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Toro joins Mega in uranium mine race

Monday, Apr 13, 2009

Toro Energy has joined Mega Uranium in the race to become WA’s first uranium producer after lodging a mining lease application over its Wiluna project.

The application covers the Lake Way deposit, which forms part of its 100 per cent-owned Wiluna uranium project where it has a 23.9 million pound resource.

Toro managing director Greg Hall said the lease application was intended to provide certainty of tenure, with the company still needing to apply separately for a formal mining licence if it decided to develop the mine.

The move comes after Mega made history earlier this year by lodging the first mining lease application over a would-be uranium project since the State Government lifted the controversial six-year ban on mining the nuclear fuel in November.

Mega hopes to develop its Lake Maitland project in the Eastern Goldfields, which is the fifth-biggest known in WA.

The deposit is thought to be worth between $1.3 billion and $4.6 billion, depending on the uranium price.

It also follows talk that BHP Billiton may be accelerating development of its Yeelirrie uranium project in the Goldfields after it met local stakeholders this week to discuss any concerns they might have.

BHP restarted work on the project after the ban was lifted. Yeelirrie, between Wiluna and Leinster, is the biggest calcrete deposit in the world.

Toro, which kicked off a preliminary drilling campaign at Wiluna this month, said it would continue to drill its Lake Way and Centipede deposits to boost the project’s resource.

Toro expects to make a decision about whether to start a definitive feasibility study in the second half of this year. The company has suggested it could be ready to start mine construction as early as the second half of 2010. Shares in Toro climbed 1.5¢ to 17¢ on Thursday on the news.