hmr takeover ground next door to sim, page-30

uranium to china : it's a deal Like it or not, this news article from The Age is excellent news for SIM with load of uranium leases in 3 States and they're drilling in early April.

Also in another news article from The Australian about Chinese looking for investment in Australia, it contains the following paragraphs below :

But he predicts that uranium could be the next big thing for China, with its companies demanding a stake in new projects, in return for long-term purchasing deals, as in CNOOC's stake in the North West Shelf.

"I am aware of Chinese interests trying to find uranium projects in Australia," he says. "It's pretty obvious. You can see it happening", after the agreement allowing China to buy Aussie uranium is signed.

"There are going to be new uranium projects that will be desperately looking for Chinese partners to develop them," he says.



Uranium to China: it's a deal
By Brendan Nicholson
March 19, 2006

An AGREEMENT clearing the way for massive uranium sales to China is almost certain to be signed when Premier Wen Jiabao visits Australia early next month.

The deal would give Australia the ability to monitor the use of its uranium in China to ensure that it is only used for peaceful purposes.

It is expected to see a significant increase in the amount of uranium mined in Australia. Sales to China could quickly double Australia's annual income from uranium to $1 billion.

The Sunday Age has been told that formal negotiations, which began last August, have proceeded much more rapidly than expected. Those talks, led by officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, were expected to take up to two years.

"It's now 90 per cent certain that the agreement will be signed during next month's visit," an official said yesterday. "That's certainly the target.

"That doesn't mean we are going to be digging up uranium and shipping it off to China the next day," the official said.

An agreement would simply clear the way for the companies owning Australia's uranium mines to begin negotiations with China over prices.

The official said it would be up to the Australian companies to make the investment needed to mine enough uranium to meet Chinese demand.

China is expected to quadruple its use of uranium over the next 15 years to meet a massive increase in the demand for power.

The companies' negotiations may be complicated by the row over an apparent Chinese attempt to impose a price cap on iron ore. China's Commerce Ministry has reportedly issued a notice on the internet accusing the biggest iron ore producers of using their monopoly to make unreasonably high profits and violating the rules of fair trade. Australia responded that any move to impose a price cap would breach World Trade Organisation rules.

China first asked officially to buy Australian uranium in August 2004. Then in June 2005, it emerged that Australia was negotiating conditions for the export of uranium to China. These included a range of nuclear safeguards that could lead to a lucrative export trade.

When Foreign Minister Alexander Downer was asked yesterday for details of the coming agreement with China, he said the Premier's visit was still two weeks away. "It would be terrible to spoil the story of Premier Wen's visit today," he said.

Greens leader Bob Brown condemned the potential deal as outrageous and said it was "farcical to say that Australian uranium would not end up in Chinese nuclear weapons".

"This is selling uranium into a nuclear power which has rockets which can reach Sydney and Melbourne and during the last year has threatened Taiwan with nuclear weapons," Senator Brown said. "Moreover, it has sent nuclear technology to Pakistan and via there to Iran and Libya, all this in an age of handbag-sized nuclear weapons and global terrorism."

with Jason Koutsoukis