Shares Outstanding: 123.5 million
Market Cap: $20.99 million
Website: WWW.PeleMountain.com
Flagship Project: Eco Ridge Mine
Uranium and Rare Earth Elements
Risk: High
TORONTO, Oct. 20 /PRNewswire/ -
By Mark Weaver
Overview
Pele Mountain Resources (TSX-V:GEM) "Pele Mountain" is a
Canadian mineral exploration and development company formed to
acquire mineral resource properties and to carry out mineral
exploration and development activities in Canada. Its flagship project is its 100% owned
Eco Ridge Mine uranium and rare earth elements project near
Elliot Lake in Northern Ontario.
We have a renewed interest in Pele Mountain Resources because of
increasing market focus on uranium, rare earth elements (REE), and
gold. Pele Mountain is exploring and
developing properties containing each of these resources.
Pele Mountain represents for us a
potentially exciting, long-term, triple play, but we are
particularly excited by its emphasis on rare earth elements. On
Sept 28, 2010, the company announced
that, based on the production rate used in Pele's October 2007 NI 43-101 Scoping Study (the
"Scoping Study") by Scott Wilson Roscoe Postle Associates ("Scott
Wilson RPA"), Eco Ridge leach solutions could contain up to 218,000
kilograms of recoverable total Rare Earth Oxides ("TREO") annually,
in addition to 826,000 pounds of uranium oxide. These projections
are based on the Scoping Study and on rare earth oxide ("REO")
assays from 30 widely spaced drill holes and the results of leach
tests performed at SGS Canada Inc. Fifty percent of this TREO would
be heavy rare earth oxides ("HREO") plus Yttrium.
Regarding REO market developments, Pele's rare metal's advisor,
Dr. William Bird commented,
"China, which produces about
97-percent of the worldwide supply of REO, has recently reduced its
REO export quotas by up to 70-percent. These new export
restrictions have sparked a rush to find and bring to production
new sources of REO outside of China. The Elliot
Lake uranium deposits, such as Pele's Eco Ridge Mine
project, are ideally positioned to supply significant REO to the
western world. They are well-understood deposits that have
produced REO commercially in the recent past. They are in a
politically stable and mining-friendly area of Ontario and much of the infrastructure is in
place to very quickly produce again."
Development
All 30 drill holes that Pele
Mountain has analyzed for REO to-date have contained
significant REO. A total of 29 of the 30 analyzed holes were
drilled over an area 2 kilometres across strike and 1 kilometre
down dip within the area of the defined NI 43-101 uranium
resources. The outlying hole was located north of the classified
resources and intersected the down-dip continuation of both uranium
and REO mineralization beyond the resource area. Assays for each
individual REO are contained in the chart available at
http://www.pelemountain.com/pdfs/092710_REOtable.pdf
HREO plus Yttrium have demonstrated good recoverability in leach
testing on Pele's drill core at SGS Canada Inc. Section 16 of the
Scoping Study states, "overall leach extraction of heavy rare
earths (terbium, dysprosium, erbium, holmium, thulium, ytterbium
and lutetium) plus yttrium, in all leach tests averaged 64%."
http://www.pelemountain.com/pdfs/Table2_RareEarthExtraction.pdf
With regard to REE recovery, Dr. Bird stated, "This means
that up to 64-percent of these valuable heavy REE, which occur with
the uranium at Eco Ridge, are available in the uranium leach
solutions, at no extra mining or milling costs. Chemical
extraction of the REE from the uranium leach solutions at
Elliot Lake has been commercially
successful in the past. Pele is assessing extraction and recovery
opportunities for REE by-products, along with an assessment of
their potential contribution toward project economics for inclusion
in future Eco Ridge Mine economic modeling purposes."
Rare Earth Element Applications
The range of applications in which REEs are used is
extraordinarily wide, from the everyday (automotive catalysts and
petroleum cracking catalysts, flints for lighters, pigments for
glass and ceramics and compounds for polishing glass) to the highly
specialized (miniature nuclear batteries, lasers repeaters,
superconductors and miniature magnets). Heavy REEs, such as those
found at Elliot Lake are
particularly valuable and identified by the US military as
strategic and critical. They are used in nuclear applications,
electron and laser technology, and telecommunications. Within the
defence industry, REEs are essential in the manufacture of
anti-missile defence weapons, aircraft parts, communications
systems, electronic countermeasures, jet engines, rockets,
underwater mine detection, missile guidance systems and space-based
satellite power.
