Two uranium exploration companies brawl in Utah’s Lisbon Valley, part one
After interviewing SXR Uranium One CEO Neal Froneman, we realized it was important to cover developments in Utah, particularly in the Lisbon Valley. Whenever Mr. Froneman talked about Wyoming, he almost always included Utah at the same time. Most of our focus during the first half of 2006 had been on the in situ recovery (ISR) method of uranium mining. Now, as the spot price of uranium touches the $50/pound level, it looks like conventional mining in the US may make a strong comeback.
Utah is strictly underground high-grade uranium mining, possibly offering some of the consistently highest grades available in the United States. International Uranium Corporation’s announcement to reopen the White Mesa uranium plant, about 50 miles from the Lisbon Valley, was the first step toward renewing interest in the Paradox Basin of southeastern Utah. SXR’s interest in the area was a significant second step. There may be several other reasons if early drilling results from two junior exploration companies are promising deep in this semi-arid soil covered with juniper, sagebrush, and Ponderosa and Pinyon pines.
Utah is a state where underground uranium mining was successful and continued until the spot price completely collapsed. Specifically, it was the Colorado Plateau’s Paradox Basin, which became world famous, in part because of a Hollywood movie about its most colorful pioneer, Charlie Steen. His home in Moab, Utah, became the city of millionaires, as a result of the uranium rush that began with its discovery.
The Lisbon Valley became one of the most promoted uranium districts in the world, thanks to Charlie Steen, then penniless, the unemployed petroleum geologist who discovered the Mi Vida uranium deposit on the southwestern side of the Lisbon Valley Anticline. . On July 6, 1952, Charlie Steen mined 14 feet of grayish-black pitchblende, specimens of which he had only seen in museums. No one had ever discovered pitchblende on the Plateau before. With uranium grades as high as 0.4 percent, this became one of the richest mineral deposits mined in the United States.
Our recent research and interviews with two geologists revealed that there could be a newly developing playground in the Lisbon Valley uranium district. It is also known as the Greater Indian Uranium District, named for the mineral belt, and is located 30 miles south of Moab, Utah, about halfway between Salt Lake City and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Excluding US Energy, which has potential uranium properties on the west side of the Lisbon Valley Fault, there are three junior uranium exploration companies exploring or hoping to explore for uranium on the northeast side of the Lisbon Valley Fault. Lisbon. They hope to pick up where Rio Algom left off, during the low point of the twenty-year uranium depression.
Why do uranium companies
Exploring the northeast flank of the fault?
Although the west side of the fault has been the most productive uranium mining ground, Rio Algom discovered a mineralized zone in 1972 on the “nose” of the north-east side of the fault. Over the next sixteen years, the company’s Lisbon mine produced about 24 million pounds of uranium from more than 5.6 million tons of ore grading an average of 0.22 percent. It is true that grades were higher on the western side of the fault, an average grade of 0.35 percent U3O8.
The discovery of Rio Algom and the extraordinary production of uranium confirmed a little publicized entry in an obscure chapter of a geological textbook, entitled “Geology and exploitation of uranium deposits in the Lisbon Valley area, Utah”. Hiram B. Wood of the American Institute of Mines, and on behalf of the US Atomic Energy Commission, wrote in 1968: “An extension of the Great Indian Ore Belt, similar in size and grade to the known ore belt, probably occurs in the collapsed block northeast of the Lisbon Valley Fault at depths of 2400-2700 feet below the surface capped by Dakota…leaving this area as the most favorable unexplored area remaining in the Lisbon Valley Anticline “.
It should be noted that none of the major uranium ore deposits had outcrops. All discoveries were made by exploratory drilling. Due to stratigraphy, mineable deposits were found at depths of more than 2,000 feet. “All of the anticlines in the Paradox Basin, of which the Lisbon Valley is one, are salt structures,” said Richard Dorman, vice president of exploration for Universal Uranium, which is now drilling on the northeast side of the anticline. Dorman explained an anticline for the layman: “It’s where the earth bends into a rounded dome.”
There may very well be more uranium, according to the two uranium exploration geologists we interviewed for this story. Both Universal Uranium and Mesa Uranium are drilling to identify and evaluate the Moss Bach sandstones in the Chinle formation. It was Charlie Steen’s uranium discovery on the Moss Bach Member that started the massive prospecting race in the district in the 1950s. Most of the uranium production occurred along the northwest flank of the anticline. Over forty years, more than 80 million pounds of uranium were mined from the 16-mile-long, half-mile-wide trend of the western flank.
Exploration drilling is underway on the northeast side of the anticline near the previously producing Lisbon mine. There are geological advantages in the exploration programs of both companies, Universal Uranium and Mesa Uranium. Universal’s smallest property is six miles long and two miles wide, but closer to the fault line. The larger Mesa position is closer to the old Lisbon mine, but is an arc-shaped ground position farther from the fault. Global Uranium, which has not announced a drilling program, is reportedly sandwiched in the area between the two.
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