Very much for joining us. I'm Nicholas Read from Read Corporate, and on behalf of DevEx Resources, ASX ticker DEV, it's a great pleasure to welcome you all to today's investor call and shareholder webcast. Well, DevEx has emerged as a new force in Australian uranium exploration, and that momentum has accelerated under Managing Director Marnie Finlayson's leadership. The company has executed a clear and disciplined strategy, consolidating a dominant land position across the Northern Territory's McArthur Basin, one of the most prospective uranium regions globally, and backing that with a strong balance sheet following its capital raise last year. What's particularly compelling, and what today's presentation focuses on, is the quality and scale of the exploration pipeline now coming into view.
It's my great pleasure this morning to introduce Marnie Finlayson and the company's Technical Director, Brendan Bradley, who join us from Sydney to take us through this targeting work and the upcoming drill programs in detail. By way of introduction, the way this presentation will work is that Marnie and Brendan will step us through the slide deck, and then we'll take questions from the floor. All participants are in a listen-only mode to start with. Following the presentation, we'll start the Q&A, initially for teleconference participants, followed by online questions from webcast participants. For teleconference participants, if you wish to ask a question, you'll need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad.
For webcast participants, if you wish to ask a question, please do so by selecting the Live Q&A tab located on the right-hand side of your webcast screen. Well, without further ado, I'd like to hand over the floor to Marnie and Brendan to take us through this morning's presentation, which we're all very much looking forward to hearing. Marnie, please take it away.
Thanks, Nicholas, and thanks for the kind introduction. As Nick said, I'm Marnie Finlayson, the Managing Director of DevEx Resources, and I'm joined today by Brendan Bradley, our Technical Director, who has led the development and will lead the execution of our exploration strategy. It is my great pleasure to present my first webcast as Managing Director after joining DevEx in early December last year. As many of you have heard, there are three key reasons why I joined DevEx. Number one was to be a part of the Tim Goyder stable. With a track record of building businesses, as you see recently from both Liontown and Minerals 260 , as well as getting strong capital market support. The second reason was the uranium thematic.
I'm passionate not just about the energy transition, but also energy addition, as we see from the world's insatiable appetite for energy, I firmly see as nuclear energy being a clear, clean, base load power solution. Finally, the prospectivity of the land position we have in the Northern Territory, which is the subject of our presentation today. We committed in February this year to develop an exploration strategy, and we are presenting that to you today. We will be making forward-looking statements today, please read this at your leisure. A little bit more about DevEx. We conducted a strategy refresh in February this year, and we are now laser-focused on uranium with an unwavering belief in the market and the world's need for this fuel.
We have a plan to deliver shareholder value in the short- term through the drill bit, and in the longer- term through delivering uranium into this growing supply deficit we see in the mid to late 2030s. And we do all of this with a strong focus on building stakeholder relationships, seeing these as a critical foundation for growth. As you can see in our corporate overview, we are well-funded, and after the Alligator Energy transition closes this quarter, we'll have AUD 28 million in the bank, which will support the exploration strategy that we are presenting today. Steven Clark from Euroz Hartleys commenced coverage of DevEx in mid-April. Finally, I wanted to point out that Andy Brown commenced as a Technical Advisor for DevEx and has supported the development of this strategy.
For those of you who don't know Andy, he spent 27 years with Pico World's End, North, and Rio Tinto. He was an exploration geologist on Jabiluka and was a Senior Geo at Ranger, which means he knows this region well. Additionally, he led the discovery team for NexGen's Arrow Deposit in 2014, and he has provided significant input into the program we are presenting today. Why do we like the market? Well, as you can see here, there has been significant changes over the past months. The way I see it, we have two crises and one solid solution.
The potential long-term impact of the Hamas crisis can be seen by looking back to the effects of the uranium price the two years following the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, where the uranium price went up 400%. AI and data center energy demand continues to grow, and this year, this demand will equal 1,100 TWh, which is the same as Japan's national grid usage this year. Government policy is shifting as a result of this, a recent example is the U.S. introducing the 30x 30 policy. What is the impact? Well, for me, it really widens the supply deficit that you see on this graph. That is the investment thesis for DevEx. We want to find, develop, and supply into this growing supply gap in the mid to late 2030s.
