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Strathmore Plus Uranium (TSX-V: SUU)(OTC: SUUFF) VPE Terrence Osier on Uranium Tailwinds, Equities Disconnect & Upcoming Drilling
Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the VP of Exploration for Strathmore Plus Uranium, Mr. Terrence Osier. Terrence, how are you today, sir? Great to have you on.
Terrence Osier: I'm doing fine, Gerardo. Thank you very much for having me.
Gerardo Del Real: Well, let's get right into it. We chatted a bit off-air. I mentioned that I really want to dive into some of the uranium tailwinds and there's several, and I absolutely want to talk about the recent news with the one-mile step out that hit some pretty solid grades that bodes well for future results, obviously. But before we get into that, you're kind of new to our audience, but not new to the field, obviously to the space. I would love for you to give us a bit of background on your experience and your accomplished track record.
Terrence Osier: Well, my wife and I, Nancy, we moved here in 2004 after I received my master's degree at Idaho State University. I applied for a position with what was going to be the up-and-coming new Strathmore Minerals Corporation at the time. I started the job, the very first employee with Strathmore in November 2004 in the Riverton, Wyoming office, that's near where I live now. That's where my office is here.
We had Strathmore Minerals Corporations. I started staking mining claims. I started doing stuff on permitting. We went out and drilled on our projects in Wyoming, specifically in the Gas Hills. We had projects in New Mexico. That's where I met John DeJoia. I met Dev the following year at PDAC in 2005. Everybody knows the whole story about Strathmore spinning out our Fission properties years ago from 2008 on, which we're about to spit out the fourth for uranium.
Strathmore, we were permitting projects in the Reno Creek area of the Powder River Basin. We eventually sold that project, and then our Gas Hills project, we eventually had a $40 million joint venture with the Korean Electric Power Company that we signed post-Fukushima in 2012. Then in 2013, Strathmore was acquired by Energy Fuels, and the majority of us were let go at that time.
Following that, I worked for a little bit again on some Canadian projects. Then the market really fell out. I got into abandoned mine land work in the State of Wyoming with a local engineering firm. Then I quit that and went and consulted with Laramide Resources, the uranium company with projects in New Mexico, specifically Churchrock and Crownpoint that I was familiar with. Worked with them for a couple of years. We put together some 43-101s on that, got back into mine land work, and then in October 2021, Dev called me and asked if I would like to start a new Strathmore.
That's what we did. Started staking mining claims in late 2021 that were eventually acquired by Strathmore and we'd gone out and acquired three projects, our Beaver Rim, our Agate, and our Night Owl project. We did drilling on the Night Owl and Agate project last year in 2023, and we continued another a hundred hole drilling program on Agate this year, which we completed the first half of drilling a month and a half ago.
The next drilling program we're going to start will be Beaver Rim, hopefully beginning of September. We posted the reclamation bond yesterday, now we're waiting on the final documentation for the drill notice on that project. Then once we're done drilling on that, probably in mid-early October, we will get back out on the Agate project and extend drilling hopefully into the project area, into the new claim groups that we've acquired. But we have more than enough land at the present time to do some exploration, specifically that southern trend that we found, and then of course along the northern trend.
Gerardo Del Real: Let's talk about that drilling. You started drilling Agate, June 10th is when you press released it, and quickly within a week you extended the mineralization trend at Agate by 50%. Then fast-forward a month to just two or three weeks ago, you hit a one-mile step out that hit some pretty favorable grades and thickness there. Can you speak to the Agate project and what it is that you're targeting there and how you're feeling about the pace of the drilling as you go?
Terrence Osier: Well first and foremost, the Agate project's located in the Shirley Basin uranium district of East Central Wyoming. It was the second-largest mining district in Wyoming after the Gas Hills, so it was probably fifth or sixth-largest districts in the United States for mining. It was the place where the first in situ recovery operations were successful in the sixties, which was followed up by large open pit mining in Shirley Basin.
Our project lies in the central trend, and this is a project that Kermadec Corporation had drilled years and years ago in the seventies. Thousands of thousands of holes in this general area they were drilling. They were putting together a large deposit, and eventually of course, the price of uranium collapsed and the market closed, predominantly throughout the United States.
I'd known about this project for years. The director, John DeJoia, my friend, he actually had worked out there in the seventies and saw all this drilling going on, so he remembered this project also. When we were putting together projects, I'm like, well, I got this idea in Shirley Basin and John's like, I got one too, and it turned out it was the same area. We went out there and staked some claim.
We have about 600 holes were drilled on the project area currently, maybe a little bit more because we've added some claims, but we only have the gamma log data for about half, and some of that is very sparse. For instance, the northern trend, out there we have the lower sand and the middle sand, and the northern trend was only in the lower sand. We drilled that last year and then for this year I'm like, well, we've got these other potential areas that are shown on the map. We went to the south and again, we found some uranium down there in the lower sand. We're like, okay, this seems like to be the very southern extent of this mineral trend that we're drilling on the north. We'll eventually infill between them.
