Trigon Uranium takes 50% interest in Intercont’l Potash

Surging prices for potash are turning even uranium exploration companies into plays on the coveted commodity. Trigon Uranium (TEL-V) is just the latest to jump on the potash bandwagon to take advantage of the boom in worldwide fertilizer demand.

In a deal announced today, the Colorado-based uranium explorer active in the southwestern United States has taken a 50% interest for an undisclosed sum in Intercontinental Potash Corp., a privately funded Canadian company.

The announcement sent Trigon Uranium shares in mid-day trading up 55.3%, or 13 cents apiece, to 36.5 cents, on a trading volume of 1.01 million shares.

Intercontinental Potash owns 100% of U.S. Potash Corp., a privately held Colorado-based company that holds exploration and mineral lease applications covering about 86,000 acres stretching across the “four corner states” of Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico.

Trigon will provide services including exploration and development land management acquisition; geological and exploration planning; and financial and administrative services to both Intercontinental Potash and U.S. Potash Corp.

The move into potash comes just two years after Trigon declared it was diversifying into uranium. In April 2006, Trigon told shareholders that it was diversifying out of diamonds and into uranium exploration “as an appropriate strategy to diversify risk and increase the timeliness of value creation for the shareholders.”

“While the returns generated by diamond deposits can be great, diamond exploration is a very expensive, lengthy and time-consuming process,” the company’s president and chief executive, George Poling, said in a statement at the time.

Now Trigon is trying to stay one step ahead of the curve with its foray into potash.

The company says its focus on uranium exploration in the same “four corner states” in which Intercontinental Potash Corp. and U.S. Potash Corp are active gives it “considerable business and geological capabilities” in the area that it can bring to bear on potash and potash-related minerals exploration.

Trigon has a 52-week trading range of 10.5 cents-83 cents and has 60.3 million shares outstanding.