Categories: Energy
Topics: General Energy

ALX Uranium (TSX-V: AL) CEO Warren Stanyer on the Kickoff of Exploration at the Close Lake Uranium Project

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO and a Chairman of ALX Uranium (TSX-V: AL)(OTC: ALXEF), Mr. Warren Stanyer. Warren, how the heck are you this afternoon?

Warren Stanyer: Good, but where was the introductory music after that great introduction? Thanks, Gerardo, for having me on.

Gerardo Del Real: Thank you for coming on. As always, Warren, I appreciate the time. Exploration has commenced at Close Lake. Obviously, we're in a uranium market that is awaiting that Section 232 report just to provide clarity and a path moving forward. I think obviously that is imminent. But let's talk Close Lake. I know that it's a project that you're excited about. Give me the details, Warren.

Warren Stanyer: Absolutely. When we took on this project, obviously there's mineralized holes and there's a lot of holes they drilled that did not meet the criteria as a great mineralized hole. They'd have some. They'd have some of this or some of that, but this hole CL-90 from 1997 was 107 meters of 0.34% and that was 8.5 meters of, I believe it's 2.8% including. This is a great hole. They drilled a couple hundred meters away from it, and at the time they were looking for very elongated deposits, that we now know deposits can be contained in a smaller area.

This survey we're doing, it's just sheer fortune that this particular hole was open all the way down to 512 meters. That means we can put our metal cable with a metal probe down the hole, energize on surface and we're going to see for a long way around the bottom of that hole. It'll help us figure out where this slug trail actually goes. That's what we call it, the path of the uranium mineralization.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Talk to me a bit about timeline and when you'll have a better idea of what the next steps will be.

Warren Stanyer: Right now we're processing this data. It will be starting this week. They just finished the QC, quality control, has been done on the data. It takes a very long time to crank this through a computer. Our geophysicist actually had to upgrade his whole system when we first did this in 2017 at Black Lake. It'll probably take a couple of weeks before we can see what we want to see.

Orano is the operator. Orano of course is the French company, a world leader in uranium. They used to be known as Areva. They were more commonly known that way but they've changed their name again to Orano. Orano will decide what to do once we get these results.

I've got my fingers crossed that there's something there screaming to be drilled because this area was one that they had moved on from because of the widely-spaced holes and what they felt didn't meet their criteria for a very long, 800 to 1,000-meter long deposit. As I said, we now know that Millennium for example, it can be as small, the footprint is determined to be maybe 100 to 300 meters so this could be something that could tell us where this mineralization actually goes.

Gerardo Del Real: We talked oil and gas off-air here a little bit ago. I would not be doing my listeners a favor if I didn't ask for your take on the uranium market. I would love your take. But before you get into that, I want you to share your past success in this space, because that's important.

Warren Stanyer: There's a presentation on our website right now and we call it, “True Detectives,” because I love detective stories, always have right from The Hardy Boys when I was a kid. I read every single one of them. They were always looking for treasure and finding clues. It's very, very much the same in this business. Both my grandfathers were prospectors. My mother's father was in the Klondike in 1906. He worked on the Dawson fire department. He knew Robert Service, the poet and he had a gold mine there with another fellow. They eventually sold for a lot of money, he bought a racetrack and lost it all. That's the way that prospectors are.

Gerardo Del Real: Yes, sir.

Warren Stanyer: My father's father looked for Slumach's lost gold. There's a show on TV called Curse of the Frozen Gold on Discovery. It's about these guys in BC that are looking for Slumach's lost treasure, a First Nation's man who had this solo mine with big nuggets and nobody could ever figure out where it was because they hanged him for murder. All these great stories go with looking for gold, looking for treasure, and that's why I was attracted to the business. I saw mines in British Columbia like Afton Mines. My father's friend was a director and it went from $0.10 to $5 in 1972, if you could imagine that.

Gerardo Del Real: Fascinating stuff.

Warren Stanyer: All these things are part of where I grew up. I was drawn to it and I love looking for buried treasure.

Gerardo Del Real: Awesome, awesome. Now, thoughts on the uranium space? What do you see developing and how do you see the rest of the year playing out, Warren?

Warren Stanyer: Well, the US decision is going to be important. I hope that the US government does allow Canada a little bit of wiggle room here, because we're the ones that basically funded your uranium programs. We gave you all the uranium you needed over and above what you already had, or sold it to you. And that uranium doesn't go away. Some of it's been consumed in reactors, but a lot of it is in weapons that are still being dismantled and recycled. The hope that I have is that what just happened with the aluminum and steel tariffs with Canada, where these tariffs were removed after a short period of time.

If anything comes at us in some kind of a tariff, I think it'll be removed because of our special relationship. This is not Kurdistan where I live, run by a corrupt group of individuals. Well, I don't necessarily like our government here but I don't think it's Kurdistan.

Gerardo Del Real: Well said.

Warren Stanyer: Hope I'm saying that correctly.

Gerardo Del Real: Absolutely. No, no. That's well said. I think it's very valid point. It's definitely top of mind for everybody that speculates in the uranium space. Obviously, you've done a great job, Warren, maintaining the market's attention and advancing what could be a company-making project here, with your partner of course. Anything else that you'd like to add?

Warren Stanyer: Well, we just closed this financing a week or so ago. At $1.5 million, that's enough for our first year at Close Lake to satisfy the first-year obligation and get us into earning towards 20%. We have to spend $3.5 million so yes, we need some good results and it's the kind of property that can deliver them. Our Dennison shares are still in treasury and right now our cash position is well over $2 million, and we still have close to 1.4 million Dennison shares. Right now, we feel pretty good but you always got to look over your shoulder and keep moving forward.

Gerardo Del Real: Well said. Well Warren, let's keep our fingers crossed for good results. I'm looking forward to having you back on. Thanks again for your time today.

Warren Stanyer: Thank you, Gerardo.

ALX Uranium (TSX-V: AL) CEO Warren Stanyer on the Kickoff of Exploration at the Close Lake Uranium Project