Forum Energy Metals (TSX.V: FMC) (OTCQB: FDCFF) took its next big step on Thursday as it started trading on the US market, giving more investors access to its considerable potential. As an explorer in the world’s most valuable uranium real estate, the company is well placed to benefit from rising prices.

Already listed in Canada, Forum has now on the OTCQB, giving US investors much more efficient access to its diverse and exciting projects. The firm highlighted the OTCQB’s power to “build shareholder value for companies”, helping Forum boost its liquidity and reach the fair valuation it deserves.

By trading on the OTCQB, the company can access the enormous network of data distributors and investors in the US and get the word out to them as quickly as possible. Given that its three 100% owned energy metal projects are set to be drilled in 2021, this looks like the perfect time to come aboard. Forum’s shares will still trade on the TSX Venture Exchange.

President and chief executive Rick Mazur said: “Our listing on the OTCQB is an important step for the company to expand global awareness of Forum’s exploration activities and provides US investors with a platform to participate in the company’s success.”

Well positioned in Uranium

Right now, Forum is looking for high-grade deposits in Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin, “the most valuable uranium real estate in the world”, containing rich and high-grade mines. According to the firm, Saskatchewan supplies more than a fifth of all annual uranium mine production.

Forum’s properties can be found at or near the edge of the Athabasca Basin boundary so it can look for near-surface uranium mineralisation. All properties were chosen for their proximity to known mineralization deposits or occurrences.

In November 2019, Orano Canada signed a $6 million option agreement to explore Forum’s Fir Island uranium property, where it has already completed a resistivity survey and a six-hole diamond drill program. More drilling is planned for 2021.

Uranium took a beating following the 2011 Fukushima disaster, but as newer studies find ever-worse consequences of global warming - like extreme rainfall and the Amazon beginning to actually – nuclear energy is looking like it could be necessary to stop complete disaster.

Nuclear power is also an important part of meeting the Paris Agreement’s goal to limit the global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius.

This reality, combined with lower production over for the past few years has created an impressive bull market in uranium, with the commodity price now 16% higher at $28.35 compared to only $24.50 at the start of 2020. At the start of 2011, before Fukushima, it was trading at $77.00.

Not just uranium

Forum isn’t only looking for uranium, either. It also has a $30 million agreement with Rio Tinto (LON: RIO) (ASX: RIO) for exploring the Janice Lake sedimentary copper property in north-central Saskatchewan.

Rio Tinto has a four-year option to buy a 51% interest in Janice Lake by spending $10 million, and can earn another 29% interest by spending another $20 years over three years, giving it a total 80% stake.

So far, Rio Tinto has completed the first phase of drilling at Janice Lake, which confirmed and extended copper mineralisation at the Jansem and Janice targets. A major diamond drill programme is planned for winter 2021 at Janice Lake.

Forum also has a 100%-owned palladium exploration project named Love Lake. The project is located around 60 km northeast of Janice Lake. Previous grab samples from a trench in the Lake area returned 0.33% copper, 1.33% nickel, 2,735 parts per billion (“ppb”) platinum, 2,685 ppb palladium and 70 ppb gold. Another found 0.43% Cu, 0.23% Ni, 3,580 ppb platinum, 4,275 ppb palladium and 200 ppb gold.

On Thursday, Forum highlighted that it has upped its budget for drilling at Love Lake. The firm is also planning exploration for its Wollaston and Northwest Athabasca joint venture uranium projects.

In this same release, Forum said its non-brokered private placement had closed, raising $500,000. The money will be used to incur qualifying expenses for mineral exploration projects in Saskatchewan.

With so much planned, Forum’s 2021 contains strong promise. Given excellent uranium market conditions and the firm’s diverse interests, everything is in place for a bright future.

Author: Anna Farley

The Author does not hold any position in the stock(s) and/or financial instrument(s) mentioned in the piece.

MiningMaven Ltd, the owner of MiningMaven.com, owns a position in the stock(s) and/or financial instrument(s) mentioned in the piece.

