de graaf hot on rocking uranium

a bit old but don't think it has been posted before:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22389865-18261,00.html

De Graaf hot on rocking uranium

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Robin Bromby | September 10, 2007

WHERE Bertus de Graaf goes, there's bound to be a Big Idea involved. When he ran Ross Mining, it was developing the Gold Ridge mine in Solomon Islands. Then the next Big Idea was getting Ross taken over on attractive terms.

Just before things went sour in what has become the Pacific's most dysfunctional nation, de Graaf sold Delta Gold on the idea of acquiring Ross Mining. Not only a Big Idea, but Great Timing. The investors didn't like it: on the day the Ross Mining takeover was announced - March 1, 2000 - the thought of owning something in Solomon Islands frightened punters and Delta's stock fell 10 per cent.

The punters were right. Six months later, Delta was forced to write off $143.7million and freeze dividend payments. Gold Ridge, by this time having been closed because of rebel threats, accounted for $81.1 million of that.

Two years later, and de Graaf was back with another Big Idea, this time with hot rock energy. He was one of its pioneers and the $15.5 million IPO by Geodynamics was a ground breaker in the business of geothermal energy and has spawned many imitator floats.

De Graaf and Geodynamics parted company last year, with the outgoing MD citing "irreconcilable differences".

Now he's back and about to take the helm at Uranoz, which until now had been a uranium play spun out of WPC Resources. Uranoz will buy the Limestone Coast geothermal project in South Australia and have 45 per cent of geothermal rights in the Indian state of Maharashtra and in the Himalayan region of that country.

Hot rocks taking the limelight from uranium? Now, that's a Very Big Idea.

Central Asia warms up

DE Graaf will also bring with him the right to earn 61 per cent in four hot rock geothermal projects in Kyrgyzstan now controlled by Kentor Gold.

Far East Capital's Warwick Grigor reminds us that, just a month ago, he put out a client note alerting investors to Kentor's geothermal potential. His firm had, in June, placed 20 million shares for Kentor at 13c (and its share price still lingers there). Kentor was founded to look for gold in the Central Asian republic, and then diversified into Northern Territory uranium. Grigor, in his August 1 note, notes that the company had floated at 50c a share. The last time they were over that level was March 2005, but he believed the slide might have ended and a new upward movement might have been imminent.

Grigor knows Kyrgyzstan well - he chairs Monaro Mining which is drilling for uranium there. He believes the geothermal potential in that country is not widely appreciated. "Kyrgyzstan benefits from very hot granites at relatively shallow depths," he wrote - and provided this comparison: in South Australia, Geodynamics needed to drill down between 4km and 5km to get the necessary 250C to heat the injected water through the fractured hot rock, but Kentor estimates it will need to go only between 2km and 3km.

Moreover, there is the huge China market just across the border and its power grid was less than 200km from Kentor's project site.