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Vancouver company sets its sights on uranium prospect in Sask.

Aug 12, 2013 | 6:27 AM

The Athabasca Basin in northern Saskatchewan is on the radar for TAD Mineral Exploration Inc.

This past spring the company acquired 4,000 hectares of land that is a prospective area for uranium.

Director of TAD Jason Gigliotti said he wanted to get involved in the Athabasca Basin for the past 10 years, but due to timing and scenarios it never worked out until now.

“We’ve actually wanted to be up in the basin for quite a while. I thought that uranium, despite what happened with Fukushima [nuclear plant] and everything else, is kind of one of the ones that I would expect is going to be leading the venture market back out from the doldrums it’s been in,” Gigliotti explained.

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported a 56 per cent increase in energy consumption between 2010 and 2040. They anticipate nuclear power generation to double during that period. With Canada having the third largest reserves of uranium, just after Australia and Kazakhstan, this could make any company involved a big player in the future if it were to come to fruition.

In addition to that forecast, Gigliotti said a huge focus has been put back into the Athabasca Basin for junior companies after uranium was discovered there by Alpha Minerals and Fission Energy.

“With the Basin, obviously with what Alpha and Fission has found, it’s has certainly woke up a lot of people within this region for example,” he said. “This is certainly one of the areas that have garnered some attention, so it makes sense that we try and be involved there for our shareholders to ideally make some money at the end of day.”

At this point TAD is in the very early stages of the project.

“We literally got to get up there on the ground and make sure what we have to get some drills targets set up, so we’re kind of in the middle of raising some money right now,” he said.

SUB: Moving the junior market

When TAD made the announcement of the new acquisition, the stock valued jumped by 60 per cent from $0.02 to $0.04.

For Gigliotti, making moves in venture projects is vital to stirring the market and wants to re-invigorate some of the shareholders by showing the company is heading forward.

“The one thing for sure is that if you’re doing nothing your shares are certainly not going to react to anything,” he said.

“The guys running companies aren’t getting out there being as active as they can because everyone is trying to conserve cash as much as they can, which is understandable. But at the same time my belief being in this market for 20 years now is that the venture market, a lot of times, really trades more on momentum and sort of sentiment as far as overall marketplace goes.”

In his opinion the venture market should be one of the best right now, not the lowest and in order to be considered on the rise he thinks around 200-million shares should be trading a day.

When TAD announced they acquired 4,000 hectares at the Athabasca Basin, 11 million shares of the 44 million available were traded.

“We’re going to go work as hard as we can to change the mindsets of people to really get people going again back interested in the junior market,” he said.
He thinks the venture is going to be in for a strong second half this year and early next year.

“I think you’re going to see the entire market start to move and there’s going to be a lot of opportunities for people to get involved in some companies,” Gigliotti said.
“Really this year we’ve really changed the mindset to become a lot more active and pickup multiple projects and the Athabasca Basin is certainly one area that I personally think is going to be one of the leaders in the next two years as far as junior activities go.”

TAD, based out of Vancouver, is a junior resource company that was incorporated in 2007. It engages in the acquisition, exploration and development of mineral properties within Canada.

sstone@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahstone84