TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – The company that ends up buying TSX-listed Hathor Exploration will probably end up acquiring Fission Energy, which owns the deposit directly adjacent to the Cameco target’s flagship Roughrider property in Saskatchewan, Mercenary Geologist website author Mickey Fulp said on Thursday.

The world’s biggest uranium producer, Cameco, in late August made a C$520-million hostile bid for Hathor to gain access to Roughrider, which the Vancouver-based junior formally rejected this week as being too low and “predatory”.

Fulp’s comments, made at the Toronto Resource Investment Conference, back up what other analysts have said about Fission Energy ultimately becoming a takeover target itself.

“Whoever ultimately ends up with Hathor, and I’m certainly not convinced it’s going to be Cameco, they’re going to have to take out Fission Energy too,” said Fulp.

“If you draw an openpit around Roughrider, it encroaches severely onto Fission’s ground, and there is a uranium deposit on Fission’s ground.”

Hathor this week published the results of a scoping study into Roughrider, which envisaged a five-million-pound-a-year mine for a C$567-million capital cost.

Cameco was quick to question the assumptions Hathor used in the study that SRK conducted.

The company said it was talking to other major miners and foreign utilities that might make a white knight offer.

Fission Energy climbed nearly 8% to close at C$0.70 on the TSX-V.
 

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