Energy Metals Readies La Palangana for Production

The South Texas project held by Energy Metals (EMC-T, EMU-N) and privately held Everest Exploration are now at the permitting and engineering stage, offering hope that the two projects can be in production next year.

Energy Metals, which owns 99% of the project and is the operator, has applied for Radioactive material Handling Licences from Texas environmental authorities for both the Hobson uranium recovery plant and the La Palangana in-situ leach (ISL) project. The Hobson plant, in Karnes Cty., about halfway between Corpus Christi and San Antonio, operated from 1979 to 1992, processing local leachate and subsequently resins from distant ISL operations.

The plant had a capacity of 270 tonnes (600,000 lb.) annually, which Energy Metals plans to double. It is the subject of a valid permit, which has to be renewed for the restart, and the licence application covers approval for the expansion as well.

Consultants have almost finished design and specification work, and Energy Metals has ordered some of the plant equipment that will be needed for the expansion.

The plant will get its initial feed from the La Palangana uranium deposit in Duval Cty., about 90 km west of Corpus Christi. La Palangana, a roll-front deposit in the Tertiary-age Goliad sandstone, has been known since the 1950s when it was discovered by a company exploring for potash. Union Carbide produced some uranium from an in-situ-leach well field in the late 1970s, producing about 150 tonnes U3O8.

In 2005, a consultant for Standard Uranium (now part of Energy Metals) estimated the inferred resource on Palangana at 1.7 million tonnes grading 0.15% U3O8.

The project will still need a final Production Area Authorization from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and monitoring wells are currently being installed at Palangana to provide baseline water-quality information, which is a requirement of final approval.

Core drilling continues at the property, partly for stratigraphic and grain-size information, and partly to provide chemical-analysis checks on grades estimated from down-hole radiometric probing. Radioactive disequilibrium — the preferential removal or concentration of daughter elements in the uranium decay chain — can cause gamma-ray counts to vary from the value that would be expected from a given U3O8 grade; if the daughter elements, normally more radioactive than uranium, are preferentially removed by groundwater processes, gamma-ray counts will be lower than normal, and grade estimates will be low.

Evidence from two core holes is that radiometric probing does underestimate the U3O8 grade, with chemical assays coming in 12% higher in one hole and 74% higher in the other. More holes are being assayed to determine a typical ratio for the whole deposit.

Infill drilling on the resource area showed that the average thickness of the uranium-bearing beds was 2.4 metres, with an average grade of 0.11% U3O8. Some intersections graded as high as 0.27%.

Energy Metals has concentrated exploration drilling, to expand the resource, on the northwest, west, and southeast flanks of the La Palangana salt dome, which underlies the mineralized part of the sandstone. Drilling on the northwestern flank intersected sandstone showing characteristics of a reduction-oxidation boundary, where uranium might be expected to precipitate from groundwater. Tighter drilling is planned in that area.