Thursday, 11 January, 2007

by Mandi Zonneveldt and Alison Bevege
Courier Mail

IT'S the uranium rush that has pitted the Chinese against a midnight pegger.
The bounty? Two potentially lucrative uranium deposits in the Northern Territory called Angela and Pamela.

The hunters – six Chinese companies, including Sinosteel and the giant state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation, and a prospector named Norm.

Just days after Australia ratified a key agreement to sell uranium to China, the scramble to secure supplies has begun.

The Northern Territory Government yesterday confirmed that six Chinese companies were among more than 40 vying for the rights to explore the Angela and Pamela prospects.

The Courier-Mail revealed last month that the China National Nuclear Corporation had teamed with Chinese investment giant CITIC to bid for a licence.

But the rush to explore the prospects about 25km south of Alice Springs has hit a hurdle.

While the Chinese were submitting their applications by remote, Norm McCleary pegged the ground the old-fashioned way – and he is taking the NT Government to court to keep it.

Mr McCleary is seeking an injunction in the Darwin Supreme Court preventing the Government from deciding who will be granted exploration rights until his case is heard.

Mr McCleary yesterday rated his chances as 60/40, but said the battle was worth it.

"You're talking an in-ground prospect of between $1 billion and $2 billion and there's only two tickets in the game, my ticket and the NT Government's ticket," he said.

"You don't get a chance to buy a ticket in a two-ticket $1 billion lottery very often."

Mr McCleary, who has a string of mining floats, including Arafura Resources, hatched a plan to peg the ground as soon as he heard it was on the market.

"The Government had advertised that the ROs (reservation from occupation) would expire at 12pm on the 6th of December, so therefore you're able to start pegging and apply the first nanosecond past 12 o'clock, so that is what we prepared."

The prospecting veteran and his team arrived in Alice Springs a few days before the 6th. They hired four-wheel-drives and with carefully calibrated computers set out into the Outback after dark.

"We all had individual places to go because we wanted to be able to time our pegging almost to literally the first second past 12," he said.

"When the clock struck 12, the hammers started to hit straight after it," he said. "It was a beautiful night. We even had a full moon. You couldn't have picked better pegging conditions."

Mr McCleary made two applications to the NT Department of Mines to access the land.

He claims in court documents the department did not follow correct procedure when dealing with his application, unfairly denied consent for him to enter the land and did not provide reasons for their refusal.

NT Department of Mines spokesman Stephen Yates said the department could not make a decision on the Angela and Pamela prospects while the matter was before the courts.

"Because the matter is before the courts, we can't make any comment and the timeframe for it to be resolved is entirely up to the courts," he said.

A decision had been expected by April.

A directions hearing will take place at the Darwin Supreme Court next week.

The case comes as the debate over the development of new uranium mines in Australia builds steam, with the Labor Party expected to overturn its policy banning new mines at its conference in April.

The gap between supply and demand has seen uranium prices double from about $US35 a pound last January to $US72 this week.