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New Horizon Uranium
Corporation
(NHU-TSXV)
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Putting A Team Together First To Evaluate Properties, Then Looking For The
Properties And Working With Partners Has Allowed New Horizon Uranium To Move
Each Prospect Forward Faster And Set Them Apart From Their Peers
Uranium Exploration
Metals/Mining
(NHU-TSXV)
New Horizon Uranium Corporation
2221 East Street, Suite 200
Golden, Colorado 80401
Phone: 303-422-7803
William R. Wilson
Director, President and COO
Interview conducted by:
Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor
CEOCFOinterviews.com
Published
- November 23, 2007
BIO:
Mr. Wilson’s corporate experience includes creating and managing eleven
mining companies over 25 years as director, officer and/or CEO with mines
and properties in the United States, Canada, Russia, Democratic Republic of
Congo and Ukraine. He managed a large portfolio of uranium properties in
Grand County, Utah for Buttes Resources as Vice President - Mining. Prior to
the formation of New Horizon Uranium Corporation in October 2005, Mr. Wilson
was President of Basin Perlite Company from October 1999 to January 2004 and
Vice President – Mining of Tonogold Resources Inc. from April 2004 to August
2005. He is a graduate of the Colorado School of Mines with a Metallurgical
Engineer degree and of the University of Southern California with an MBA. He
currently serves as director and as chairman of the audit committees for BRC
Diamond Corporation and Nevada Bob’s International Inc. both listed on the
TSX-V. Mr. Wilson is a member of AusIMM, the Mining and Metallurgical
Society of America, the Canadian Institute of Mining and the Society of
Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration.
Company Profile:
New
Horizon Uranium Corporation is a uranium exploration and development company
founded in October 2005. The company began trading April 17, 2007 on the TSX-V
under the symbol NHU-V.
New Horizon is the operator of two joint ventures in Converse County,
Wyoming. The ventures control more than 12,000 acres on the White River
Formation. The Company intends to explore and develop this project area and
further investigate if it has potential to be an In-Situ Recovery (“ISR”)
operation. Additional exploration opportunities are being investigated in
Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Texas.
New Horizon is continually exploring and developing its current projects
while aggressively searching for new opportunities to grow its uranium
portfolio.
CEOCFO:
Mr. Wilson, what was your vision when the company was founded and where are
you today?
Mr. Wilson:
“It started as a simple idea - I had the opportunity to discuss the idea of
a uranium exploration company with the chairman of International Royalty
Corporation, Doug Silver, a long time colleague. He suggested that IRC would
provide the venture capital to get the company started if I put together the
right team together. That was our start, and IRC has been very supportive of
New Horizon and two of their senior people sit on our board.”
CEOCFO:
What was your idea?
Mr. Wilson:
“The idea was to start an exploration company from scratch that would be
unique in that we would put the team together first and then go out and look
at properties rather than find a bunch of properties and hope somebody could
valuate them. Our plan was to put the team together first, so that with each
prospect we brought in, the team was looking at it from the start. I think
that was somewhat different from many of our peers.”
CEOCFO:
Please tell us about the properties that you have under your belt now.
Mr. Wilson:
“We have two very important properties. One is in the southern part of the
Powder River base in Wyoming, where uranium has been mined for many years
and continued even with the downturn in uranium. Over the last twenty years,
it has continued to be a producer primarily within In-Situ Recovery (ISR)
type projects. We had the opportunity to pick up a large property in joint
venture with Canyon Resources who had originally drilled some of that area
back in the 1980’s. They moved on to gold so we formed a JV with them for
the management of the uranium joint venture, which is now our Converse
Project. Shortly after that, we added in another group of properties in that
same area held now by Uranium One, who are a major player in the uranium
business. They are our joint venture partner in the other part of the
Wyoming play, known as Sand Creek. It is rather complicated, but we manage
both joint ventures with both joint venture partners with some overlap of
the properties. We plan for Converse-Sand Creek to be an In-Situ Recovery
project; we have had good results so far and we are going to continue to
drill that property.
