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General Market Commentary
Blue Sky Uranium sees Argentina project as potential mine
Blue Sky Uranium Corp. (TSX: V.BSK, OTCQB: BKUCF, Forum) is a junior exploration company now on the radar of the Stockhouse audience. Investors were first introduced to BSK in a full-length feature article from November 2016. The Stockhouse Community was alerted to a great uranium opportunity in Argentina.
Argentina is a nuclear-powered nation. However, it currently has no domestic sources of yellowcake to power these reactors. As a consequence, Argentina has been paying a significant premium for the imported uranium necessary to keep its nuclear industry in operation.
Blue Sky saw an opportunity here. The Company is part of The Grosso Group of companies. The Grosso Group has made a name for itself finding and developing highly prospective mining projects in Argentina. BSK is its vehicle for unlocking the opportunity in Argentina’s uranium industry.
Argentina is the world’s 8th largest nation, in terms of land mass. Yet its mining industry was essentially blocked off for foreign development until the 1990’s. This means that this is a relatively undeveloped jurisdiction – and one of the metals that is present in significant quantities is uranium.
Blue Sky’s flagship property is the Amarillo Grande Uranium Project, exclusive mineral rights on a huge, 287,000 hectare land package. In 2017; the Company has ramped up its exploration work on several of the properties included in the Amarillo Grande land package.
Stockhouse had the opportunity to check in with the President and CEO of Blue Sky Uranium, Nikos Cacos. We asked him to share his thoughts on BSK’s rising share price, improving conditions in the uranium sector, and the Company’s progress in developing Amarillo Grande.
Blue Sky chart
1. Looking back on 2017; in March, Blue Sky reported proceeds of $3 million from the exercising of warrants. Do you see that as a vote of confidence in the Company?
Most definitely this was a vote of confidence. We have proven to the shareholders that we understand this structure and are now fast tracking a resource estimate expected early in the new year.
2 At the end of March, BSK reported its first drilling results, from the Ivana target at Amarillo Grande. Please discuss those results.
The Ivana target has grown to be a much larger and more important target than initially thought. Drilling has discovered a higher grade zone over a very significant width which has been a real game changer. We are confident that the resource calculation that is underway will exceed all our expectations.
Furthermore, a second target to the north, the Anit target has been another pleasant surprise. Our drilling at Anit (see News Release dated September 18, 2017) with data from previous sampling programs carried out by the Company has led to the delineation of a significant area of vanadium mineralization, covering a much larger area than the previously defined uranium mineralized zone (see Figure 1: https://www.blueskyuranium.com/assets/news/2017-11-08-nrm1-bsk-h8nb22.pdf).
The current market interest in vanadium as a component of storage batteries for renewable energy has helped spur a significant price increase over the last year. These results confirm the regional potential of Amarillo Grande where two significant uranium-vanadium discoveries have been made by the Company. Amarillo Grande covers a one hundred and forty kilometre trend where there is potential for many more discoveries.
3. The Company has issued several subsequent press releases on further drilling at Amarillo Grande. What were the highlights of this additional work?
Mineralization identified to date at Amarillo Grande has characteristics of sandstone-type and surficial-type uranium-vanadium deposits. The sandstone-type deposit is significant because most of the uranium being currently produced economically comes from these types of deposits. Amarillo Grande has the potential to host multiple deposits and develop into a district size uranium-vanadium region.
4. What is the significance of the “new uranium-vanadium discovery” that Blue Sky reported in September?
Vanadium is traditionally used as a hardening additive in steel manufacturing. More recently, vanadium has become the main constituent of vanadium redox flow storage batteries. Storage batteries are a key component in the sustainability of renewable, but intermittent, energy sources such as wind and solar, which are expected to see increasing future market share[i]. The current market supply of vanadium is mainly from China, where supply reportedly tightened in the last year. These and other factors have resulted in prices of Vanadium surging over the past year.
Vanadium, with the current increase in price because of its use in steel manufacturing and in batteries, could have a significant positive effect on the economics of the Amarillo Grande project.
5. The uranium sector has been showing signs of capitulation after a protracted bear market. What are you seeing in this market at the moment?
Today only 90% of the global uranium mines of the global uranium demand can be satisfied by producing mines. The number of nuclear reactors will double in the coming 10 to 20 years. The previous main supplier of uranium – Russia’s nuclear weapons arsenal – doesn’t exist anymore. Where will the needed uranium come from? The existing mines can be expanded and new mines opened but not at the current uranium spot price of around US$ 20 per pound. An enormous supply gap seems to be inevitable at least at the current market price. That is the situation investors should be aware of – a sharply rising uranium spot price and an inevitable connected second uranium boom.