We have a long-term aspiration to be a 10-million-pound producer. People ask me, what does that mean? Well, for me, it's three individual assets producing 3 million-4 million pounds per year. How will we do this? We do it through three pillars. First, to explore and discover in the Northern Territory. We believe this is the most highly prospective region in the world, and is the subject of this presentation today. Pillar two is through M&A, to bring more advanced assets into our portfolio where we can bring our experience and skill set to bear to bring that uranium into that supply deficit. Finally, we will partner to deliver. We are building early and enduring relationships with key stakeholders across all of our portfolio to ensure that we have those relationships in place as a platform for delivering our strategy.
Final, this is underpinned by, firstly by our team's unwavering belief in uranium and also by our values. These aren't a fancy acronym. This is how we work and how you will see us every day. Pillar one, this is why we're here today, and as you see on this picture here, we're focused on the McArthur Basin in the Northern Territory in Australia. After recent acquisitions, we will hold a commanding land position in this region with highly prospective leases. Think of this basin as a bowl. The center of the basin is quite deep, and therefore there's no economic discoveries to be found. We are focused to the north and the south of this region, as you can see on the map where the dark blue is our lease area. Why do we like this area?
Well, we're hunting for high-grade unconformity-style deposits. I like to think of the McArthur as Australia's Athabasca. On this slide, you can see the Athabasca Basin in Canada on the right-hand side and the McArthur Basin in Australia on the left-hand side. The Athabasca is home to NexGen's Arrow, Cigar Lake, and many other well-known deposits. These are to scale, really shows you the prospectivity and the landholding that we have in Australia in similar geology. In the Athabasca, it costs about AUD 1,000 a meter to drill diamond drilling, and in the McArthur it's about a quarter of that. In the Athabasca, there's over 60 companies exploring, developing, and delivering, whereas in the McArthur Basin, there's about four. In the Athabasca, since 2000, over AUD 5 billion has been spent on exploration activities.
In the whole of the Northern Territory, that number is less than AUD 750 million. These numbers are nothing about the geology and the prospectivity of this region. They are all impacted by changing territory and government policy, and therefore a lack of market support to fund exploration activities in the Northern Territory. This has now changed. There is increasing market support for uranium, and also we have strong Northern Territory government support, and this was confirmed when we met with the territory ministers only a few months ago. We have strong traditional owner support. Northern Territory recently added uranium to their critical minerals list, and there are also opportunities for co-funding for uranium exploration. A little bit more about unconformity-style deposits. Traditionally, unconformity-style deposits were thought to exist on the unconformity line, as shown in the Athabasca with an example like Cigar Lake.
It was through the discovery of Arrow that it was found that these deposits actually go deep into the crystalline basement. If you look at the picture of the McArthur Basin, the mined as uranium deposits here of Ranger and Nabarlek were both open at surface and outcropping. Therefore, were picked up very easily through the radiometric surveying as the sandstone cover had worn away over billions of years. The secret to targeting in the McArthur Basin is understanding the indicators that exist and tell us that a giant may lay below. The team has used learnings from Jabiluka and Angularli, shown here undercover, to inform our program that Brendan will cover today. Why do we like these deposits? Well, they're significantly richer and larger than other deposits within Australia.
This table was compiled by our team using data from S&P. You can see tonnage on the y-axis, grade on the x-axis, and therefore scale of deposit sitting across. As you can see with the red dots here, the unconformity-style deposits stand out, and that is why we have strategically chosen to build our land position in the McArthur, home to Australia's richest and largest uranium deposits. Following the acquisition of Alligator Energy's tenure and Rio Tinto's applications, we received a 1 TB drive of data from Alligator Energy. We had access to their core, and we brought together a team with very different perspectives, including Andy Brown, who I mentioned earlier, and also with significant input from Matt Yates, our Independent Director.
It really has been geo-fest in our office for the past three months. The data has provided regional perspective and identified significant opportunities that we have across our expanded portfolio, as well as further validating our existing targets. On this slide, you can see in the drill ready and application to drill columns, the historical tenure and targets that we have talked about previously. The news here is with the additional overlay of data, we like these even more. Brendan will cover that shortly. Behind it, we have a solid pipeline of targets. We plan to invest in on-the-ground field activities, surveys to vector in and further improve our chances of drill success. That's what you see represented in the target definition and field confirmation areas.
