Greg Klein reports that renewed interest in the southwestern Athabasca Basin area of the Patterson Lake South camp comes from Cameco Corp. as the giant signs a purchase agreement with ALX Uranium. The merchandise consists of 27 claims totalling 7,064 hectares peripheral to ALX Hook-Carter property. That leaves ALX with a more closely consolidated PLS camp position of 16,461 hectares.
Most of the vended claims are isolated from the Hook-Carter main contiguous block. They also include a small, northeastern portion of the main block, covering ground with depths to the unconformity much deeper than the main parts of the property where ALX intends to focus its exploration. The development might portray Cameco in an acquisitive mood, following the recent news that the company had optioned 60% of CanAlaska Uranium West McArthur project in the eastern Basin.
ALX president and CEO, Jon Armes, says the Hook-Carter transaction benefits both parties. ALX gets $170,000 and, on some claims, a 1% net refining returns royalty that can be reduced to 0.25% by paying ALX $750,000. Other claims have a 2% NRR reducible to 1% for $500,000. Cameco, he says, gets to tidy up its land position in the PLS area, making concerted exploration more viable.
A lot of that ground is 600-plus meters to the unconformity, Armes points out. When you start drilling 1,000-metre holes at $400 a metre, that is quite a costly endeavor for a junior mining company.
The sale provides ALX with some significant hard dollars, certainly more than we paid in our staking and other costs, and we maintain a small underlying royalty, he adds. The chance of Cameco making a discovery northeast of us would only benefit us.
With Hook-Carter now under consideration for ground EM and a possible drill program, the company announced exploration plans for 4 other projects. On the agenda are ground gravity for Gorilla Lake and Perch, a radon-in-lake survey for Lazy Edward Bay and ground EM for Newnham Lake.
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