Watchdog Jim Woodward of PowertechExposed.com reports that wishful Canadian uranium mining company Powertech has skirted bankruptcy by getting strategic investors to throw them $1.5 million. (Given Powertech's rock-bottom stock price, that gets you 15 million shares). According to data posted on PowertechExposed.com, Powertech has burned up $9 million over the last two years without producing an ounce of uranium. At that rate of non-production, $1.5 million will keep the companies lobbyists and lawyers lunching for another four months.
Woodward notes that strategic investors differ from normal financial investors in that they are usually seeking to control and perhaps acquire the companies in which they invest. Since Powertech is seeking permits to drill and contaminate the southern Black Hills in its quest for uranium, South Dakotans and regulators might want to know who's going to be running the company. But Powertech is keeping its investors' identities secret.
Woodward also notes a change in Powertech's press-release boilerplate:
After repeated challenges on this website to provide supporting evidence, Powertech has removed the following statement from its news releases:
"The Company's key personnel have over 200 years of experience in the uranium industry throughout the United States, and have permitted more than a dozen in-situ operations for production."
The February 12 news release includes the new language:
'The Company's key personnel have in-situ uranium experience throughout the United States and worldwide" [links mine; Jim Woodward, "Powertech to Raise $1.5 Million from Secret 'Strategic' Investors," PowertechExposed.com, 2013.02.18].
That change seems to more reasonably reflect the summaries posted on Powertech's own website, which includes mention of in-situ mining experience on two of its twelve management team member profiles (and not on the bio of its project manager in South Dakota, Mark Hollenbeck).
From a letter in the Mitchell Daily Republic:
"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has determined economic benefits to South Dakota will be minimal. Does it make sense to give our water away to a foreign company and compromise the quality of our water, so that our uranium could potentially be used against us by our enemies?"
Uranium is not the way to go for power generation based on atomic energy. Thorium Salt reactors would be much safer and cheaper to build and could be built in many capacities. Big money is behind the buggywhip of atomic energy without regard to ecology or economy or safety.
I'm not a geologist or a nuclear scientist but I wonder how great the uranium actually is in the southern black hills if the only company interested is this one.
Now again similar to drilling oil, I'm not for or against it in general, I look at the cases individually. If someone can do it safely I don't think its a terrible idea, a company on the verge of bankruptcy makes me quite nervous
Powertech is a shell company. They ain't ever going to mine an ounce of uranium on their own. Powertech as an entity is there to protect the assets and/or to hide the identity of whoever is funneling them money. Who's behind Powertech? Ultimately it could be the North Koreans or Iranians. Unless they come clean, we may never know.
Amen Donald, as with XL. Asian ownership of Canadian oil.
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Can this rush for uranium world wide be anything other than the new Cold War?
200 years experience and now international experience? I hope our DENR folks don't buy into that line of bs..
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Similar to our Deadwood Standard folks with their 10,000 years of mining experience. Maybe I heard that wrong? Or was it a 10,000 dollar bond they wanted to guarantee performance with?
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Ya know, ya just keep throwing numbers until the sheep like the recipe.
Uranium mining could devastate an already threatened part of the Black Hills hydrologic region:
http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/opinion/forum-powertech-asking-south-dakotans-to-take-huge-risk/article_8e3a2f0d-df25-5252-b9c4-d751ca25a107.html