Finally, further out, we need to move these targets from application through to exploration license. This is a known process for DevEx and therefore is de-risk. We really like the indications, particularly at Mustang, which Brendan will talk about shortly, and it has as much prospectivity as Big Radon, which we'll drill this year. We just need to do the work to access and refine these targets. We'll also use state-of-the-art hyperspectral survey to understand alteration signatures beneath the surface, and Brendan will talk more to that shortly. I won't steal any more of his thunder, but I would like to say how pleased I am with the resultant pipeline that you see in front of you. We have prospectivity across 2026, 2027, and 2028, and we are well funded to deliver. I'll now hand over to Brendan.
Thanks, Marnie. We'll make a geologist of you yet. Marnie's been sitting in a few of our geological meetings and following along with all of our techno speak, and it's been good. To Marnie's talking of the pipeline we just presented before, what we're looking at now is, with the map that you're seeing, is a much larger consolidated ground package. There's two things with that besides saying larger. The important word for me is contiguous, and now that we've acquired and are finalizing the acquisition of the Alligator ground, this contiguous ground package not just provides our ability to explore from north to south unimpeded, but also the ability to bring together another large dataset and bring these two datasets together that we, that Marnie was mentioning earlier.
These two datasets, both DevEx's original and the ones that we've just acquired, it now provides that contiguous ability to compare the full region of this area and identify not just what we've already recognized as targets within our own ground, but also bring the other targets and put them all into context. One of the key data packages that we've brought together is the geophysical airborne magnetics radiometric datasets, which I'll talk to, and hopefully not lean on too heavily, but point to various targets that we really like and what they mean along strike from each other.
Key to that is the recognition of several corridors which are noted on these maps, which include the Nabarlek corridor, known and centered on the old historical Nabarlek mine, which is the Nabarlek mining lease that we own, where 24 million pounds of uranium was historically mined from the deposit. That fault zone continues down south, crosses what was originally our boundary onto the Alligator tenements, and continues south down into the Caramel region. These corridors we regard as continuously prospective. Our next step is now that we've got all this data, is to hone in on where the best drill opportunities lie, some of which we're gonna get going with in the coming month, and the other ones that we'll be working up.
As we sort of move on with the next slide, I'll be taking you into some of the immediate drill targets that we've got planned, and then also step out into some of the targets that we've still got to work up. We wanna move them through as quickly as possible in line with the 2026 drill program strategy, and then the broader strategy as we gain access to these areas and refine these targets as we move ahead. I'm just zooming right in now to some of the drill targets that we have, including starting in the north, our northern-most tenement boundaries up around Deep Yellow's Angularli uranium deposit.
The tenements that DevEx has here were just recently granted late last year, or last year, and then we've been on the ground doing the work last year and the refinement of the targets this year, ready ahead for this year's drilling season. It's important to mention when we talk about other projects which we like equally in grounds and applications, that we already have been working in the area, moving these tenements forth into grant, getting access to these areas through heritage, environment, and the like, lining up ready for drilling as we look for with our Sandfire prospect up here, which is located to the south of the Angularli deposit, which is, you know, a quite a high-grade deposit to the northwest of our area. We've been on the ground. We've done surface geochemistry.
We're seeing pathfinder geochemistry that's pointing us in the right direction. Likewise, we've been doing ground gravity, which is what that colorful image is showing you. That's recognizing the fault zones, and the fault zones is the zones where the uranium is moving along those pathways and hopefully depositing in areas that we like and, especially complications in the center where two faults meet within our tenements, down in the, in the left where that blue bubble box is pointing to.
Zooming in on this area, as an example of consolidation of data is we've recently brought all the magnetics back together again, it's given us that ability to really become confident with what we're seeing as far as what that fault zone looks like coming down to the southeast of Angularli on what we call the Angularli fault zone. That fault can be seen, there's a couple subparallel structures that we see also that are interesting, the complication that we like, because complication slows uranium-bearing fluids down and creates the ability for them to deposit in ways, is where both those that northeastern fault termed Sandfire fault and also the Angularli fault meet together in that area where that big, bright white circular feature is, that magnetic feature, that becomes like target number one.
