American Lithium updates its Peruvian uranium count at Macusani

American Lithium — yes, a company named for lithium reporting on a uranium project — published an updated mineral resource estimate for its Macusani project in southeastern Peru on November 2. The deposit now carries 57.16 million pounds of U3O8 in the Measured and Indicated categories (the counted-with-confidence bucket), plus another 65.32 million pounds in the Inferred bucket (the educated-guess bucket). The grades are very low: 179 to 213 parts per million U3O8 in M&I, which works out to roughly 0.018 to 0.021 percent uranium in the rock. This is a resource count, not fresh drill holes — so there are no intercepts to measure.

Here is the part that matters. The company is clear that the jump from its last estimate — a March 2015 report, over a decade old — is mostly a bookkeeping story, not a geology story. The release says the differences reflect “updated reporting requirements and economic constraints rather than changes to the underlying geological model.” Two levers did the lifting: a long-term uranium price of US$100 a pound (the old study used US$50), and a low cut-off grade of about 47 ppm uranium for the open-pit shell (prior work used 75 ppm globally). A higher price and a lower cut-off both make more low-grade rock “count” as a resource. The pounds are real; so are the assumptions behind them. The person who signed off, QP Stewart Nupen of Deloitte, “previously contributed to the development of the MRE while employed by TMC” — prior involvement with the same deposit that the text does not reconcile. The stock is down 18.3 percent over three months, sitting between the broad uranium benchmark (down 15.8 percent) and junior uranium peers (down 21.0 percent) — sector tide, no company-specific bid.

What to watch. The company says an updated Preliminary Economic Assessment is “well underway,” with no completion date given, and the NI 43-101 technical report for this estimate is due on SEDAR+ within 45 days of the release. Expansion and infill drilling, metallurgical piloting, a PFS, and the long-promised Macusani spin-out are all stated but undated. The caveats are the story: resources are not reserves and have no demonstrated economic viability; the economics hang on that US$100 price; and Note 8’s claim that “there are currently no known risks that could materially affect potential development” is an unusually absolute line for a pre-PEA uranium project in Peru — read it with that in mind.