MiningMaven Ltd, the owner of MiningMaven.com, has not been paid for the production of this piece by the company or companies mentioned above.

MiningMaven.com and MiningMaven Ltd are not responsible for the article's content or accuracy and do not share the views of the author. News and research are not recommendations to deal, and investments may fall in value so that you could lose some or all of your investment. Past performance is not an indicator of future performance

This week saw Forum Energy Metals (TSX.V:FMC) up the ante in Saskatchewan by taking full ownership of the highly prospective Janice Lake copper project.

On Monday, the Canadian explorer revealed that it had reached an agreement with the property’s former owner Transition Metals to accelerate its option to acquire a 100% position. The move comes two years ahead of schedule and waves $150,000 of scheduled option payments.

Janice Lake has become an increasingly exciting opportunity over the past year and a half thanks to millions of dollars’ worth of drilling and exploration by Rio Tinto. Rio first entered a US$30 million option to take an 80% stake in the project in May 2019 after a successful first-pass drilling campaign by Forum encountered strong copper grades along a 6km trend.

At the end of September, the major miner completed its summer exploration program at Janice Lake. This included 25 holes for 818 metres on seven targets located on historical copper showings and structural and geophysical targets identified on the property. Meanwhile, mapping and sampling crews took 525 outcrop samples over the full 52-kilometre extent of Janice Lake as well as completing some 30 kilometres of surveying across two targets called Jansem and Rafuse.

Rio is now interpreting its work through ongoing assaying and geochemical analysis with results expected to help refine future drill targets for a planned drilling program in 2021.

The age and depositional environment at Janice is similar to the giant Udokan Deposits of the Lake Baikal region in Siberia, and the Revette deposits of Montana. Baikal Mining Company reports JORC-compliant Measured and Indicated resources of 1.822 billion tonnes grading 1.01% copper, 14.3 grams per tonne silver for the Udokan deposits.

“Immediate 100% ownership by Forum is an important step forward for the advancement of the Janice Lake project as Rio Tinto explores the property under its option,” said Forum’s president and CEO Rick Mazur on Monday.

Janice Lake isn’t Forum’s only quality project in Saskatchewan.

It also owns the Fir Island property in the region, where drilling earlier this year confirmed the continuity of a target structure showing signs of uranium mineralization. The work was funded by Orano Canada, which has entered an option to acquire 70% of the project in exchange US$6 million of exploration spend. Forum has now proposed a much more extensive drilling campaign at Fir Island to build on its exciting results.

Meanwhile, the company also owns the Love Lake project in north-east Saskatchewan, where work recently identified two target areas prospective for magmatic nickel-copper-palladium-platinum deposits.

Author: Daniel Flynn

The Author does not hold any position in the stock(s) and/or financial instrument(s) mentioned in the piece.

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MiningMaven Ltd, the owner of MiningMaven.com, has been paid for the production of this piece by the company or companies mentioned above.

MiningMaven.com and MiningMaven Ltd are not responsible for the article's content or accuracy and do not share the views of the author. News and research are not recommendations to deal, and investments may fall in value so that you could lose some or all of your investment. Past performance is not an indicator of future performance

Vancouver’s Forum Energy Metals (TSX.V:FMC) has reported encouraging drill results from its Fir Island project in Canada.

Forum is exploring its 100%-owned property in the western state of Saskatchewan, on the northern border of the United States.

Forum said it had confirmed signs of uranium mineralisation across six holes totalling 1,819m, just 1km south of five previous drilled holes at Fir Island.

The exploration is within trucking distance of the McLean Lake uranium mill.

These positive results mean Forum will now engage in a much larger drilling programme in winter 2021, supported by its funding partner Orano Canada.

This year’s drilling scheme is the first to be funded by Orano, backed by an option agreement which allows Forum to earn a 70% interest in Fir Island. Under the terms of the deal Forum will spend $6m on exploration by 2023.

