Sorry about the previous post. This is the story I meant to...

Sorry about the previous post.

This is the story I meant to post


The head of one of the world’s largest players in the atomic fuel market, Sergei Kiriyenko of Russia’s Rosatom, forecast that the uranium price would start improving this year. Prices have fallen to aroundUS$43.50 a pound from the record of US$136 in 2007, according to Ux Consulting. Kiriyenko did concede that it was speculators rather than users who had driven up the price. However, Rosatom is forming a joint venture with Germany’s Siemens, which will create a powerful alliance on the world market. In the US the new Obama administration is looking at applications to build at least 31 new nuclear reactors. Futures markets have already begun to reflect improving confidence with June 2009 at US$50, September at US$54 and March 2010 at US$57.
Current low prices, and bearish sentiment on uranium miners’ shares, are welcome to some. At Canada’s Cameco chief executive Jerry Grandey, said at a Reuters’ conference in New York last week that the company planned to make acquisitions among uranium miners, with deals worth more than US$2 billion a possibility. Forecasting a reversal in the recent price decline he pointed out that global annual mined output falls seriously short of consumption.

A few days ago Cameco announced a bought deal to raise C$460 million at discounted C$17.25 a share “to strengthen its capital position and enhance its financial flexibility to allow it to take advantage of opportunities that may emerge from the current industry environment”. On Friday the shares traded at around C$19.50, down slightly, in line with equity markets generally.

Uranium’s supply shortfall has been more than filled in recent years by stockpiles and an annual 24 million pounds or so from decommissioned Russian nuclear weapons. Cameco manages the decommissioning, along with two partners, in a deal that expires in 2013. “Somewhere between 24 million and 12 million pounds of supply will drop out after 2012,” said Grandey. However, off-setting that could be production from Cameco’s Cigar Lake mine, which the group hopes will start by 2011.


Simmo.