Commodities | Apr 30 2013
By Andrew Nelson
Last week on the uranium spot market might not have been busy, but at least it was positive. There were just four transactions reported, with 900,000 pounds of uranium finding new owners.
Demand remains thin and patchy, with discretionary purchases by utilities, producers and financial entities driving what little action there was in the market. The good news last week was that buyers were prepared for the most part to pay a little bit more in order to secure stock. Industry consultant TradeTech reports that this was especially the case for deliveries due later in the year.
It’s not much, but TradeTech’s Weekly U3O8 Spot Price Indicator lifted US$0.25 to US $40.50 per pound.
Industry website U308.biz had a sit down with Kivillaq Energy CEO Jim Paterson last week and he had a few optimistic things to say the prospects for uranium prices.
“It's certainly something that's cyclical, and the price of uranium has to go up. In the current state of things I think that there will be a significant number of exploration and expansion projects that are cancelled because of uranium market prices, especially the larger-cap projects,” he said.
“We're already seeing that. Of course, that's going to have serious ramifications on the supply pipeline in the near future, and we're going to see a backlash against this low pricing environment.”
Yet as always and despite the optimistic talk, the reality of it is that this market is still not in good shape, at least demand wise. There was no new demand, nor any transactions reported in the term uranium market. There are a number of utilities sitting on the sidelines waiting for a good spot to jump into the term market, but that has been the case for a while now.
The term market currently features three non-US utilities looking for a combined 3.75m pounds U3O8 equivalent for delivery from 2014 out to 2020. One US utility is looking at offers for about 1.2m pounds, with one last utility is seeking offers for an undisclosed amount of material to be delivered beginning in 2017.
In the meantime, TradeTech’s Mid-Term U3O8 Price Indicator stayed put at US$46.00 per pound, while the Long-Term price was mired at US$57.00 per pound.
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