Uranium Price Drops On Miniscule Volumes

This story features ENERGY RESOURCES OF AUSTRALIA LIMITED. For more info SHARE ANALYSIS: ERA

By Andrew Nelson

Most of the uranium world gathered for the World Nuclear Fuel Cycle conference last week in Singapore. While many were hoping this could be the event that would bring back some reason and ignite an increase in demand, the exact opposite is what ended up happening.

We’ve been looking at flat week on week pricing for a while now, but a couple of sellers entered the market with a little new supply at the wrong time and the next thing you know TradeTech’s U308 Spot Price Indicator is down US$1.35 to US$40.90 per pound. The move is on the back of just two deals that accounted for 200,000 pounds of uranium changing hands.

TradeTech speculates it was the lack of market activity and talk of new problems with Chinese import licenses that prompted a couple of sellers to lower their prices. That leaves a fairly big question: why hasn’t this big drop in the price drawn out more buyers?

There was a bit of news out of Japan last week that certainly didn’t help matters. JP Morgan reported the country had finally released the much touted new safety standards for nuclear power. “Stringent” is the adjective used by the broker to describe the new codes.

JP Morgan sees the new rules easily delaying the restart of reactors in the country. According to the broker’s strategy team, it’s possible that only 2-3 reactors will restart this autumn, which would only offset the closure of the Ohi plant in September. In fewer words: JP Morgan says depressed uranium demand could last longer than expected.

Business intelligence house GlobalData has put out a new report that predicts to a 30% increase in global nuclear energy generation by 2020. The numbers are in the same neighbourhood as what we’ve been hearing for a while now and the report cites an escalating need for power and ever increasing fossil fuel prices as driving the demand, especially amongst rapidly developing countries.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported last week that Energy Resources of Australia ((ERA)) said that an approval to construct an underground uranium mine at its Ranger mine in Kakadu National Park is expected and will help re-establish the company as one of the market’s major players.

“ERA expects to commence underground exploration drilling of the Ranger 3 Deeps exploration decline in the second quarter of 2013,” said the news report.

Yet while many may hope for higher prices, there is still very little to pin those hopes on other than the abstract truth that demand must increase over the years ahead, while supply is too short and decreasing. This fact is easily borne out by the state of the term uranium market, which was flat and transaction less once again last week.

There was no new demand at all, although one lonely utility did pick a lucky preferred supplier for mid-term deliveries. But in the end, TradeTech’s Mid-Term U308 Price Indicator remained at US$46.00/lb, while the Long-Term Price Indicator stayed put at US$57.00/lb.
 

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