The Geo-political Dimension
Despite the fact that rare earth metals are classified as
critical minerals in the U.S. National Academies' "criticality
matrix," the U.S. National Defence Stockpile at present contains
none. This is a significant limitation given China's demonstrated willingness to use REE
exports as foreign policy leverage. As China's unofficial REE embargo on rare earth
exports to Japan continues into
its fourth week, questions are now surfacing regarding the impact
this is having on Japanese industry. Japan is particularly vulnerable to supply
chain interruptions because of their reliance on "just in time"
(JIT) techniques which minimize the very kind of stockpiled
inventory that might provide a cushion in the event of an extended
cut-off in supply. The New York Times indicated
that Japanese manufacturers might begin encountering shortages as
early as late last week, and that if supplies do not resume
shortly, Japan and its allies may
consider filing an official WTO complaint. The irony is that
China, too, may eventually have to
import heavy REEs. Chinese foreign trade sources, as far back
as 1996 have stated that China is
not the only country that has these deposits, but it has been
carrying the lion's share of their supply for more than a decade,
at the cost of quickly depleting its own resources and hurting its
environment.
Trading at $0.17, on rising
volume, we believe Pele Mountain,
once again, offers investors the potential for significant share
appreciation.
Risks:
By its nature, exploring and mining is a risky business and
there is no guarantee that current exploration programs will result
in profitable and accident-free mining operations. The
recoverability of the carrying value of interest in mineral
properties and the Company's continued existence is dependent upon
the discovery of economically recoverable reserves, the achievement
of profitable operations, and the ability of the Company to raise
additional financing, if necessary, or alternatively upon the
Company's ability to dispose of its interests on an advantageous
basis.
The Company has no resource properties in production and,
consequently, has no current operating income or cash flow from its
mineral property exploration and development operations at this
time. The Company has recorded losses in all of the three
most recently completed fiscal years and expects to continue to
record losses until such time as an economic resource is
identified, developed and brought into profitable commercial
operation on one or more of the Company's properties or otherwise
disposed of at a profit.
Finally, all phases of the Company's operations are or will be
subject to environmental regulation in any jurisdictions in which
it does or may operate. These regulations mandate, among other
things, the maintenance of air and water quality standards and land
reclamation. Environmental legislation is evolving in a manner
which will require stricter standards and enforcement, increased
fines and penalties for non-compliance, more stringent
environmental assessments of proposed projects and a heightened
degree of responsibility for companies and their officers,
directors and employees. Pele is aware of these issues and actively
complying with them. Social, economic and environmental impacts
have been considered in all stages of the development. Extensive
aquatic and terrestrial assessments have been undertaken on the
project area and no significant environmental concerns have been
identified.
Management:
Alan Shefsky B.A., J.D. -
President & Director
Mr. Shefsky founded Pele Mountain Resources in 1996 and has been
President of the Company since that time. He has provided
leadership and vision in property acquisitions, financing, and
negotiating joint ventures with other industry leaders. He holds a
B.A. in Economics from the University of
Western Ontario and a Juris Doctor degree from the
Pepperdine University School of
Law.
Fergus Kerr, P. Eng. - Vice
President, Uranium Operations
Mr. Kerr joined the Company as a consultant to lead its
Elliot Lake Uranium Mine Project
in 2007, becoming a Vice-President in January 2008. He has more than 35 years of mining
industry experience, including 14 years in Elliot Lake as General Manager, Manager of
Mining and Mine Superintendent for Denison
Mines and 7 years as mine manager at Inco's Sudbury operations. Mr. Kerr has also served
as a Sector Director of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of
Ontario and is currently an
Adjunct Professor at Laurentian
University, lecturing on occupational health
engineering.
James Andersen, CA, CPA (Illinois), Vice President, Finance,
CFO
Mr. Andersen joined the Company in 2007. He is a principal of
Andersen and Company Professional Corp., an accounting firm in
Toronto, and has more than 15
years experience in public accounting practice.
Dr. William Bird - Rare Earth
Advisor
Dr. Bird has more than 40 years of mining-industry experience
and is renowned for his expertise in rare-earth elements
("REE"). He has served as a senior executive of several
successful publically traded resource companies, including as CEO
of Rare Element Resources Ltd. (TSX Venture: RES), owner of the
Bear Lodge REE and gold deposits, from 2005 until 2007. He is
currently President and CEO of Medallion Resources (TSX Venture:
MDL), which is focused on the acquisition and exploration of REE
projects. Dr. Bird earned a Ph.D. in Geology from the Colorado School of Mines.
Disclosure: This is an independent report. Pele Mountain
Resources has not remunerated Mark
Weaver (www.MoneyinMetals.com) or Jay Taylor for these comments. Neither
Mark Weaver nor Jay Taylor own shares in Pele Mountain Resources
at the time of publication.
SOURCE Pele Mountain Resources Inc.
Copyright . 20 PR Newswire