The following is a transcription of the above video, and The Market Online has edited it for clarity.
Uranium has been making headlines with its supply and demand imbalance. Its price is bullish, and the trend has been predicted to continue well into the year.
With all that aside, Blue Sky Uranium (TSXV:BSK) is a uranium and vanadium exploration company with exploration efforts focused on southern Argentina. Today we are fortunate enough to speak with the company’s CEO about the heavy metal and its projects.
Here to talk about Blue Sky Uranium is the president and CEO himself, Nikolaos Cacos.
TMO: You have more than 30 years of executive management and advisory expertise in the mineral industry, and please by all means expand on this, but as for the company, what is the company’s focus and mission?
Cacos: Blue Sky Uranium is focused on exploring and advancing not just a uranium deposit in Argentina but a big uranium district – a huge district that rivals that has many similarities with some of these districts we see in Kazakhstan. That’s important because these districts in Kazakhstan supply half the world’s uranium. And the reason for that is not because they have just lots of it, but they can produce it at very low cost. And we’re seeing a lot of geological similarities here with our deposit.
And this is what makes Blue Sky’s projects in Argentina very exciting because they have the potential and the prospect of becoming world-class, like some of these Kazakhstani ones with the ability to have some of the lowest operating costs. So, a very exciting opportunity.
TMO: And how important is it for the company to follow international best practices in exploration? And can you give us some examples of how this is upheld?
Cacos: Well, this is something that we’ve done before it became a catchphrase in the last 30 years. We operate in Argentina. We’re managed by Grosso Group, Grosso Group Management. And I’ve been together with Joe Grosso, the founder, since the very beginning, back 31 years ago, in fact.
And he set the stage that, when we are in a country, like in Argentina or abroad, we have to be careful. We’re guests there, we’re operating there at their behest. And we have to be on our best behaviour. It’s a very simple way to think of it. But when you practice, when you think of that and then you apply these practices throughout your company and how we behave and how we act there, it creates a very positive environment for us, a very welcoming environment. And Argentina has been very welcoming for us.
So, we’ve worked with other companies that we’ve managed. And to give an example to the question that you stated, if we find old archeological finds, what we do is we fence it around. We notify the archeological society and the universities in Buenos Aires. And then, we section it off and make sure that we are as respectful as possible.
And other things that we do, we ensure that we give employment to all the people that are in the surrounding area as much as possible. So, we do lots of these, you know, we’re very conscious of our social contract there and the environment in which we work. So, we try to be as respectful as possible, and I think it’s a very simple philosophy to follow that can have many benefits, not just for us, but also for the locals where we operate.
TMO: I could see that. And I also see the company has four major projects. And correct me if I’m saying this wrong, Amarillo Grande, is that correct?
Cacos: Amarillo Grande really translates into the big yellow. That’s the big district. And that’s really where we focus 100 per cent of our efforts. The other projects that we have are good projects with excellent potential, but we’ve remained focused on the Amarillo Grande project.
TMO: And it’s going to continue to be one of main interest for the company as we continue to 2024. Correct?
Cacos: That’s right. It’s the project where we’ve already established a deposit of just over 17 million pounds of uranium and where we published a recent preliminary economic assessment, which demonstrates that is a very competitive deposit. And what that means, it’s got the potential to produce uranium at a very, very low cost.
TMO: Well, that brings me to my next question because I know the company released the positive preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for the Ivana Uranium Vanadium deposit. So, with that, what do you want to highlight for investors around it?
Cacos: Well, again, what I highlight is usually, when we look at these PEAs, and this is still relatively early stage for our company to have a PEA, but the reason we put it out, because we want to identify is first of all, we have this huge district that spans 145 kilometres in length. It’s huge. And the deposit just occupies about 5 kilometres of that. So, there’s potential here to make uranium discoveries along this entire district.
But before we invest all these funds and efforts to do that, do we have a deposit now that is competitive? And that’s why we did this PEA and what the PEA demonstrates is that first of all, what would it cost to put something like this into production? And what we determine our costs are under $160 million, and that includes a 25 per cent contingency cost.
So that’s a very low cost for a project like this. And then what does it cost to bring out a single pound of uranium? And in our case, the PEA indicates it’s less than $25 a pound. So, this is a very, very, in fact, this deposit, if it was in production, would rank amongst the lowest operating costs in the world.
So, it’s an excellent quality project. It could potentially make money, not just now when the price of uranium is hovering around a $100 a pound, but even when it cycles low and it’s closer to under $30 a pound. So, it’s a very robust project in that sense.
TMO: Well, and you briefly mentioned the price of uranium. So, what do you suspect the outcome to be as we continue into the year?
Cacos: Well, uranium is a way to power nuclear reactors to generate electricity. Electricity that is safe, secure, reliable and carbon free. And there’s not many other sources that can generate electricity that efficiently and that are carbon free out there. So, there’s an acceptance now for nuclear energy around the world.
Every day I hear about new reactors that are being built, and then there’s the prospect of small modular reactors which could really revolutionize carbon free and good base load electricity. So, the demand for uranium is continuing to go up, and you can’t just flick a switch and get more uranium out of the ground.
So, I suspect this imbalance forecast for a sustained high price for uranium and (there’s) perhaps a lot of room for it to go up much higher.
You can find Blue Sky Uranium Corp. on the TSXV under the symbol “BSK” or head to its website at blueskyuranium.com for more information.
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