Energy Ventures (ASX: EVE) has acquired the prospective Coyote Basin uranium project located in northwest Colorado, USA, by staking federal claims and by the assignment of an existing State of Colorado Uranium Mining Lease from VANE Minerals (US) LLC.
A total of 522 Federal lode claims have been staked to secure the project which hosts known sandstone and lignite hosted uranium mineralisation with near-surface resource potential.
Significantly, the project area is close to existing Energy Ventures' uranium projects at Maybell and Skull Creek, has access to infrastructure and has been subject to historical exploration.
The project is located 40 kilometres southwest of the Maybell project and about 35 kilometres to the northwest of the town of Meeker.
Widely-spaced exploration drilling completed in the late 1970’s is reported to have intersected shallow uranium and associated vanadium mineralisation hosted by lignitic units.
The Coyote Basin project currently comprises a single State of Colorado Uranium Mining Lease and 522 federal lode claims located in Moffat and Rio Blanco counties in northwest Colorado.
The company is progressing historical data compilation in order to plan a surface exploration and drilling program to confirm the presence of high grade mineralisation and to obtain samples for bench-scale metallurgical testing, subject to obtaining statutory access permits.
The company said additional drilling to confirm the historical resources will be undertaken if the results of this work are encouraging.
Energy Ventures, through its wholly owned US subsidiary Oregon Energy LLC, now owns five uranium exploration and development projects located in the western USA, all of which have been subject to significant historical exploration and have historical resources.
The Aurora uranium deposit located in southeast Oregon is the most advanced of these projects and has a total resource base of 38 million pounds (Mlb) uranium (eU3O8) comprising an Indicated Resource of 36.7 Mlb eU3O8 at a grade of 253 ppm eU3O8, and an Inferred Resource of 1.2 Mlb eU3O8 at a grade of 151 ppm eU3O8 (grade cut-off 100 ppm eU3O8).
On June 2 drilling results from the Aurora project indicated uranium zones with potential to be exploited by shallow open pit mining, providing a boost to Energy Ventures' ongoing feasibility studies into the project's economics.
Progress on the Aurora project and the company’s other exploration projects in the western USA has not been significantly impacted by the Japan tsunami, though there has been a re-rating of uranium stocks by the market post the nuclear accident at Fukushima.
Energy Ventures has cash reserves and liquid investments that will allow the company to continue with its strategy of advancing its technical projects toward development, increasing the overall resource base and demonstrating value.
The company's ultimate aim is to supply product to the domestic US market, which is the largest consumer of uranium in the world and is expected to have consistent demand in the longer term.