Proactive investors

Additional information

Additional	Information
Market:	TSX
Sector:	General Mining
Epic:	FDC
News:	Latest news
Web Site:	Forum Uranium
Other Articles:	03-12-200827-11-200809-05-2008

Rick Mazur of Forum Uranium talks to Proactiveinvestors

by Harry Norman

Forum Uranium
Rick Mazur

Rick, these days everyone seems to be prospecting for Uranium - what makes Forum Uranium stand out from the crowd?

Well, first thing, I have to agree with you, everyone's looking for it; but we were one of the first ones to look for it. Back in 2004, we formed our company and got a good land position in Canada, at a very early stage. The second important thing is the quality of our exploration team. I've got an exploration team that one would die for: the two gentlemen that are top dogs in the Forum team are my Vice President of Exploration, Ken Wheatley, and my Chief Geologist, Boen Tan, who together have discovered, in their careers, 300 million pounds of uranium. At today’s value of say, $75 per pound, we are talking about - in their careers - they have discovered 25 billion dollars of uranium.

Rick, talk us through Forum's activities over the last six months.

 In the last six months the company has reached a point where - after doing three years of good, solid, geological exploration; all the geology, geophysics, geochemistry and structural studies etc - we've reached the stage of diamond drilling and that’s the stage where discoveries are made, and we're a discovery company. We are poised to make a discovery in the Athabasca Basin of Saskatchewan and/or the Thelon Basin in Nunavut, which is just to the north of Saskatchewan. In the last six months we have commenced three drill programs on three of our projects in Saskatchewan, for a total of 13,000 metres of drilling in Saskatchewan, on three highly prospective, well located, uranium projects, with nearby, existing, uranium processing facilities. So it’s been quite a year.

So Rick, when could Forum's prospects be in production?

Well, I'm glad you asked me that question. Certainly any discovery we make in the Athabasca basin, or the Thelon basin, can range anywhere from 0.3 per cent to 20 per cent. Huge grades, very, very high grades of uranium mineralisation; it will definitely be something that will be of great interest to the major, uranium producers, in the world, or the major utilities of the world. We are not a producing company - as I mentioned earlier, our expertise is in exploration. I've got a team of uranium exploration geologists that know how to find this metal, they've got a history and track record that can’t be beat. When we make our discovery - and I'm very confident that given the time and money, Forum Uranium will be the discoverer of a large uranium deposit - certainly down the road, the likes of Cameco AREVA, Denison, or other uranium producers (which there aren't many of) will come knocking at our door. I believe the best way to serve our shareholders will be to sell the asset, or indeed sell the whole company, at a much higher price than it is today, which is trading at C$0.45, on the TSX-V exchange.

So Rick, what is an “unconformity-related deposit” and why are you so interested in them?

Well Harry, an “unconformity-related deposit” is a style of uranium deposit and currently, 50 per cent of the world's uranium is produced in these types of deposits, in Canada and Australia. Why am I so interested in them? Well, the fact of the matter is that they are the richest and the largest uranium deposits in the world. These deposits in the Athabasca Basin, for example, range in value at today’s prices from $3,000 per tonne to $40,000 per tonne of rock. I mean, these are world- class grades and they're also very large. The average deposits in the Athabasca and Thelon basins are anywhere from 10 million pounds to 50 millions pounds. Then there are the giants, the big deposits that are available. There are at least three deposits in the Athabasca that are 200 million pounders. The current producer from Cameco was a 400 million pound ore body, and the new development project by AREVA, in the Thelon basin - the Kiggavik project - which is one of the areas that we're exploring (in fact we have a dominant land position in the area of that new uranium development project by AREVA, at Kiggavik) is a 150 million pound ore body. These are large bodies and that’s why I'm so interested in looking for them.

I noticed that Forum is listed on the TSX-V exchange, the US Over The Counter Market (OTC), and in Frankfurt. What are your thoughts on these markets?

Well the TSX-V exchange is definitely our highest volume trader; it is the venture capital exchange for the resource industry and, in particular, the mining sector. So I believe that’s the dominant exchange to be on. The US “Over The Counter” and Frankfurt exchanges are listings that we have just to give our American investors and our German investors an opportunity to trade the stock in their own countries. They tend to be more retail type of traders.

So Rick, what are your thoughts on the AIM market and are you considering a UK listing?

Actually Harry, we have a very large investor base here in London already. Forum was originally reorganized in 2002 by a group of UK investors, on the TSX-V exchange. It was a natural progression for us to keep coming back here and keeping those investors informed, and then friends told friends and they ended up becoming investors. So we already have a large, UK, retail, high-net-worth, and institutional following. But if we were to make that discovery … when we make that discovery I believe we will certainly give listing on AIM consideration because at that time we'd certainly be in need of some big funds to drill off an economic, uranium ore body.

So Rick, what is Forum's financial situation?

Harry, the company currently has C$6 million in cash at the end of the first quarter of 2008 and the projected budget down the line calls for … probably the rest of our 2008 budget year will be another C$4 million in exploration.

So Rick, what do you anticipate for the rest of 2008, for Forum Uranium?

Well Harry, I am really excited about this next project that we’re going to be putting a drill on, commencing in July of this year. Right now we are flying our North Thelon joint venture, which is that project I mentioned that has a very good land position covering all of the prospective geology in and around AREVA 's 150 million pound, uranium ore body that they've announced they're conducting a feasibility study on. So we’re flying the airborne-geophysics right now, we are planning to move a ground geophysical crew into the property in June; in June they'll get on the ground and use a technique that we call “gravity surveying”, which is an excellent technique for identifying the alteration that is associated with these ore bodies. With the airborne program and the ground gravity, we'll have a number of targets to select for drilling which we plan to commence in July. This technique has been very successful in the discovery of the Kiggavik deposits where three ore bodies, totaling 150 million pounds, have been discovered by utilizing these techniques. So, I'm really looking forward to that data and getting the drills on the ground.

Where do you hope to see Forum Uranium in five year’s time?

Well Harry, hopefully you and I, and all of your listeners, will be lying on a beach somewhere enjoying the fruits of Forum’s successful discovery of a uranium deposit, and ten times the share price that we could have bought it for today. [Laughs]

Register here for more articles on Forum Uranium

Copyright © Proactiveinvestors.com.au, 2008. All Rights Reserved. Site designed and maintained by Riskmedia Solutions 2008 Tehnicom Solutions
Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions | Copyright Info

Proactiveinvestors is a leading global source of financial news, stock market news, business financial news, company data, comment and analysis with a particular emphasis on mining news and oil and gas news.