LOI To Acquire Uranium Project In Utah

VANCOUVER - WestKam Gold Corp. has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with Ameranium Resources Corp. for the purchase of 100-per-cent legal and beneficial interest in 131 lode claims in Grand County, Utah, covering 2,649 acres (1,072 ha), called the Powerline One Project. The Powerline lies within sedimentary rocks of the Colorado Plateau, the most prolific uranium mining region in the United States, and has produced over 328 million pounds U3O8 (at 0.2 to 0.4 per cent U3O8) since the 1950’s. The required environmental surveys have been completed and permits to carry out drilling have been issued by the United States Bureau of Land Management. Drilling can commence at any time following the posting of the necessary reclamation bond. Field work and mining can be carried out year-round.

Prior work on the project identified a prospective target zone extending across the Powerline property, and resulted from reanalysis and reinterpretation of historical seismic data. The data was cross-analyzed against gamma ray logs from numerous historical abandoned oil and gas wells.

Gamma ray logs are a common geophysical log used in downhole surveying of wells drilled by the oil and gas industry and are used to assist in identifying lithological units in a well. When radioactive elements decay, they emit radiation that can be measured by the logging instrument. This amount of radiation is typically scaled in application programming interface (“API”) units, a standardized system established by the American Petroleum Institute.

Figures in the original well logs version show zones of anomalous API readings (greater than 400 API). The anomalous values detected by the gamma ray logs from these wells are likely to be indicative of high-grade radioactive material.

The Samson 12-1 well is the primary well of interest with multiple anomalies identified in the Chinle formation at about 2,700 ft with readings well in excess of 400 API. Gamma ray geophysical logs indicate a 35.4-metre-(116-feet)-thick zone of uranium mineralization within which a 19.0 m (62.4 ft) thick section is estimated to have uranium grade of 0.0258 per cent eU3O8.

The top of the favourable target zone in the Samson Powerline hole is at a depth of 823 m (2,700 ft). This zone is well below the potable water table and has the potential to be amenable for uranium mining by in situ leach and recovery methods (ISL). The buried deposits are thought to lie at depths ranging from 300 to 1,000 m and are considered to be attractive targets due to the advent of ISL. Deposits of this type and grade account for approximately 46 per cent of worldwide uranium production.