Wednesday 16 November 2005
ABC NT Local News

A Western Australian exploration company says it is at a loss to explain a massive discrepancy in sampling results for its uranium deposit near Alice Springs.

Deep Yellow says latest tests on samples taken from the Napperby deposit, 150 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs, show vastly less uranium than was found by three previous drilling campaigns.

Executive chairman Leon Pretorius says the results are a shock.

"I think that's putting it very mildly or lightly, I cannot tell you publicly what I said when I found out," he said.

"When you get an inconsistent value for your standard then you have reason obviously to doubt the rest of the data they've supplied you. That'd be the easy answer.

"Obviously at this point it points to the fact that maybe the laboratory used ... possibly the wrong factor when they were finalising the numbers."

But Mr Pretorius says a control sample tested at the same lab has also come back with a lower than expected reading and Deep Yellow now hopes laboratory error will explain the discrepancy.

The company has informed the Australian Stock Exchange and suspended trade, worried shareholders would panic and sell upon seeing the unexpectedly poor drill results.