Categories: Energy
Topics: General Energy

North Shore Uranium (TSX-V: NSU)(OTC: NSURF) CEO Brooke Clements on Upcoming Drill Program to Upgrade Historic Resource & Unlock Exploration Upside

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president and CEO of North Shore Uranium (TSX-V: NSU)(OTC: NSURF), Mr. Brooke Clements. Brooke, it's great to have you back on. How are you today?

Brooke Clements: Great to be back, Gerardo, and I'm doing really good.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, listen, let's get right into it. You had some important news this morning that I want to get to, but before we get to that, we are in a hyper-volatile moment in the markets and just geopolitically in general, right? And despite all of the volatility, uranium has been remarkably stable. Some, including myself, who believed uranium is going much, much higher, would call it a bit on the boring side, although boring is really welcomed right now. The one consistent thing that politicians on both sides of the aisle, outside of spending anyway, here in the U.S., have agreement on is advancing nuclear capacity and critical metals here in the U.S. And so I want to start there. What are your thoughts as far as United States domestic uranium supply, the bipartisan support, and just what you're hearing there out in the space?

Brooke Clements: Yeah, the U.S. is the leading consumer of uranium in the world. They consume about 50 million pounds a year for their plants, and last year, the country only produced two million pounds, so there's a real ... And they plan to build a lot more nuclear capacity, especially with these small modular reactors, SMRs. Yeah. So last year, the U.S. designated uranium a critical mineral, and there's really a push by the government to increase production of uranium. They're assisting with permitting efforts and some incentives and things like that, and some executive orders by Trump. And yeah, it looks like the U.S. is a great place to be looking for uranium right now. Really need the supply.

Gerardo Del Real: Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. And listen, you are in an enviable position. You have a tiny, tiny market cap of roughly $15 million Canadian right now. You also have at your Rio Puerco project, and we'll talk about the news this morning here in a bit, but you have a historical resource estimate of six million tonnes. And so it excites me to no end as a shareholder to see that you've engaged a drill contractor and you're preparing for what's going to be, I think, a really, really exciting drill program this year. Can you give me the details on the approach there and the program?

Brooke Clements: Yeah. First, just as a little background, we always say historical resource, and that's because the historical resource of 11.4 million pounds, 6 million metric tons, was defined in the '70s and it wasn't defined to today's regulatory standards. The main thing we hope to accomplish in this drill program is to validate that resource to today's standards, repeat the results. Basically, we're going to twin about 25 of the holes drilled in the 1970s, we have the results for those. And if we can do that successfully, we'll be able to just call the resource current. We'll just be able to call it a resource. That's one of the main objectives of our drill program.

Gerardo Del Real: I got to believe the rerating on that would be pretty significant because right now, I mean, your valuation is almost like a shell. Listen, I've known Blake for quite some time. I've done really well with uranium and Blake in the past. I expect to continue to do very well with North Shore. Look, I got to believe that peer comps for a resource that is upgraded and updated is going to be significantly higher than the $15 million market cap you have right now. Tell me about the drill program. How aggressive do you plan on being with it?

Brooke Clements: Well, we're going to drill around 25 holes. I was just out there last week getting all the access to the sites and the sites sorted out. I also met with nine federal and state regulators and showed them around. We're in the permitting process and had a real good dialogue with them at the sites. Also took the drill contractor around and assessed all the sites from their perspective. And our drill contractor's Harris Drilling out of Fallon, Nevada, and they have significant uranium experience. Very notably, they've been drilling for NexGen, who has a permitted uranium mine in the Western Athabasca Basin up in Saskatchewan. So yeah, we're just moving ahead, trying to get this program going as soon as possible, and it could start as early as next month, permit's pending.

Gerardo Del Real: No, listen, couldn't be more excited. Again, the historic resource of 6 million tonnes, the 11.4 million pounds are going to fetch a lot more than $15 million in this market. How do you see the uranium price playing out as it relates to ... Everybody looks at the spot price, right? But really it's the long-term contract price that is the key indicator to me. How do you see that developing throughout the rest of 2026, given where the utilities are and their need to start contracting for future supply?

Brooke Clements: Well, there's a significant gap. I think about 90% of the demand is produced by mines right now and the rest from stockpiles, but there's new capacity coming online. So everybody sees a supply gap coming. And I think that's only good for the uranium price. It was over $100 in early January upon that speculation. I think right now, with so many things going on in the market right now, it's just kind of hard. But I see once things settle down, people will realize how important it is and the price will go up.

Gerardo Del Real: No, couldn't agree with you more. One last question. You mentioned meeting with the regulators. How has that gone relative to the project, in relation to the project as far as community engagement and stakeholder engagement and regulator engagement? Because I know they've been extremely cooperative in wanting to advance uranium supply here in the U.S.

Brooke Clements: Yeah. We're working with the BLM in the state of New Mexico and they couldn't be more cooperative and we're on track to get our permits within a month. And we'll see. Yeah, they've been really good and very helpful. And they do want to see increased uranium exploration activity, as do the local communities. In a couple of weeks, there's actually a conference in Santa Fe, a clean energy conference, and people from the local Aboriginal communities and everybody's going to gather and talk about clean energy and uranium, and it's going to be focused on New Mexico and New Mexico's place in that.

Gerardo Del Real: Exciting times for the company, exciting times for me as a shareholder, looking forward to the commencement of that drill program once you secure that permit, which I know is imminent. Brooke, anything else to add to that?

Brooke Clements: Yeah, just getting back to your valuation comment, right now the price uranium is about $85 U.S. a pound. At $80 U.S. a pound, the in situ value of that 11.4 million pounds would be about $900 million U.S. And again, our valuation is 15 million Canadian, 10.7 million U.S. And based on that, the value of the historical resource would be 130 Canadian or 95 cents U.S. a pound. So I think we have some significant room to go up on that. And one other thing we didn't really, or two other things we didn't really touch on, two of our near to midterm objectives, there's also a lot of exploration potential, potential to expand this historic resource. All of this historic resource is just located in one section, and we have confirmed uranium mineralization on three adjacent sections where we have claims.

On one section, there was 800,000 tonnes of uranium identified in the '70s. So one of our objectives as well is to flush out that potential, try to grow the resource. And another thing, once we establish and upgrade this resource to current, we're going to start assessing in detail the deposit for in situ recovery or ISR mining, which is the cheapest, most cost-effective and clean method of uranium mining. Some of the conditions out there that we have are ideal for that, flat lying, sedimentary hosted, uranium deposits below the water table, deposits bounded by shale layers. So those are two other objectives of our near term work.

Gerardo Del Real: Look, there's a lot to like there. Again, it's a tiny market cap. It's an experienced team. You're in the U.S., there's a historic resource, there's exploration upside, it's 2026, and you actually have bipartisan support to advance the project in an expedited manner. Timing couldn't be better. Brooke, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

Brooke Clements: Thank you, Gerardo.

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