Western Uranium Can Start Mining If Prices Reach Mid 30’s: CEO
By Aoyon Ashraf
(Bloomberg) -- Western Uranium will be able to start production from its Sunday Mine Complex in Colorado within about 30 days if uranium prices reach mid 30’s; “virtually” all infrastructures are there for mine start-up, Western Uranium CEO George Glasier told Bloomberg in interview this week.
Planning to reduce cost via use of Ablation Mining Technology; mine was previously put on stand-by due to low uranium prices (was previously mined by Denison Mines) WUC CN could operate as dual-commodity co. with vanadium as co-product of uranium, as vanadium prices have been recovering slowly
If vanadium reaches around $6/lb, could produce uranium “for nothing” as all cost would be recovered by vanadium; if uranium reached around $35/lb, vanadium production cost would absorbed by uranium
See vanadium market overview here: Link
Glasier says would need to see few mos. of increasing prices to make any decision on production; watching uranium mkt closely for 2017-2019 as those would be the key years for startup of operation
Early 2017 vanadium market would see equilibrium and really would start to see some material movement: WUC CN director Russell Fryer said during interview
NOTE: Glasier is founder and former president/CEO of Energy Fuels (EFR CN)
NOTE: Sunday Mine Complex has measured, indicated resource of 1m lbs at 0.25% U3O8, 6m lbs of vanadium at 1.49%; also has inferred resource of 1.9m lbs at 0.36% U3O8 and 11.4m lbs vanadium at 2.16%, according to co. website
NOTE: Sept. 7, Hallgarten & Co. initiated on WUC CN with long recommendation with PT of C$4.80
Said turn in uranium mkt will come back just as it has for other mining sectors; could be “brutally swift” implying that cos. that are nearest to production will be best positioned to benefit
WUC CN has market-cap of C$34m, with 17.9m shares outstanding as of Sept. 2:
Bloomberg data
