has technical questions about your reserves.
Please
refer all enquiries to Mr. Bill H. Gunn, phone (970) 948 0901.
3.
SEC:
Supplementally provide us with a table showing annual revenues, annual
operating costs (includes all operating costs directly chargeable to the
product production facilities without including depreciation, depletion,
amortization charges or corporate overhead) and annual operating profits
or losses for your solution mining operations for the last three
years.
4.
SEC:
Supplementally provide a table of the last three years of annual
production, including grade, tonnage and amount of commodity
produced.
Natural
Soda Inc. acquired the White River Nahcolite Minerals leases, plant and other
assets in February 2003. The following table summarizes tonnages of product
produced and sold and financial statements for NSI since we acquired the assets.
Production encompasses various grades of sodium bicarbonate including grades of
USP product, industrial products and animal feed quality.
Items
3 & 4: Natural Soda Summary of Production and Income
Statements
Period:
Feb
- June
2003
FY
2004
Nine
Mths
2005
Tonnage
sold
27,864
84,103
60,574
Tonnage
produced
28,350
84,349
60,864
Gross
revenues
$
4,676,012
$
12,726,749
$
10,427,258
Distribution
costs
1,452,926
5,458,354
4,547,885
Net
revenue
3,223,086
7,268,395
5,879,373
Operating
costs
2,685,916
6,997,421
5,599,328
EBITDA
537,170
270,974
280,045
Depreciation
& amortization
617,671
1,186,184
430,630
Gross
Profit/Loss)
$
(80,501)
$
(915,210)
$
(150,585)
Closing
Comments
We
acknowledge:
·
this
company is responsible for the adequacy and accuracy of the disclosures in
the corporate filings,
·
we
understand that SEC staff comments or changes to disclosure in response to
staff comments do not foreclose the Commission from taking any action with
respect to the filings, and
·
the
company may not assert staff comments as a defense in any proceeding
initiated by the Commission or any person under the federal securities
laws of the United States.
Yours
faithfully
/s/
Bill H Gunn
Bill H
Gunn
President
Exhibit
1 - Map of NSI leased are within State of Colorado
Exhibit
2 - Eocene Basins
Exhibit
3 - Saline Minerals in Green River Formation
Note -
the WRN leases shown are now owned by NSI.
Exhibit
4 - Detail map of NSI leases
Exhibit
5 - Geologic cross-section
Exhibit
6 - General Stratigraphy (1)
Exhibit
7 - General Stratigraphy (2)
Exhibit
8 - Saline Zone
Exhibit
9 - Stratigraphy of Uinta & Upper Green River
Formations
Exhibit
10 - Mine map showing cavities
Exhibit
11 - Permit status report, page 1
Exhibit
11 - Permit status report, page 2