Skyharbour Begins Drilling at Athabasca Basin-based Preston Project

Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin has yielded some exciting uranium discoveries in recent years, and Skyharbour Resources (TSXV:SYH) hopes that its Preston project will be the next big thing in the region. On Tuesday, the company, along with its joint venture partner Athabasca Nuclear (TSXV:ASC), announced the start of summer drilling at Preston.
The drill program will consist of 1,480 meters across five holes at depths ranging from 150 to 400 meters; the focus will be on the Canoe Lake and FSA targets. The company has identified 15 targets at the project, and it chose those two based on encouraging fieldwork results.
“The Canoe Lake target is really our highest-priority target,” Skyharbour’s president and CEO, Jordan Trimble, told the Investing News Network. “We did a small drill program just over a year ago in which we drilled three separate target areas. Most of it was focused on another target area known as Swoosh, and the main reason we couldn’t get into Canoe was the time of year. We drilled in March through May [when] it is quite wet — particularly in the Canoe area, and it can make it tough and very expensive to access certain areas.”
Trimble said that the particularly dry summer has made accessing the target much easier and has made drilling more cost effective. “Now we are able to get into it at a reasonable cost and drill what we believe is the best geological target on the property,” he said.
Naturally, the goal of any drill program is to make a discovery, and the same goes for Skyharbour’s summer program. Considering the property is in close proximity to successful projects held by Fission Uranium (TSX:FCU) and NexGen Energy (TSXV:NXE) and has a very similar geological setting, Trimble believes Preston has the potential to be the next thing in the Athabasca Basin. Still, he admitted that such “discoveries aren’t made overnight and they typically don’t happen on the first drill holes.”
“What I would consider a success would be intersecting some mineralization and strong alteration and indications of higher-grade mineralization nearby,” he said.

Changes in ownership

As mentioned, the Preston property is a joint venture between Skyharbour and Athabasca Nuclear — however, that wasn’t always the case. Until Tuesday, the project was owned by four companies known as the Western Athabasca Syndicate: Skyharbour, Athabasca Nuclear, Rojo Resources (TSXV:RJ) and Noka Resources (TSXV:NX). But because Rojo and Noka didn’t meet their cash call for the summer drill program, they defaulted on the Syndicate’s option agreement.
Going forward, the Syndicate will be a 50/50 joint venture between Athabasca Nuclear and Skyharbour, which is also the operator of the project. While it is unfortunate that Noka and Rojo weren’t able to raise enough money to continue participating in the project, Trimble said that “from the perspective of Skyharbour shareholders, this is a positive development.”
“The silver lining is that Skyharbour effectively doubled its interest from 25 to 50 percent without any additional expenditures, and going forward it will be a 50/50 joint venture, which was actually the case with Alpha Exploration (TSXV:AEX) and Fission when they made the discovery at Patterson Lake,” Trimble said. “It also gives us some flexibility down the road in terms of whether we want to bring in additional partners or sell our larger portion of the project to another company.”

Moving forward

Now that Preston is owned by two companies as opposed to four, there is the question of whether or not Skyharbour and Athabasca Nuclear will be able to foot the bill for the project. While that remains to be seen, one positive is that there are no financial requirements in the joint venture other than annual assessment work to keep the land in good standing. Luckily, the companies have been granted some relief on these costs from the government of Saskatchewan.
“One major development we had a few weeks ago was that due to the forest fire situation, the government of Saskatchewan granted us, on all of our claims across the Basin, a free year of assessment work. That was about $3.4 million worth of exploration assessment work that was basically granted to us for free,” Trimble explained. “It certainly eases the burden of us having to finance more exploration in the near term to keep the claims in good standing.”
Besides keeping an eye on results from this new summer drill program, Trimble said that investors can expect results from the a sampling program at Skyharbour’s 100 percent owned Falcon Point project, also in the Athabasca Basin.
“We just finished a small field program at our Falcon Point project. We will be announcing assay results from the soil, chip and biogeochem samples over the next few weeks. We did that program around a high-grade, historical surface showing at the project that ran up to 48 percent U3O8.”
The summer drill program is expected to wrap up in the next month and half, with results likely to come down the pipe in October or November. At end of day Tuesday, Skyharbour’s share price was up 16.67 percent to close at $0.035. The company is down 30 percent year-to-date.

Securities Disclosure: I, Kristen Moran, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
Related reading:
Jordan Trimble of Skyharbour Resources on Exploration Partnerships and Upcoming Drill Program