Oasis is the most advanced of Greenvale’s new uranium portfolio and was acquired earlier this year.

Yesterday, Greenvale reported it had hit high-grade uranium in the first diamond holes drilled at Oasis.

Laboratory chemical analysis returned 9m at 758 parts per million uranium oxide from 40m, including 1m at 1637ppm U3O8 and 1m at 1466ppm U3O8.

Spectral gamma logs from the hole in some cases returned higher-grade radiometric assay intersections, including 0.5m at 2838ppm equivalent U3O8 and 0.4m at 1699ppm eU3O8, reflecting the higher sampling resolution of the probe.

Spectral gamma log results for an additional three holes returned 7.7m at 1598ppm eU3O8 from 84m, including 4.7m at 2457ppm eU3O8 and 0.7m at 4199ppm eU3O8; 4.7m at 786ppm eU3O8 from 279.1m, including 0.9m at 1425ppm eU3O8; and 2.1m at 1638ppm eU3O8 from 77.1m, including 0.6m at 3841ppm eU3O8.

The company said the results demonstrated the continuity of mineralisation down-dip from surface to around 300m vertical depth, where the structure is still open.

One of the holes intersected high-grade mineralisation roughly 50m deeper than any historical drilling, confirming that mineralisation remains opens at depth.

“The first round of drilling at Oasis has gone super well. We’re very pleased with it,” Greenvale chairman Neil Biddle said yesterday.

The company is awaiting assays for a further nine holes.

“We amended the program last week to include two or three more holes – possibly four more holes,” Biddle said.

“Because it’s still continuous along strike and at depth, we decided we’d step out more and beyond that, we’re going to do some trenching to see how far we should be stepping out with the drilling, so the program will keep getting extended as long as we’re hitting uranium along strike.

“Oasis is just one shear of many. It’s a big mineralised system, and we’re going to be there a few years, so we just started at Oasis, because that’s the only shear system that’s outcropping and the only system that’s had much historical work done on it, but there’s 90sqkm of intruded volcanics and metasediments that contain structure and radiometric anomalies that really are untested, and we’ve we just started to pick up some decent rock chip uranium assays 4km from Oasis.”

Policy likely to change

While Queensland briefly allowed uranium mining under the Newman Liberal government, the more recent Palaszczuck Labor government reinstated the moratorium.

Biddle believes the policy will change.

“I’m in touch with Senator Susan McDonald, who’s the federal shadow resources minister. She’s a Queensland senator, and she is very pro-uranium,” he said.

“The state government’s a little bit shy, but they are a Liberal government, and [premier David] Crisafulli was resources minister when they lifted the moratorium on uranium mining … but there’s absolutely no reason why Queensland shouldn’t be mining uranium.

“Uranium is very benign. A truckload of bananas is more radioactive than a truckload of uranium, pretty much. It’s pure ideology, and it doesn’t make any sense.

“All our trading partners use uranium or are planning to use uranium in nuclear power, so we’re an outlier in that regard.”

Due to strong growth in the nuclear sector, Citi expects the uranium price to rebound to US$100 per pound next year.

Greenvale growing

Greenvale shares have more than doubled this year, valuing the company at just under A$40 million.

“I think most of the focus is on gold at the moment, rightly so as gold’s steaming along,” Biddle said.

“I’m not disappointed with where our share price is at the moment. We don’t have any resources under our belt yet – we do at the Alpha [torbanite] project, but we don’t have any uranium resources yet.

“Oasis, we think, could be a decent sized resource. We’ve just got to keep going with it but until we can put a number around, wrap up some numbers around it, the market doesn’t really know what it what it’s about.”

Greenvale is also looking at adding further uranium projects to its portfolio, which also includes projects in the Northern Territory.

“We’re looking at existing resources close to our project areas, particularly in the Northern Territory, and we’re looking at a near-production scenario in the US, in Wyoming,” Biddle said.

“We’re quite keen on uranium production because you can actually set them up quite cheaply, so that has attraction to us.

“We’re just going to keep building our resources until uranium pops, which it will do eventually.”