LAM article on their new uranium property in Australia-
I am looking for a much higher share price on this one-
"Supply shudders drive uranium prices
By Barry FitzGerald
June 18, 2004
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Uranium prices are booming, surging 80 per cent to more than $US18 a pound in the past 12 months, in response to the fears held by nuclear power utilities about future long-term supply sources.
The price surge has sparked renewed interest in Australia's undeveloped uranium resources, which in total, are the world's biggest.
The Canadian mining industry is showing particular interest, with one of the first to benefit being the unlisted, Sydney-based Tackle Resources.
Tackle is associated with mining analyst Steve Bartrop, who is executive director of the Sydney-based Fat Prophets research house. The Canadian tidger Laramide Resources has struck an option deal with Tackle to acquire a 100 per cent interest in the Westmoreland/Lagoon Creek uranium deposit and associated copper and gold prospects in far north Queensland.
The uranium deposit was discovered in the 1950s by MIM and more recently was kicked over by Rio Tinto, the last owner before Tackle picked up the vacant ground.
The copper/gold potential was what pricked Tackle's interest when the land package became available but it is the uranium that has excited Laramide. It told the Canadian market that Rio Tinto's pre-feasibility work showed the mineralisation was amenable to acid leaching.
Westmoreland was last listed as containing 21,000 tonnes of uranium oxide material, making it one of Australia's biggest known undeveloped deposits.
The biggest developed deposit is WMC Resources' Roxby Downs copper/uranium/gold deposit in South Australia.
The uranium component at Roxby Downs was a factor in the share price of WMC marching to a six-week high yesterday.
Laramide said the rising uranium price reflected strong industry fundamentals, with present world mine output of 43,000 tonnes a year representing little more than half of the 78,000 tonnes a year that power utilities consume.
"This positive pricing picture follows a prolonged bear market dating to the early 1980s," the Canadian company said.
That bear market had much to do with the nuclear power fears that followed the partial meltdown of the nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979.
A flood of material from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s continued the bear market, notwithstanding uranium maintaining its 16 per cent share of the world electricity market.
The Uranium Information Centre, a Melbourne-based industry group, said yesterday there was nervousness about uranium supplies.
UIC general manager Ian Hore-Lacy said "there is a perception that stockpiles held by utilities are depleted".
This comes at a time when 30 new reactors are in various stages of construction around the world, and when nuclear power is seen by some as the answer to the greenhouse gas problem fossil fuels pose in power generation. |
