rio will seek to negotiate a joint venture, page-12

Fireblade,

Great find. Well done!

This is what I was expecting, for reasons I have previously explained. It appears that RIO have now fired the opening shot by going public on this.

I strongly suspect, however, that other interested parties (e.g. Areva) will not let this go unopposed. If Rio succeed it will increase their grip on the world's uranium supplies - and hence give them more control over future U pricing. That is clearly not good from the POV of consumers & competitors. You can be sure that Dattels & co will have been in touch with those alternative bidders to tell them what it would take to get the shares/votes he controls.

I therefore expect that other offers will get slapped on the table in the not too distant future... unless Dattels has already agreed terms for the RIO JV as part of the earlier boardroom fight!

Subject to adequate terms, I expect that Extract's Board will favour the RIO JV option, as it should leave upside to the currently defined Rossing South resource in the hands of Extract s/hs. Moreover, I also suspect that the Namibian govt will favour this Rio deal - which is a rather important consideration. Rio is a relatively good partner to deal with. Rio will also make sure that Namibia gets the best price for it's natural resources, whereas a consumer might not. They already have processing facilities nearby and are well tied in with water & power supplies and have plans for capacity expansion at Rossing well advanced. We shouldn't forget that the Namibian govt owns 3% of Rossing Uranium Ltd, nor that Extract's new chairman has close links with the govt.

No wonder the SP has been strong this week!

Bring it on!

Mark