Our other large
property where we own 100% is the Summit Project on the Colorado Plateau in
the southeastern part of Colorado. We purchased a database and went to many
of the landowners there, signed up leases and started drilling on that
property early this summer. We had some good results to start with and plan
to continue drilling the property with a view to establishing its potential
as an underground mine. The advantage that we have there is that Summit is
located between a licensed mill in Utah owned by Denison and a planned mill
in Colorado owned by Energy Fuels. Energy Fuels has moving along with
permitting on their mill and we like the fact that we good properties near
what may be two of four possible uranium mills in the entire United States.
We are also looking in Utah, Nevada and South America. We are getting some
geologic diversity as well as some geographic diversity.”
CEOCFO:
Why do you like uranium?
Mr. Wilson:
“We like uranium because unlike many commodities there is no substitute.
Uranium is the basic fuel for nuclear power reactors and nuclear power
reactors are a very important part of the worldwide energy sources. Much of
the energy growth in China and India, with their booming economies, is going
to be nuclear energy. There is currently a 20% shortfall between the demand
by the nuclear energy vs. what the uranium industry that can supply. The
reason that I personally like uranium is because, in the last boom, I was
involved in uranium exploration and mill development and I know many of the
current players. I understand the industry and the things that some of my
peers have been successful with and avoid where some of them have not been
successful.”
CEOCFO:
Do you prefer in general to own a project 100% or does it depend on the
project?
Mr. Wilson:
“It really does depend on the project. The first project we started with was
a joint venture. We had some critics that said we had to pay $1 million to
earn our 50%, but we knew the joint venture partner very well and Canyon
Resource was literally in our back yard in Golden, Colorado. Later we were
able to bring in Uranium One a second joint venture partner who contributed
their properties for a 30% interests in the Sand Creek joint venture.
The Summit
Project in Colorado was from scratch and built up our property ownership to
over 3,000 acres. We continue to do that and as we drill there, we are
finding ourselves in a very good operational situation down the road.
It depends very
much on the circumstances. I do not know if I have a preference, we have to
look at each one and decide whether it is in our best interest to go in
where you do not own 100%. It could be much bigger if you owned 50% of a
large piece of the pie, rather than owning 100% of a small project.”
CEOCFO:
What is in Argentina that is of interest to you?
Mr. Wilson:
“Two of our directors, George Young and Paul Jones have worked in Argentina.
They have very good history down there in mining projects; they know the
government, the industry, and they have good connections. One of our
geologists Steve Davis has worked extensively in Argentina. We feel the
country has some very good uranium opportunities that have been overlooked
to a great extent. The government has had an atomic energy agency for many
years and they have a pretty good base to start with.”
CEOCFO:
What is ahead and what is the timetable going forward?
Mr. Wilson:
“The opportunity to get our Colorado property into production as an
underground mine is our short-term project. An underground mine can be rapid
in terms of permitting. Energy Fuels who are developing the mill nearby are
doing the hard permitting on the mill. Paul Jones my partner and I know a
lot about underground mining and we know Colorado mining and regulations
very well having both operated mines in Colorado. The Wyoming project as an
ISR property will take longer but we are very encouraged about what we have
seen so far. As we are working on those two more advanced projects, we are
looking for good targets to expand our portfolio in other areas in the
United States. Our so-called Blue Sky will certainly be in South America
because those are more likely projects that will take longer to develop. The
market likes Blue Sky; it likes to see projects that have a lot of upside.”
CEOCFO:
Why should potential investors pick New Horizon Uranium out of a crowd?
Mr. Wilson:
“Our team experience, our joint venture partners and other affiliations in
the industry and our geologic and geographic diversity position us to move
out in front of many of our peer uranium companies.”
CEOCFO:
In closing, what is the biggest task ahead for New Horizon Uranium?
Mr. Wilson:
“Our biggest task ahead is to build our shareholder base as we continue to
build our property portfolio. We want to get exposure to many of our
shareholders in Canada; we would like to expand that shareholder base with
individual investors as well as institutional investors up there. We are
giving some consideration to a potential registration in the United States
so that we may broaden our shareholder base in the U.S.”
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