Toro Energy comes up trumps as Theseus turns into major uranium discovery

Toro Energy (ASX: TOE) string of high rating results has confirmed the Theseus Prospect in Western Australia to be a huge uranium mineralised system covering over 7.5 square kilometres to continue to unlock the meaning of this discovery, Toro will now ramp up drilling targeting the definition of higher rating uranium zones.

An air-core drilling campaign kicked off at the prospect previous in the month, with 19 of the planned 60 holes having been drilled and gamma logged so far to whole depths ranging from 103 metres to 210 metres, passing from end to end a basement interface at roughly 125 metres what is so important for the discovery, is that twelve of the nineteen holes drill so far report uranium intersections through grades above 100ppm eU3O8, and widths greater than 0.5 metres - pointing in the direction of an extensive system.

Greg Hall, managing director, added “We are excited and confident by the size, extent and grade of uranium mineralisation so far intersected,"Toro’s systematic move toward to defining the location of the higher rating uranium mineralisation in Theseus is key to ensuring the system is well defined before extra closely spaced drilling is used to define a resource prepared in accordance through the JORC code.”

Uranium is the next year gold

A military coup, massacre of civilians and the attempt murder of the coup leader is not what Forte Energy had in mind when it bought the human rights to dig for uranium in the West African state of Guinea. After a horrible 18 months, bullish Aussie chief in service officer Brad George reckons all bets are reverse on and uranium could be “next year’s gold”. The company was target a JORC-compliant resource approximation at Firawa when the president died and an opportunistic army officer took over. Within a year, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara had been shot in the head by the previous chief of the presidential guard.

Just three months earlier, soldiers loyal to Camara slaughtered 150 civilians protest at his predictable candidacy in elections. He hasn’t returned to Guinea, exit his old defence minister to organise the voting. Forte hopes all the problem is over and it can get back to business. Investors empty the company on the assumption it had lost the Firawa license, but Forte chiefs expect they may return when Guinea sort its act out. George told ShareCast the exploration season is receiving underway again and the source should be several times bigger. “We are back to prove it up,” he said. A pre-viability study is planned for 2011.

Thankfully, the climate is altogether more peaceful though considerably hotter in Forte’s other goal area Mauritania. It’s been granted nine uranium exploration licences there and more permit are awaiting approval. Good news is the politics is less exciting than Guinea and the government is “squeaky clean”. Bad news was the company struggle to get test results back in a credible timeframe. It would take months to send and receive information, which lost Forte reliability in the City. Now there’s a limited laboratory in Mauritania run by an Irish solid that claims it can do it in just a few weeks. Assay subject solved, says George, also a mining forecaster at Mayfair based finance house Matrix.