Desert Uranium discovery considered to have plenty of legs

A new discovery that is to be intensely drilled in the next few months has given Manhattan Corporation an uranium system considered to have a strike length of about 25 kilometres.

BRISBANE - 

Manhattan Corporation Ltd (ASX: MHC)  told the Mining 2009 Mining Convention in Brisbane Thursday that the new Stallion discovery has opened up the potential of the Ponton uranium project - 180 kilometres east of Kalgoorlie -- in the remote far south west of Western Australia.

Manhattan's chief executive Alan Eggers said that about $4 million will be ploughed into a new exploration programme on Stallion and Stallion South which are seen as linking up with the company's Double 8 discovery which surprised the market in mid 2009. Eggers said Double 8 was now ranked as the 22^nd largest deposit in Australia and the ninth largest in Western Australia.

Double 8 now has a resource of 10.9 million lb of U308 and Eggers said the immediate quest was to double Ponton resources. The project abuts Energy & Minerals Australia Ltd's (ASX: EME) Mulga Creek project, based on large sedimentary uranium discoveries made decades ago by a Japanese power utility.

Eggers said that the deposits at Ponton would be amenable to in situ leach recovery.

He said Australia held about 40% of world uranium reserves.

The top 48 deposits in Australia contain 3.337 Mt of U308 (7,360 million lbs) at an average grade of 0.8%  This was dominated by the contained uranium on BHP Billiton's Olympic Dam mine in South Australia which, if taken out, would see Canada ahead of Australia with 54 deposits for 840,125 Mt (Australia minus Olympic Dam 725,775 Mt).

Next in line was Namibia with 13 deposit for 580,730 Mt but at an average grade of 0.6%.

Eggers, one of the Australian uranium sector's strongest advocates, said it was time for the Queensland Government to lift its ban on uranium mining as it made no sense and deprived the State from becoming a major player, like Western Australia which lifted its ban with a change of Government late last year.

Another presenter at Mining 2009, Greg Hall of Toro Energy Ltd (ASX: ) said it was time the host state woke up and joined the rest of the uranium-prone Australian States in mining uranium.

He told Mineweb that the excuses being put up by the State Government to Queenslanders were looking totally implausible. The last claims he'd heard were that Queensland could not afford to develop uranium because of existing shipping bottlenecks, and that lifting the ban would cause problems for a potential shortage of skilled workers elsewhere in the mining sector.

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