Categories: Energy / Mining Stocks
Topics: General Energy / Uranium Stocks

Premier American Uranium (TSX-V: PUR)(OTC: PAUIF) CEO Colin Healey on Taking Advantage of Uranium Bull Market with Multi Pronged Strategy

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Premier American Uranium Mr. Colin Healey. Collin, it's great to have you on first time on our show. How are you today, sir?

Colin Healey: Amazing to be here, Gerardo. Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, listen, I'm very familiar with your background and your expertise and so you're just now coming on. I thought it would be a great opportunity given that I think we're about to see uranium kind of kick up here once again. We seem to have put in a pretty nice bottom here in the mid to high eighties, and so I think your timing is excellent. But for those in our audience that maybe aren't familiar with your background, can you speak to that just a tiny bit before we get into the Premier American story and then kind of approach moving forward because an exciting one?

Colin Healey: For sure. So my background, I spent the last 16 years working for a sell-side broker-dealer, mostly focused on uranium space initially as an associate working under an extremely experienced and talented geologist Geordie Mark. And then since 2012, covering uranium, battery metals, some bulk materials as an analyst. So I've looked at a lot of projects around the world including a pretty strong focus on U.S. uranium.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, explain to me because you know better than most, right, the importance of moving forward in jurisdictions that are favorable, friendly because I think we're seeing a shift in the landscape as to how governments and corporations are approaching where they get their clean energy from, right?

Colin Healey: I think we're definitely seeing that. I think we saw evidence of that shift start in the term market in the uranium term market this year. We saw non-U.S. buyers in the term market purchase more material or contract more material than they have since 2012. And I think that over 140 million pounds, I believe was contracted by non-U.S. utilities. And I think that has a lot to do with a return to the contracting market to try to source material from outside or to try to insulate and replace contracting from sources that might be at risk, mainly Russia and Russian aligned countries. So I think the timing is excellent. I think jurisdictionally, well, that speaks to jurisdiction, but our focus, Premier's focus on the United States specifically in premium jurisdictions like Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico has to do with our belief that uranium prices are going to remain higher for longer, much longer I think, than the market's giving them credit for.

And I think that mining and the ramp-up of new mine production is extremely challenging and the best miners in the world I think are going to be potentially slow or risk or slightly potentially behind schedule. I'm not very concerned about anyone overproducing in the next three years, and I think that some of the large sources of production that are conceptually going to come online in the next three to five years could easily be delayed through no fault of the developers. But there's permitting, there's challenges in procuring equipment and labor, and I think that jurisdictions like the United States are going to be very well positioned with some of the brownfields and higher marginal cost production assets to take advantage of the fact that global production is going to be slower to come online than people think.

I think that what we've got in the U.S. right now is some smaller producers all announcing production restarts from swing production-type assets, ISR in Wyoming, Texas, Conventional in Utah and the surrounding areas. And I think that those producers are going to be looking for projects to backfill a pipeline to continue for production continuity going forward and that's what we're trying to build at Premier is a suite of assets that could be shown to be or could be developed in advance towards something that can fill a production pipeline.

Gerardo Del Real: You're the newly appointed CEO firing right out of the gate with an acquisition. Can you speak to the acquisition of American Future Fuel and next steps and catalysts for the company?

Colin Healey: Sure. So the primary asset within American Future Fuel is the Cebolleta project, which has 19 million pounds of historic inferred resource at about .17%. This is shallow open-pittable resource that American Future Fuel has already done some confirmation drilling that's coming back with excellent reconciliation with historic drilling. So we think that we can quickly continue to drill that and continue to prove up that historic inferred resource while at the same time there's some significant exploration upside on that property. The St. Anthony deposit to the south of the Cebolleta deposit had an internal inferred resource done on it by a prior operator back in 2010 of about 8.2 million pounds, lower grade at 0.095%.

But as we sift through that data, I think there's probably a higher grade component to that, and I believe that there's potential to connect St. Anthony to the Cebolleta deposit, potentially wrapping that in as a larger resource for the region. So the rationale and the pillars that Premier Uranium's built on, acquire, explore and develop, the rationale here and why this fits our strategy is that we believe we can acquire this, spend some money, confirm the historic resource of size, and then begin to develop it and come up with a mining concept that works for the property.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, I was going to ask you next steps and catalysts. You kind of outlined that really, really well. Colin, it's been great having you on. Anything else that you want to add to that?

Colin Healey: No, I think that for Premier that for sure we're going to have some drilling at some point this year at Cebolleta at New Mexico once we complete the acquisition and start to get a handle on the method of approach. I think they've done a great job and they have a great strategy with that asset.

But we're also going to be working on our Wyoming ISR project, the cyclone deposit, and we will be drilling that. We're working on permitting for that right now. It has an exploration target of eight to 12 and a half million pounds, and I think that as an ISR project in the Great Divide Basin of Wyoming that this is a perfect analog to some of the other projects that are moving into production or recently have been announced as going to be developed, talking about we're in close proximity to your energies facilities. There's other deposits in the area. So I think you're going to see Premier active and generating news from Wyoming as well. And we will be, as part of our strategy acquisition is core, we're going to be leveraging our technical team to find the best projects in the U.S. in these premium jurisdictions to keep building out the company.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, it should be an exciting and profitable couple of years in the uranium space if you're positioned on the right side of it. Kudos to you and the team. I think you've done a brilliant job of getting ahead of a market that's going to be one for the books here over the coming years. Thank you again so much for your time and I'm looking forward to having you back on here.

Colin Healey: Very much appreciate it. Thank you, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: All right, cheers.

Colin Healey: Cheers.

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