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March 09, 2010
Forte Energy Continues To Hit The Grades On Its Mauritanian Uranium Prospects
By Alastair Ford


Mark Reilly has moved to London. This news may not yet have made it into the society pages of the Evening Standard or the Telegraph, but it is certainly good news for London-based investors in Forte Energy, the company thats lately been pushing ahead with some promising-looking uranium projects in Mauritania and Guinea. One of Fortes directors, Lady Barbara Judge, is already in the UK full time, but shes a non-executive, and is anyway, as far as Forte is concerned, is focussed more on forming relationships with end-users, than with the operational aspects of developing uranium mines. Her presence in London wasnt enough.

The reality was that I was spending most of my time here, says Mark, after a slightly mournful remark about the current weather in Perth. Our biggest shareholders are here or across the channel in France, the French shareholder being Areva, the great French nuclear power giant. Managing a mining company with rapidly developing operations half a world away from a Perth office would tax even the most enthusiastic of mining executives. In Fortes case, given that its assets are in Francophone Africa, its perhaps a wiser idea to be closer in, closer to the money, and closer to the projects.

And things are advancing quite rapidly now on the ground. The latest drill results to come in from the Bir En Nar project in Mauritania look very encouraging indeed. Among the better grades and intersections were 16 metres at 1,617 parts per million (ppm) uranium, five metres at 2,326 ppm, and four metres at 1,711 ppm. That result Mark is more than happy with. Its good. If we can replicate that, wed be more than happy.

More assay results are pending from a completed 5,800 metre programme, and should be announced once what Mark calls inexplicable delays with the labs have cleared. Its those problems at the labs that have contributed to the delaying of Fortes maiden JORC resource for Bir En Nar, much to Marks frustration. That JORC resource is now due out by the end of March, and, with a man from Coffey Mining kicking the tyres out there right now, there seems little doubt that this time we really will see the numbers.

In the meantime, the company drills on elsewhere, its coffers recently replenished by the A$2 million cash sale of a copper-cobalt project that it had on its books left over from a previous life. That deal takes the total cash position to around A$7 million, with another A$20,000 recently booked as part of the sale of an extended option on another copper project the company holds near Cloncurry. Australia is very definitely not the focus these days, though.

Following on from the recent work at Bir En Nar, the rigs are now turning as part of a 4,000 metre to 6,000 metre reverse circulation programme designed to put between 200 and 300 drillholes into 11 prospects on the companys Bir Moghrein ground, also in Mauritania. That work should go a long way to establishing whether Forte has any real economic propositions on that ground or not, and should provide a clear direction on the companys future once the results start coming in later in the summer.

Meanwhile, down in Guinea, where the company has already booked a JORC resource of 11.6 million pounds of U3O8 grading 296 ppm on its Firwa property, metallurgical testing is now underway. So far, results, according to official Forte documentation, have been encouraging, and leach testing is now underway with a view to gathering data for a pre-feasibility study.

Less positive have been the recent downward moves in the uranium price. But Marks not overly concerned about that at the moment. Its obviously of interest to us, he says, but its not critical. Forte, he reckons, wont struggle to deliver economic projects at the current price, even if it is weakening imperceptibly month by month. The current spot price is reckoned at around US$40 per pound, but conventional wisdom says that the real price is higher, and is set privately in individual deals between major producers and major end users. With Areva already long-established on the share register, and anxious to secure supply in its own West African back yard, its not hard to envisage where most of Fortes product will go. First, though, the company has to prove its got the resources in the first place. As far as Bir En Nar is concerned, we wont have long to wait.