Announcement:

Posts on this website are general "tips" and nothing more than that and should never be used to make an investment or trading decision. All information should be carefully cross-checked against official sources for accuracy.

China targets 45-50 million tons of Uranium supply per year by 2020

November 17th, 2010

A recent presentation by James Dines a self confessed uranium bug contained a very interesting snippet: China will be building 2 new nuclear reactors a week by 2020.

And on the demand side, this week John Borshoff reckons that China has come “out of its slumber’’ and piled up 133 million pounds in long-term supply contracts. According to Businessday.com’s B Fitzgerald.

‘’Although they have sucked (up) a chunk of new production they are nowhere near their target of acquiring in the vicinity of 45-50 million pounds per annum by 2020.’’ J Borshoff Paladin CEO.

This augurs well for Australia as we have somewhere around 40% of the world’s uranium.

BUT:

It seems ludicrous that Australia doesn’t have its own cradle to grave uranium business as we have over 40% of the world’s economic uranium resources, (www.australianuranium.com.au) plus a vast amount of land providing us with plenty of places where we could build a dedicated port and processing facility.

Eventually our cheaply exported uranium will run out and we will have missed another opportunity to capitalize on what we have by value adding.

That Australia will miss out on being a vital cog in making nuclear energy safe via the oversight that a cradle to grave solution offers should shame us and our grandchildren will likely not thank us for our lazy complacency.

Should Australia continue the Howard policy of selling uranium to Russia?

November 12th, 2010

Interestingly the calls for Julia Gillard’s head from the right seem to to have perhaps conveniently forgotten that it was the Howard Govt’s policy to sell uranium to Russia and Gillard has followed in his footsteps.

I wonder how the Indian govt. perceives this as the Rudd govt. saw fit to block sales to India on a rather flimsy pretext.

Hopefully India will not see it as an insult as India is one of our most lucrative emerging markets and good relations going forward over the next decades seems to be a foundation stone for our future wealth.

Obviously a great deal of heat will be generated on this issue…. But perhaps Canberra and some state governments could use the opportunity to explore how Russia is making a lot of money supplying Europe with a cradle to grave uranium solution.… something that Australia with > 40% of the world’s economically viable uranium resources should be doing now.

So apart from the politics, what about the practicality of sending  non value added uranium to another country so that they can make stellar profits?

Are we that rich?

Uranium Prices on the up again. Australians companies to gain.

November 10th, 2010

According to TradeTech, jumped US$5.50 to US$57.50/lb.

TradeTech reports the level of spot demand is “exceptionally high”, albeit “predominately discretionary”, meaning investors and speculators are now back in earnest. Real end-users were more inclined to sit back and reassess last week.

Perhaps the hedge funds are beginning to re-enter. Most will remember that in 2006, hedge funds pushed the uranium spot price to US$138/lb followed by a “true” bust.

However despite TradeTech’s observation of the upswing being based on discretionary buying there has been a marked number of articles outlining the future needs of the uranium power plants that are now being either built of planned. Further China appears to be making sure that it doesn’t get caught short with a stockpile build up. That plus the missiles to megaton project coming to an end in 2012 (Russia) 2013 USA seems to be part of the drivers. Certainly we have seen an uplift in the Uranium share indexes both Australian and Global over the last few weeks.

Some of the high gainers include EXT, GGG, AEE and PDN. Each of these have extraordinary drivers: With EXT bringing the world’s second largest mine into production in 2013, GGG having a lovely mix of uranium coupled with the world’s largest Rare Earth Elements deposit, AEE on track towards proving up a billion pounds of uranium with a minuscule market cap and PDN after doubling its reserves and being the first into new production.

Aura adding more uranium

November 8th, 2010

As previously remarked ,Aura Energy ASX AEE has almost as much uranium as Extract resources but is just a fraction of EXT’s market cap. AEE’s main holding is in Sweden where they are on track to prove up a remarkably large resource that may eventually be 4x EXT’s current resource. Adding to its rather obvious attractions to an investor wanting cheap exposure to Uranium,  AEE has just announced that it has hired a drilling rig to explore its West African Reguibat Project in Mauritania, West Africa.

Aura completed the initial drilling of calcrete mineralisation in Mauritania earlier in 2010. The 392‐hole drill programme confirmed the presence of the widespread calcrete uranium mineralisation generally two to four metres in thickness, and locally up to six metres thickness.

Uranium grades and extent of the mineralisation were considered highly encouraging with individual one metre drill samples ranged up to 4056 ppm U3O8.

Extract: BFS for World's second largest Uranium mine in 2011

November 4th, 2010

A month or so I opined it was time to get back into Extract. It seems that the market agreed and those of you that bought in are now being rewarded….

Extract Resources has told investors they will have to wait an extra three months for the long-awaited bankable feasibility study over its Namibian uranium mine.

Extract chief executive Jonathan Leslie told shareholders at today’s annual meeting that the feasibility study would not be released this year as planned but in the first quarter of 2011 instead.

But he said the three-month delay did not mean much, given the scope of the project.

“It’s been a very aggressive timetable,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the meeting.

“I don’t think shareholders will mind the delay. It’s a very large project and a slip of a quarter is nothing.”

He said Extract hoped to start commissioning Husab – formerly known as the Rossing South project – in early 2014 and it would be about an 18 month ramp-up to full production.

With forecast annual production of 15 million pounds of uranium, Husab would be the second biggest uranium mine in the world.
Extract shares were up 25 cents, or 3.17 per cent, to $8.15 shortly before market close.

extract-strong