Then this other spot was to the southeast, about a mile, just shy of a mile southeast of the first area we were drilling at. I noted there were some holes down there that hit some mineralization. I looked at the gamma logs, they were illegible. I was like, well, let's just go down there and drill. We were drilling and we immediately hit very shallow mineralizations about 20 feet deep, and it was not in the lower sand, it's in the middle sand. We now have a new trend in the middle sand on our project that I was not expecting. That's what we're excited about.
We have just, if we can get this trend to grow to the north, which I expect it will because we go north, everything gets deeper, which only helps for an in situ project. We have a new target, this middle sand, and the middle sand was the predominant producer in Shirley Basin, probably three-quarters of mineralization came, the mining out of Shirley Basin came out of the middle sand.
I'm really excited about this target. Like you were saying, we hit some nice grades on it. Let's see, let me go look at the presentation. For instance, we hit a hole at 15 and a half feet of 05. It starts at 40 feet deep and that's shallow. This could turn into an open pit project for all we know, just depending on if it's within the water table or not.
But hopefully this project area, this trend will just keep going north. That's our goal this fall is to continue north on that trend and to continue east and northeast on the northern trend, and see where these things go and how much more mineralization do we have on our property area. Can we build up a resource of a couple million pounds out here? That would be ideal. That's our goal for the fall on the Agate project.
Gerardo Del Real: The fall time obviously is going to be pretty critical. I think your timing is perfect. You mentioned the boom-and-bust nature of not just uranium but the commodity space. But when you have an event like Fukushima, obviously those were very, very lean years.
We now finally have bipartisan support, as insane as that sounds in 2024, on developing nuclear here in North America. It's got to feel good to have joined the uranium space or rejoined the uranium space. Having that type of support and having a market that seemingly has nowhere to go but up. I don't think that supply is going to be able to keep up with the demand for the next several years. What are your thoughts on the uranium space and the tailwinds being that you've seen both great markets and very challenging ones?
Terrence Osier: Well, the great market of 2004 to 2007, that was unprecedented. I started when uranium was 20 bucks a pound and it hit 138 in three years. Then of course the market collapsed in 2008. That didn't help, and obviously the Fukushima accident was really painful for the industry, but I knew that we were going to have to do something. We can't expect wind turbines and solar panels and the like to power a world of eight billion people.
I knew uranium was going to turn around. That's why I stayed in Wyoming. I didn't leave and it was some very lean years for me and my wife and I knew it was going to turn around and I was waiting for someone to call, and surprisingly it was Dev.
I believe the future of nuclear power is a very good one. The Chinese are leading it. The US is realizing they'd better do something. We’re proposing tripling our fleet within the next 30 years, which would be an unprecedented amount of uranium that we would need, let alone from this country, let alone from Canada or Australia and our other friends. The world is realizing we need power and it better be clean power. I think we have a very good future ahead of us.
I mean, I don't understand why the stocks are just being pummeled right now. We've got uranium prices sitting at about $83 a pound on the spot. Long-term's up to $80 a pound. I mean it's doing really well. SWUs and separate work units and stuff like that, conversion, they're at all time record highs and that's only going to pull the uranium price up. It's only going to help us all out.
This is a good time to be drilling in the fall. People are going to start getting excited after the WNA meetings next month. It's a good time to be in the market if somebody was going to get in. I mean, the prices are just low right now for stocks, I mean extremely low.
Gerardo Del Real: I couldn't agree with you more. I think this pullback is an absolute gift to anyone that has a moderate timeline to position for the next leg up. We had the first leg here about a year or so ago, and then we had a consolidation and then this recent sell-off. I think we're going to look back and realize it's just a blip in what's a clear upward cycle. Anything else to add to that, sir?
Terrence Osier: Really, I think what we're seeing is we're seeing that start to climb, just like we saw from 2004 to 2007. That was such an, I mean, the only thing that caused our climb so high at the time was people were panicking about Cigar Lake and McArthur River and the shaft that got broken in Australia and that quadrupled the price of uranium. It's just crazy.
What's actually happening now is we actually have a deficit. There was no deficit of uranium mining at that time. Now we're 30, 40 million pounds a year for the last five, six, seven years. Every year we've been below how much we need. We're burning through all that old uranium. You got spot coming in and buying uranium off the market. It's just so different now.
But again, I think we're just going to have these climbs up and down, and we're going to have this volatile market in the world because that's how things are right now. I think we're still in a really good place and we got to just be smart with what we're going to do with our money and go from there.
Gerardo Del Real: It should be an exciting end to the year. Looking forward to having you back on, sir. Thank you again.
Terrence Osier: Well, thank you very much.
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