Key to what I'm delivering with this messaging is that what we're doing is building different layers of data that all point in one direction, and that's what we like about this. It's not just relying on one data set, but multiple data sets are saying, "This is where I like, and this is where we wanna go." As a priority drill target for this year, these are the areas at Sandfire that we're focused in on around those fault zones, but especially in that X marks the spots where that white, where that white magnetic blip looks like. Sandfire's important to DevEx, and then as we step out, we start to now understand what these corridors look like.
Just zooming right out, to see the regional area, what I'm showing you is from Sandfire right on the top left, right down to where historically we were drilling a year or two ago at U40 prospect. We're now seeing these fault corridors now that we've merged these magnetic data sets together between Alligator's tenements, which we're just acquiring in the center, and DevEx's tenements. We can now map these fault corridors out quite well. Of course, on the left-hand side, you have the Angularli fault zone, and then you've got a Jet fault corridor, where we're seeing targets that we've yet to put boots on the ground and follow- up on. They're interesting targets. They're radiometric anomalies. They sit in interesting positions. These are targets we'll progress this year.
Likewise, further out to the east along the Mustang fault, where there are targets we plan to get to, there are applications. There's a large radiometric anomaly, which is what all that red splodge looks like in the center of that area called Mustang. It's 7 km long, and there's a number of other targets along strike north and south of that. Nobody's been out there before. It's an application. We've gotta get the licenses granted, work through access, and get out to something that's 7 km long, and we're excited about doing that.
Although it's sitting on the far left of the pipe that we presented earlier, it's nonetheless very important to move these targets through because we're equally excited about getting onto the ground and following up and seeing what is that radiometric anomaly, why is it there, why does it associate with that fault zone, and we're pretty excited about it. Similarly, in the Nabarlek area, where DevEx has been exploring over the last couple years in the region, some people are familiar with this diagram. It's a bird's eye view of that area around the Nabarlek mining lease, which is that red outline where the black bubble box is pointing to. We're particularly interested in this data set, which is called Radon Cup or Radon Track Etch data set. Every single point is measuring the diffusion of radon coming through the ground in that spot.
By measuring that, what we're looking for is possibly the decay chain from a uranium occurrence or a uranium deposit. As it decays to eventually wanna become lead, it goes through its path to become radon and radon gas. We're measuring radon gas coming through the surface. As a result, what we're seeing, especially in the area south of Nabarlek, where the blue bubble box is called Big Radon. It's called Big Radon for a reason. It's 3 km long. The columns of magenta is just measuring how much radon is in that area, or similarly to the north of that at KP, where the other blue bubble box is. Both of those targets become a priority drill target for this year at both Big Radon and KP.
Equally 3 km long and 2 km long, these are large systems of radon coming through the surface around sandstone, where normal traditional discoveries like Nabarlek cannot be achieved because it's not outcropping. As a result, we're keen to drill for the first time holes into both KP and Big Radon and see what lies beneath. What lies beneath, that's what we've been refining ahead of this drill program. It's such that we've been on the ground at both Big Radon and KP, and we've been doing ground gravity surveys. The purpose of the ground gravity surveys is to see what these faults are doing. Are there faults? First question we have is there actually a fault? The ground gravity is giving us the confidence because we can start to see these faults in the ground gravity.
Equally important is that we can also see complications going on within these faults, which become priority within a priority of how we're going to drill test these targets. The image on the left is Big Radon. It's the northern half of Big Radon. The black lines are the faults that we're interpreting from the ground gravity. Interestingly, where that fault complication is, where the big blue bubble box is pointing you to, is an area where our airborne radiometric surveys found a very strong radiometric anomaly. That's the area where probably the most strongest radon is coming through. Strong radon, a nice fault complication in an area that we want to go drill test. Similarly to KP, we've got again a 2 km long Radon Cup anomaly. That's the colorful magenta and red colors that you're seeing there.
Likewise, the ground gravity sees a fault zone directly associated with that Radon anomaly. Similarly, there's a small spring that's putting Radon out at the surface during the wet season, and it interests us greatly. Like Sandfire, we're talking about multiple layers, and what that brings is a refinement of a drill target. When we come out there with a drill rig and we've got a 3 km long target like Big Radon, where do we wanna drill first? The red splodge is the best place, in my view, to put the first holes, and we'll step out on scale as we drill it with a discipline about looking for large-scale deposits. That's the focus for what we wanna do in this area.
