NIGER

General Description of Agelal and Asekra Projects

Homeland Uranium owns 100% of the Agelal and Asekra projects, which cover a combined area of 3,751 km² over eight exclusive exploration concessions. Both uranium projects are situated in the Arlit region of Niger, and are positioned in the Tim Mersoï sedimentary basin. The Tim Mersoï Basin covers an area of about 114,000 km² in Northwest Niger and is a part of the Lullemeden basin covering Occidental Niger and Mali. The Agelal and Asekra Projects are located on the western side of the main Arlit-In-Azaoua flexure - fault. This fault is known to exercise major control on the distribution of uranium mineralization. In fact, the Tim Mersoï Basin contains all of the known uranium deposits within Niger.

Location of projects

Agelal Concession

The region is accessible by vehicle via a paved road from Niamey-Dosso-Tahoua-Agadez-Arlit. Travel duration from Niamey is about 15 hours for a trip of 1200 km. The region is also accessible by air via NigerAvia, which has two flights per week between Niamey and Arlit, and by charter flight from Paris to Agadez during the tourist season (September to May).

Both project areas are easily accessed by 4WD vehicle using GPS navigation over consolidated and moving sand dunes.

The project areas are located near the town of Arlit, which has electricity, water, fuel, and accommodation. Most of the contract services required for the project, (drilling and earth moving contractors) are available in Arlit.

Historical Work on Agelal and Asekra Projects

The discovery of uranium in the sediments of the Tim Mersoï Basin goes back to 1950. The "Commissariat de l'Énergie Atomique" (CEA) carried out the first uranium exploration in the basin that led to the exploitation of several mines in the 1970s.

Previous exploration work on the Agelal and Asekra properties has identified numerous anomalous zones of radioactivity and uranium showings. The project areas have been worked mainly by Cogema or subsidiary companies (Somair and Cominak) of Cogema since the 1960's. Most of the work completed within the Homeland concessions can be considered as grass roots which includes historical wide spaced drilling and airborne radiometric data that was made available from the work carried out by Cogema and other during the 1970's.

A brief history of work completed in the region:

• Regional geology was defined at the beginning of 1960 by the "Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minière" of France
• From 1974, the CEA has compiled geologic and structural maps at 1:200 000 and 1:50 000 scales of the Afasto, Teguidan Taghait and Teguidan Tesssoum sheets. COGEMA produced in 1981 the geologic map of the Tegama at 1:500 000 covering the southern sedimentary area of the Aïr from 06°E to 09°E and 15°N to 17°N
• The Metal Mining Agency of Japan ( MMAJ) funded an airborne radiometric and magnetic survey in 1974-75, this survey executed by Northway Survey Corp covers about a third of the area of Asekra perimeter and the SO corner of the Agelal perimeter (the survey report is not available and also neither the specifications of the geophysical instrumentation. The flight elevation was 150 metres above ground along lines spaced 500 metres with some sections at one kilometre)
• COGEMA drilled 33 deep holes at very large grid spacing of 5 km within the Agelal perimeter during a reconnaissance program in 1977

The synthesis of the previous work related to the discoveries of uranium deposits in Tim Mersoï Basin reveals the following observations:

• The economic uranium mineralization is essentially associated to sandstones and conglomerates units, inter bedded in silteous clay with a high content of organic vegetation substances, or laying on a major erosion discontinuity.
• A tectonic structural control of the uranium mineralization, particularly by the Arlit flexure-fault and its satellite fault zones.
• The presence of the mineralization in the neighbourhood of the Aïr crystalline basement, particularly in the areas of acid volcanic activity and plutonic granite.
• Uranium host formations are more recent toward the South and the West of the Mersoï Basin. Consequently, the uranium showings located above 19° N are in Devonian-Carboniferous formations while the Arlit and Akouta deposits further south are in the Permian-Carboniferous. The Imouraren and Geleli deposits south of 18°N are from Triassic and Cretaceous formations.    

There has been no significant active exploration on either the Asekra or Agelal concessions since 1978.

Work Plan for the Agelal and Asekra Projects

The majority of work completed within the Homeland concessions can be considered grass roots exploration with only historical wide spaced drilling and airborne radiometric data, over 30 years old, representing the latest exploration data available.

A systematic exploration program which begin in November 2007, includes a remote sensing survey, followed by ground geophysics and geochemistry, radon cup and MMI soil surveys, ground geophysical surveys followed by drilling.

It may also be feasible to re-enter the historical drill holes drilled by Cogema (if they are still open) and to resurvey them with gamma tools to provide reliable new data at low cost.

The second year of exploration will be reliant of positive results returned from the previous phase of exploration.

Homeland considers the proposed expenditure of US$8.71M over an initial 24-month period is consistent with the potential of the project. The results of each phase will be evaluated before proceeding to the next stage.

Agelal Property

The Agelal project area is located approximately 10km west of the town of Arlit and 180km north of the town of Agadez.

The Agelal Project is contiguous with the Somair and Cominak (Cogema subsidiary companies) uranium mines which are located immediately to the east.  In fact a large tailings from the mine is located less than 500 m from Homeland's concession boundary.   Somair produces about 2300tU per year from a number of shallow open pits that date back to 1968. Cominak produces about 2500 tU per year from underground operations, which opened in 1978.  The deposit types being explored for are sandstone hosted uranium mineralization.

Previous Work

A total of 46 deep drill holes were completed by Cogema in this project area on 5km spacing's, within a central strip of the licence (20km by 30km in area). An additional 13 holes were completed in follow up drilling by Cogema, targeting and infilling prospective zones. The regional stratigraphy is therefore well known and a number of significant uranium results have been returned over the prospective formations.

Given the wide spaced and historic nature of the drilling, the exploration potential of the Agelal Project area is considered high. The more prospective sedimentary formations will be targeted as underground operations, or in-situ leaching methods if applicable. Potential also exists for identifying uranium bearing formations in the upper formations along a number of the east northeast trending faults that splay off the main Arlit-In Azaoua flexure - fault.

Historical drill collar located on Agelal Project -Typical Desert Plains

The figure below shows a cross section of the interpreted stratigraphy in the Agelal concession. The identified prospective formations lie within 400m to 700m from surface with the favoured Guezouman Formation* sitting around 700m in depth. This suggests that the highest potential targets for the Agelal concession will be underground targets, or potentially extracted by in-situ leaching. Potential still exists that the upper units may return significant mineralization.

Cross Section view of Stratigraphy in Agelal concession

*The Guezouman Formation is the main host rock of the Uranium mineralization in the Agelal area. This formation varies from 17m to 56m in thickness.

Stratigraphic Column of the Tim Mersoï Basin 

Asekra Property

The Asekra project area is located 70km southwest of the town of Arlit and 130km northwest of the town of Agadez.

The Asekra project is approximately 40km to the west of the Imouraren deposit, on of the worlds largest known uranium deposits. The Imouraren deposit in construction at a capital cost of more than $1.4 billion, is scheduled to begin production of 700tU per year grading ~0.12%U in 2011. The Askekra project is also approximately 20 km north of the IR and Geleli deposits which have a combined reserve of 8,680 tU metal.

The Asekra Project has had little work carried out in the past. The most prospective uranium horizons expected in Asekra are the Permian and Cretaceous formations and more particularly the Tchirezerine 2 formation. This is the same formation that hosts the large tonnage lmouraren deposit. Potential also exists in identifying uranium-bearing units in the upper formations along a number of faults that are known to exist to the west of the main Arlit-In-Azaoua fault.