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by Will Purcell

The critical and specialty minerals stocks box score was a buoyant 103-57-130 on Wednesday as the TSX Venture Exchange jumped 29 points to 996. Sherritt International Corp. (S), 29 cents early this year, fell 3.5 cents to 17 cents on 5.23 million shares Tuesday having "reduced operations" at its Moa mine in Cuba because of "fuel supply constraints affecting the country." In other words, President Trump has tightened the petroleum screws on Cuba.

Mining is being halted and the processing plant will go on standby shortly, with planned maintenance activities to be performed. Sherritt has been told that planned fuel deliveries for Moa will not be fulfilled, and when they might resume is unknown. There is no immediate impact on Sherritt's Fort Saskatchewan refinery, which has enough feed to last until mid-April. Sherritt added 1.25 cents to 18.5 cents on 2.59 million shares today.

Brad Humphrey's Nican Ltd. (NICN) was unchanged at 4.5 cents on 687,000 shares. Nican has drilled a 1.45-metre near-surface interval grading 1.54 per cent nickel, 0.17 per cent copper and 0.064 per cent cobalt at its Pipy South property, 20 kilometres north of the Thompson nickel mine in Northern Manitoba. The hit occurred with a new hole of the company's phase I reconnaissance drill program. The hole retested a long-ago 1.35-metre intercept of mineral breccia. While the geologese survived, the assays of the rock did not.

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