It’s no secret that uranium is on a tear. Spot U3O8 is trading at levels not seen since 2011, marking a renaissance in the energy-dense metal as utilities around the globe scramble to lock in supply.
Taking a boo at bellwether Cameco Corp, it’s also staking new high ground pressing multi-decade highs and looks to be on the cusp of challenging its all-time $60 crest from the previous U3O8 bull cycle in 2007.
Ask any analyst in the bull camp and they’ll tell you it’s game on for U3O8… and that things are only just getting started. The chart above bolsters these bullish convictions. Some higher-quality entities in the junior space are also boasting positive price trajectory—observe NexGen Energy’s price chart—and are landing in the crosshairs of an increasingly appreciative audience.
Forum tags high-grade U3O8
Forum’s timing with their Sep. 12 press release couldn’t have been timed better with this recent spike in U3O8 prices. The company’s recent high volume trading activity—a multi-bagger since we last checked in seven weeks back—is underpinned by an impressive 2.25% U3O8 over 11.1 meter hit at its wholly owned Thelon Basin Project in Canada’s Nunavut Territory.
A quick review Thelon before we dive into the guts of this news:
The Thelon Basin is a vastly underexplored region the company characterizes as the closest geological analog we have to the prolific Athabasca Basin further south.
Due to a lack of systematic exploration, Thelon’s discovery cycle is in its infancy—it may be where the Athabasca Basin was a half-century ago, before Cigar Lake and McArthur River lit up Canada’s U3O8 map.
Forum believes the region holds appreciable potential for unconformity-type uranium mineralization in its subsurface layers. As you may already know, unconformity deposits stand out from other U3O8 deposits due to their high-grade nature (the vast majority of U3O8 deposits scattered around the globe are less than .5% – unconformity deposits are often greater than 1% U3O8). It’s important to consider that a 1% U3O8 hit is the rough equivalent of one-half oz of gold per tonne.
There are three deposits at the development stage in this basin—the Kiggavik, Andrew Lake, and End deposits, aka the Kiggavik Uranium Project, pounds-in-the-ground that represent 133 million lbs of uranium owned by Orano and Uranium Energy. Forum’s ground surrounds this massive endowment.
Forum’s wholly-owned land position in the Thelon Basin is a commanding one, capturing 95,500 hectares of highly prospective terrain, including claims formerly held by U3O8 colossus Cameco Corp—ground the U3O8 giant drilled extensively (135 holes for over 36,000 meters) between 2008 to 2012. When Cameco dropped its claims in the region, Forum’s CEO, Rick Mazur (P. GEO., MBA), snagged them before anyone else caught wind—a real timely and heads-up move.
The company’s VP of Exploration, Dr. Rebecca Hunter, knows this project like the back of her hand, having guided Cameco’s exploration effort—the Turqavik-Aberdeen exploration project—while working as a project geologist from 2005 to 2016. Her sleuthing of the region’s subsurface stratum led to the discovery of two unconformity-style uranium deposits: the Tatiggaq deposit and the Qavvik deposit (her efforts also unveiled the Ayra showing).
The Sep. 12 press release causing all the recent high volume trade…
Forum Intersects 2.25% U3O8 over 11.1 Metres on the Thelon Basin Uranium Project.
Here, Forum announced assay results from its inaugural 2023 summer drill program at its Thelon project (located 100 kilometers west of the Hamlet of Baker Lake, Nunavut).
The first two holes of the program were drilled to test the Tatiggaq Main Zone to get a better read on its structural controls (Tatiggaq is located five kilometers west of Orano’s 93 million-pound Andrew Lake and End uranium deposits).
The first hole (TAT23-001), though lost owing to challenging ground conditions due to the clay alteration encountered at depth, showed positive indications of having hit the mineralized zone via a downhole radiometric probe—a Mount Sopris 2GHF-1000 Triple Gamma probe—which detected radioactivity from 156 meters to 168 meters of up to 36,000 cps.
The second hole (TAT23-002), collared from the same pad as TAT23-001, tagged an impressive 2.25% U3O8 over 11.1 meters (from 148.5 – 159.6 meters). The subintervals within this broader intercept include:
- 1.35% U3O8 over 1.7 meters (148.5 – 150.2 meters);
- 3.32% U3O8 over 3.1 meters (152.2 – 155.3 meters);
- 7.27% U3O8 over 1.5 meters (156.9 – 158.4 meters).
This inaugural campaign helped peel back the geological layers of Tatiggaq. Forum’s read is that the subsurface U3O8 mineralization occurs in a series of stacked, steeply dipping lenses. Dr. Hunter believes TAT23-002 tapped the very top of one such lens. She believes that as they step back and continue to drill, additional lenses of high-grade mineralization will be encountered.
Two holes drilled 100 meters to the southwest of the Main zone—TAT23-003 and TAT23-004— were designed to test the Tatiggaq West (extension) zone. It appears they hit there, too.
TAT23-003 and TAT23-004 targeted the Tatiggaq West zone in between historical drill holes in order to infill and extend the mineralized zone. The holes were drilled to the northwest and were 50 m apart. Examination of drill core and radioactivity from hand-held scintillometer readings have identified uranium mineralization over 24 metres and 18 metres in TAT23-003 and TAT23-004, respectively. It successfully intersected additional high-grade mineralization and strong alteration suggesting that the mineralized zone can be further delineated down and up dip, as well as to the north and south to fully intersect all the sub-parallel lenses.
Assays are pending for these two holes. It goes without saying that this next round of assays is anxiously awaited as there’s a strong likelihood that the West zone is connected to the Main zone.
This modest drill campaign tested only 200 meters of a 1.5-kilometer-long anomaly. Significant exploration upside exists along strike of the known zones and within numerous sub-parallel fault zones to the north, northeast, and south.
This Sep. 12 press release also states that the company punched a hole into the 2 km x 2 km Ned gravity anomaly, located along the major east-northeast-trending Thelon Fault. Ned overlies prospective basement rock, representing what the company describes as a more traditional “unconformity contact” target. Unfortunately, the hole was lost at 165 meters in clay-altered Thelon sandstone, “a typical alteration feature of large uranium deposits in the Athabasca Basin.” Results from drill hole NED23-001 are pending.
Dr. Rebecca Hunter: “Forum’s drill program successfully shows the potential of the Tatiggaq deposit to be a sizeable new discovery in the Thelon Basin. The grades and widths intersected at the Main and West zones exceeded our expectations in both grade and extent. Based on the new drilling, the high-grade zone at Tatiggaq Main is not cut off and is open along strike. Tatiggaq West has shown that the mineralized zone is over 20 m thick so far andneeds to be further drilled along strike and to the north and south to delineate further high-grade lenses. Our drilling has demonstrated that this project is a fertile area to host major, yet to be discovered, unconformity-related uranium deposits.”
A very recent interview with Dr. Hunter…
Forum was trading in the five to six cent range when we last checked in on July 21 via the following piece – Forum Energy Metals (FMC.V) – testing its Nunavut asset with the biz end of the drill bit.
Since then, the shares have pushed significantly higher, registering a 200%-plus gain on the price chart. Congrats to those who took advantage of that deep misalignment.
Once again, assays are pending for TAT23-003 and TAT23-004 at the Tatiggaq West target, where hand-held scintillometer readings have identified uranium mineralization over 24 meters and 18 meters, respectively.
We stand to watch.
END
-Greg Nolan
Full disclosure: Forum is a Highballer client. The author owns shares and must be considered biased in his analysis.
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