Orano Canada is a leading uranium producer and has been operating in Canada for 55 years. It operates the McClean Lake uranium mill and is a major partner in the Cigar Lake, McArthur River and Key Lake operations.

In 2018 it processed 18 million pounds of the element, which is used for fuel in nuclear power stations worldwide. It is a subsidiary of energy giant Orano Group, which is majority-owned by the French government.

The world supply of uranium has been hammered by the Covid-19 pandemic, as we reported in detail here. These issues have given uranium producers a huge leg up as spot markets soar.

Forum said its drilling programme at the East Channel Fault revealed potential for uranium mineralisation with similar rock structures to its 2015 drilling scheme.

These include elevated geochemistry with uranium up to 283ppm, boron up to 2,160pp, copper at 314ppm and nickel at 2,140ppm in two drill holes that intersect the East Channel Fault.

Regional magnetic and gravity surveys suggest that the structure continues for 8km to the southwest and 2km to the north, all on Forum’s property, the company said in a release.

Author: Mark Sheridan

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MiningMaven.com and MiningMaven Ltd are not responsible for the article's content or accuracy and do not share the views of the author. News and research are not recommendations to deal, and investments may fall in value so that you could lose some or all of your investment. Past performance is not an indicator of future performance

Forum Energy Metals (TSX.VFMC) has launched an exploration project funded by Orano Canada at its major uranium opportunity in Saskatchewan, Canada.

Eight to ten holes are planned at the Fir Island project, where a resistivity survey in November last year identified a number of attributes strongly indicative of nearby uranium mineralisation. The $1 million budget for the latest round of work will be covered by Orano as part of its option agreement to earn up to a 70% interest in Fir Island by spending up to $6 million on the property by December 2023.

Last year's work at Fir Island outlined an area of low resistivity “potentially linked with alterations or structural disruption” towards the north end of the property. Forum identified a series of gravity lows, that it interpreted as alteration, with associated boron soil anomalies of up to 3,350 parts per million. Prior to this, five holes completed in 2015 demonstrated strong quartz dissolution and remobilisation, tectonisation, and sudoite clays in both sandstone and basement rocks.

Forum's efforts at Fir Island complement the work being completed at its Janice Lake copper and silver project – also in Saskatchewan – alongside major miner Rio Tinto.

Janice Lake, which is based in Saskatchewan’s Wollaston Domain, boasts a 52km-strike length containing significant concentrations of sediment-hosted copper showings. Drill core logging and petrographic studies have suggested that copper is hosted by mafic-rich stratigraphy within more felsic units at the asset. This suggests multiple layers of copper mineralisation could be present.

Rio Tinto, which has entered a seven-year, $30 million option to earn 80% of Janice Lake, is currently building a winter access road to the project's camp site. Meanwhile, preparations are underway to mobilise an 80-person exploration camp, three core drill rigs, a rotary air blast drill, fueld, and supplies. The major miner plans to use this infrastructure to complete surface mapping, prospecting, geophysical & geochemical surveys, and drilling from June.

As of the end of February, Rio Tinto and Forum were finalising details of the 2020 exploration programme and would “continue to provide updates as details are finalised” In an update, Forum added that Rio Tinto had met its initial $3 million exploration commitment within eight months, well in advance of the 18 months set out in the option agreement.

To read our recent report on Janice Lake, which explores the project's upside potential in detail, PLEASE CLICK HERE.

Author: Daniel Flynn

The Author does not hold any position in the stock(s) and/or financial instrument(s) mentioned in the piece.

MiningMaven Ltd, the owner of MiningMaven.com, does not own a position in the stock(s) and/or financial instrument(s) mentioned in the piece.

MiningMaven Ltd, the owner of MiningMaven.com, has been paid for the production of this piece by the company or companies mentioned above.

MiningMaven.com and MiningMaven Ltd are not responsible for its content or accuracy and do not share the views of the author. News and research are not recommendations to deal, and investments may fall in value so that you could lose some or all of your investment. Past performance is not an indicator of future performance.