News

March 09, 2010

Forte Energy Continues To Hit The Grades On Its Mauritanian Uranium Prospects

By Alastair Ford

Mark Reilly has moved to London. This news may not yet have made it into the society pages of the Evening Standard or the Telegraph, but it is certainly good news for London-based investors in Forte Energy, the company that’s lately been pushing ahead with some promising-looking uranium projects in Mauritania and Guinea. One of Forte’s directors, Lady Barbara Judge, is already in the UK full time, but she’s a non-executive, and is anyway, as far as Forte is concerned, is focussed more on forming relationships with end-users, than with the operational aspects of developing uranium mines. Her presence in London wasn’t enough.

“The reality was that I was spending most of my time here”, says Mark, after a slightly mournful remark about the current weather in Perth. “Our biggest shareholders are here or across the channel in France”, the French shareholder being Areva, the great French nuclear power giant. Managing a mining company with rapidly developing operations half a world away from a Perth office would tax even the most enthusiastic of mining executives. In Forte’s case, given that its’ assets are in Francophone...