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Skyharbour Resources (TSX-V: SYH)(OTC: SYHBF) CEO Jordan Trimble on Additional High-Grade Uranium Hits at Flagship Moore Uranium Project in Canada’s Prolific Athabasca Basin
Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president & CEO of Skyharbour Resources — Mr. Jordan Trimble. Jordan, good to have you back on. How are you?
Jordan Trimble: I'm doing well. Good to be back. It's only been a week here but we're back at it with some more news.
Gerardo Del Real: It's only been a week. The last time we spoke, we talked about what a beautiful job you've been doing executing on the project generator side and bringing in partners to develop the multiple projects in the portfolio.
We have a uranium bull market. Obviously, a lot of quality projects that you've been able to retain the upside for but also put shareholders in a position where they can actually see some activity. That's been done beautifully, as I mentioned.
But you also just intersected some additional zones of high-grade uranium mineralization at the flagship, which is, of course, the Moore high-grade uranium project. Care to give us some context there?
Jordan Trimble: Yeah, absolutely. So this is our second batch of results that we've announced. As you probably recall, about a month and a half ago, we announced our first 5 drill holes. Our highlight hole in there was a 6.8% U308 intersection over 2 meters.
We followed that up with some more high-grade. In this release, we've announced about 1%, just under 1%, over 5.7 meters, and within that, 1.5% over 2.5 meters. So continuing to intersect good high-grade mineralization.
Again, primarily basement-hosted at the East Maverick Zone. We've still got 5 holes pending. I will note that — and we're very happy with what we've seen — most of that drilling occurred at the East Maverick Zone. So keep your eyes peeled for additional drill results.
Outside of the continued high-grade mineralization that we're delineating at the East Maverick, in this release, we do announce results from the first few holes, really, ever drilled at a new target; the Grid 19 target. And we talked a little bit about that in previous interviews.
It was a new target that we garnered earlier in the year with some geophysics. It had a couple of historical holes but they did not test the targets that we would've liked them to have tested. This was with previous operators. And so the geophysics that we carried out early in the year properly refined these targets.
And so the first 3 drill holes, we're actually quite happy with what we were finding in them. Although there wasn't any high-grade uranium mineralization, there was anomalous and enriched zones of uranium mineralization in a few of the holes.
One of the holes actually had a 0.05% U308 intersection over a meter. But we saw high levels of boron, thorium, nickel, other indicator minerals and elements, and all of the right kind of alteration and structure.
So this is a new target that has been relatively untested historically. The first few exploratory holes that we completed… very pleased with what we've seen. And it's likely a regional target that we'll continue following up on along with several others.
So, again, it's a big property; just under 36,000 hectares. It's on the east side of the Athabasca Basin proximal to mining infrastructure. We've got our main Maverick corridor that's 4.7 kilometers long. Just over half of it has been systematically drilled; lots of room along strike and at-depth.
We're continuing to intersect high-grade generalization at the main Maverick and East Maverick Zones. And we're now making some new interesting discoveries in some of these regional targets of the project.
So very happy with the results thus far. Again, a number of holes yet to report so keep an eye out for additional news flow on that. And plans are underway for a winter 2022 drill program. Once we have all the results in, we'll have some details on that program that we'll announce.
Gerardo Del Real: Assays pending. You now have five partner companies so a lot of news flow from those five partner companies. I’ve got to get your take on the uranium space. We saw China come out and say they're going to go ahead and build 150 nuclear reactors.
The trend seems pretty simple at this point, right? It’s not hard to get it right at this point in the game!
Jordan Trimble: Yeah, it was interesting because it wasn't new news… it just seemed to catch on here in the last week. But yeah, bottom line, they've announced their intent to build 150 new nuclear reactors over the next 15 years. That's more reactors that have been built in the last 35 years.
And the one thing that the Chinese do well is they build these reactors on time, unlike some of the cost overruns and these long timeframes that we've seen on some of these new builds in the west. So that is a major, major development.
They've announced their new five-year plan. Obviously, nuclear is going to have to play a major role in their decarbonization effort. So that's just yet another macro development, global development, that's a good tailwind for the sector.
But it's not just China. We just saw, recently, France announced that it's going to be building a new generation of reactors for the first time in decades. Rolls Royce announced that it got funded to develop its SMRs in the UK. We just see this continued positive news flow.
And again, as these two mega-macro trends continue to gain traction — one, clean energy and decarbonization, and, two, electrification globally — nuclear is the perfect fit for both.
Gerardo Del Real: I'm starting to think you should spin out a royalty company with all these assets that you have under your belt, Jordan!
Jordan Trimble: Well, look, just to recap — because we've talked about each individual option or joint venture partnership — but as you mentioned, we do have the five partner companies now, two of which are formal joint venture partners:
- Orano at our Preston project. Again, Orano being France's largest uranium mining and nuclear fuel cycle company.
- Azincourt Energy at our East Preston project; they own 70%.
- Valor has an earn-in option at Hook Lake for 80%.
- Basin Uranium Corp., a 75% earn-in at Mann Lake.
- And Medaro Mining, more recently, an initial 70% earn-in with the option to acquire the full 100% at our Yurchison project.
And just to tally up the numbers in these option and joint venture partnerships, we're now looking at total exploration expenditures of C$19.8 million, cash payments of just over C$10 million, and big share positions in some of these partner companies.
So yes, it's going to provide lots of news flow. It'll obviously compliment what we're doing at our flagship Moore Lake project. And we're looking forward to a number of these companies getting active in the new year. I expect that we'll see several drill programs start up here early in the new year.
Gerardo Del Real: A lot to like! Thank you for your time, as always, Jordan.
Jordan Trimble: Thank you. We'll talk soon.
Gerardo Del Real: Alright, chat soon. Looking forward to those assays.
Jordan Trimble: Alright, thanks. Take care.
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