UrAsia Energy has agreed to merge with fellow Canadian SXR Uranium One to create a world-scale producer.

AIM-quoted UrAsia and SXR Uranium One, quoted on the Toronto Venture Exchange and in Johannesburg, plan to merge by exchanging every UrAsia share for 0.45 of an SXR Uranium One share. If successful (and with no rival intervention) the deal will create a company with a combined proven and probable reserve base of 49 million lbs and total proven and probable, indicated and inferred resources of 420 million lbs.

The merger would bring UrAsia’s central Asian interests, notably Kazakhstan’s potentially rich Kharassan project, under the same corporate roof as SXR Uranium One’s Dominion project in South Africa, Honeymoon in South Australia and other interests in South Africa and Canada’s Saskatchewan Province. The two merger partners claim the combined group, to be called Uranium One, would achieve an estimated annual production of more than seven million lbs of U308 from 2008 at a decidedly economical cost, at today’s prices, of US$10 to US$12 (£5 to £6) a lb.

Advisers say the terms put a value on UrAsia of around 308p a share. That compares with today’s 293.5p, up 28.5p today, valuing the company on its own at £1.4 billion and up from 115.5p last October.

Punters might wish to cash in some of their chips, but believers in the potential of nuclear power and uranium’s role might find a combined group well placed to flourish.

UrAsia Energy	AIM	0pm	p	p
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UrAsia in £2.5bn merger			12/02/2007
Newcomer - UrAsia Energy			25/08/2006