Hole 116: 2.5 Metres Grading 70.34% U3O8 / #10-200: 22.5 Metres Grading 11.3% U3O8 / #30: 69 metres grading 2.33% U3O8 / #10-188B: 7.5 metres grading 29.98% U3O8
ATHABASCA BASIN: WHERE GRADE IS KING!
Message: Interview with HAT CEO
Enjoy...
December 3, 2008
AN INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN STANLEY PRESIDENT, CEO AND DIRECTOR OF HATHOR EXPLORATION Uranium was the first commodity to crash over a year ago, falling from almost $130 a pound to $40 in spot markets and recently heading up as nukes are built around the world and the 440 already on stream need secure sources of uranium and the old Russian fuel from spent nuclear weapons is drying up in a few years. Uranium may be entering a new phase and one of the more intriguing stories now is that of Hathor Exploration, an exploration
play in Northern Saskatchewan surrounded by uranium producers. What makes the story so exciting (although in this ugly market, we shouldn’t get too carried away) is the incredibly high grades of drilling results so far to date. Stephen Stanley is the Company President and he is a
busy and in demand guy these days as you’ll probably catch him on BNN tomorrow and then he’s off to see Toronto institutions and early in the New Year he is off to see institutions in Europe that also want to be up to date on the Hathor story and then down to New York. Drilling on their play starts around January 1st, subject to ice conditions and yesterday, Stanley tells us that the ice is nine inches thick and crews are currently working on ice roads plus helping mother nature a little bit on that ice on the lake. Enclosed please find an updated interview with Steve Stanley: David Pescod: Steve, the current size of the Roughrider
zone according to different followers is anywhere between 20 and 50 million pounds of U308 high-grade uranium. That’s a big discrepancy. So what numbers would you be most comfortable using? Stephen Stanley: I think that it is too early to assign a
number of pounds to Hathor’s Roughrider Zone uranium deposit. What we see at Roughrider Zone so far is all basement- hosted mineralization. This zone remains open in all directions; up dip, down dip and along strike; so there is a lot of room to add significantly more size to this deposit. Also, we do know that there are some very high-grades associated with Hathor’s drilling to date (assays up to about 61% U3O8) and with grades like that, it doesn’t take a lot of high-grade mineralization to rack up pounds in the ground. If you look next door at Areva’s Midwest A deposit, they have more than 4 million pounds U3O8 contained in about 3,300 cubic metres of rock grading about 21% U3O8. At McArthur River, in their Zone 2, you probably about 200 million lbs in a volume that measures about 100m X 90m X 30m.
D.P: When drilling resumes in January, how big do you
think the target could be?
S.S: Currently it is open in every direction so the potential
to increase the size of the Roughrider zone is very good.
D.P: Are these resistivity and gravity studies reliable and
what is it that they say to you? In other words, what would be the odds of increasing the Roughrider to say 60 million pounds at about the same grade?
S.S: The resistivity and gravity anomalies are indicative
of alteration of the sandstones. If there were no alteration of the sandstone at Hathor’s Midwest NorthEast property, then the chance of having a classic unconformity style of uranium deposit is virtually nil. However, at their Roughrider Zone, we see massive alteration from the unconformity virtually to the surface and this bodes well for Hathor. If the size and degree of HAT’s alteration zone correlates to the size of a uranium deposit then Hathor is very fortunate as the size and intensity of sandstone alteration is believed to be very significant. Only drilling will give us that answer.
D.P: It is suggested that these deposits come in Pods
and there might be other holdings on their small property. How likely is that?
S.S: The classic unconformity deposits typically do occur
as “pods” associated with a linear mineralized structure or fault zone. At McClean Lake we see the Sue A, B, C, D and E pods; at McArthur River we see Zones 1 thru 5; at Midwest we see the Midwest and Midwest A deposits; at Cigar Lake we see the East and West Zones. I would expect that there may be other uranium “pods” associated with the Roughrider Zone structure, and in particular, these may be shown to us geophysically as the southwest and northeast lobes of the gravity anomaly. These appear as discrete gravity targets but may actually be part of one large mineralized zone, or, they may be two pods along the same structure. Once again only time and more drilling will give us that answer. D.P: There are three main players in the uranium business
all surrounding Hathor’s play - Denison, Areva and Cameco and some needing feed for their processing facilities and all could be potential buyers of Hathor. Meanwhile, Hathor’s management has let it be known that at the right time and right price, the company is for sale. How would you rate the potential buyers and are there others out there?
S.S: For most the logical buyers would be either Areva
or Cameco. The McClean Lake mill of Areva & Denison is only about 11 km away and we know it needs new sources of ore. Cameco’s 100%-owned Rabbit Lake mill facilities are about 25 km away and they are planning major capital expenditures there. Like McClean, it is also running under-capacity and could use more ore. Then, however, there are other potential buyers ranging from majors, that are in the uranium space but have no projects in the Athabasca Basin (the premier uranium producing place on the planet); to majors that have no uranium exposure but have often talked about getting involved in uranium; to aggressive mid-tier producers looking to expand production; to Chinese or Indian sovereign companies or funds looking for security of supply for their nations nuclear reactors; to Japanese, Korean or American utilities also looking for security and diversity of supply. Our job is to leave no opportunity unexplored.
D.P: A big question these days is what next for uranium
prices. It was the first commodity to crash and now seems to have based with demand starting to climb and many projects not delivering production that was expected or being delayed because of the credit crisis. There are also problems such as Cigar Lake may never see production and the credit crisis affecting other projects, plus increasing Indian demand. Another factor also to be considered is the possibility of America reprocessing some of their older nuclear weapons. What is your take on the potential for uranium prices down the road?
S.S: We agree as most of the analysts do that the price
of uranium should continue to be strong as the global markets make the transition from fossil fuels to what many consider to be the only true alternative, Nuclear energy. However if the uranium price was to soften it could make Hathor’s discovery that much more important as it could be one of only a few that would have the grade to still be economic. D.P: Some value Hathor based on its deposit, size and
grade, but there are those with lower targets that seem to be concerned about discounted cash flow numbers. What would be your expectations for price targets at different resource numbers and do you see it as an obvious take-over?
S.S: We are not in a position to talk about price targets
and as far as Hathor being an obvious take-over target I think the market recognizes that the Roughrider Zone is something very special with grades that are truly spectacular. I think it would be very difficult to make a case that it is not an obvious take-over target.
D.P: Thank you for your time Mr. Stanley!
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