You know, now with the acquisition of what we've been doing, now with the acquisition, for example, of Alligator Energy's tenements, we've incorporated all of their data. We see opportunities there. We knew there would be opportunities, we're excited about those, but we've got to now move them forward as quickly as possible ahead of the 2026 drill campaign. We like what we're seeing down there. We've pulled the data. We've been out on the ground. We've also been at prospects like Orion East, one of the blue bubble boxes there, where you can actually walk to the surface and you can find fault breccias with outcropping uranium mineralization in that fault breccia. We reported some simple chipping from the other month, from that area where historical chipping rock chipping has gone up to 2%. This is part of a bigger story.
This is part of these bigger fault corridors that you're seeing in there. On the right, you've got the Nabarlek fault zone continuing down, and on the left-hand side, there's the Khyber Pass fault zone, which equally extends into DevEx's old historical tenements, but now the broader tenement package. Flanking those two faults are flanking the historical deposit known as Caramel, the uranium deposit down there on the southern side. The excitement we get about it, I'll probably say excite too many times, I've got to be careful when I get into this geology, but is that we're seeing the geological formations down there at Caramel that look very similar to the rock types that we see historically over at the old Jabiluka deposit or the Jabiluka deposit down to the south, to the southwest. You know, Australia's biggest uranium deposit in my view.
The rock types down there are the similar type of rock types that we're seeing at Caramel. We're seeing rocks that look identical in many ways, and what we can say is that, okay, we've got this right sort of stratigraphy package. What we now have to do is take these fault corridors and marry them up with these right rocks and see where we wanna go. Hence what I'm pointing to with all these blue bubble boxes saying, "What about this radiometric target up at Caramel North? What's to do there? It hasn't been drilled yet." Caramel East, is there an opportunity over here? The geologists, they've got a busy year ahead of them.
We've got to not just focus on the drilling that we're going to do, but we've got to focus on the sort of geological structural targets, putting them together, and then determining which are the ones that we wanna drill, which are the ones we wanna move forward fast. You know, just to emphasize Caramel, just so you point it across, is this is a cross-section through Caramel. You can see the historical drilling in the area directly above that carbonate unit or marble unit. Anybody who's familiar with the Jabiluka deposit will immediately twig to that. These carbonate units become really great host rocks, especially at the top end of these carbonate units for big deposits. You know, Alligator and Queensland Mines drilled this deposit. You can see the results they're getting drilling uranium.
They're a thick carbonate, yet those last two holes on the left-hand side have only got a little bit of carbonate unit and no uranium. What immediately jumps out at us is that feels like a fault. Where's that fault going, what we need to do to find that geology reoccurring on the other side of that fault becomes something that while we're already into the drill core, pulling the drill core apart, looking to see and create a geological model that equals drill target for us. Last point and the last map, promise, is stepping out. Again, in scale, when we talk about these fault corridors, we can see there the radiometric anomalies are saying, "Okay, here's an interesting spot.
Here's an interesting spot where uranium is leaking through these fault zones. We go into these big yellow areas, which is the McArthur Basin sandstone sitting over the top. It's masking the ability for uranium deposit to reveal itself. There's radon coming through there saying somewhere around there it may be occurring. What we're now looking at is with the combination of these two datasets, or at least the combination of both DevEx's and Alligator's datasets, is that we're also seeing an opportunity with huge data gaps. These data gaps, especially in hyperspectral, which is a fancy word for a plane or a satellite that looks around at the sandstone units and looks for alteration minerals around that.
Why we're interested in alteration minerals is both in the Athabasca Basin and also within the McArthur Basin, is a uranium deposit might be blind, and it may stop at that unconformity, but alteration continues into the sandstone. From time to time, that alteration can be mapped with a hyperspectral tool, whether it's on a plane, satellite, or in your hand. You can start to see these hyperspectral anomalies. We don't know what we're going to find in this area other than what we're seeing at Big Radon, where a historical, diamond-focused or De Beers were doing hyperspectral up in that little area up there, and we know that we can do it.
We wanna do it over this whole package such that we can again hone in on multiple layers of data that says, "I'm prospective, drill me." That's what we're looking for with this. Data gaps, data that we have, and naturally following these corridors becomes a focus for the team in addition to the drill prep plans that we've got. Hence why you see a lot of bubbles or a lot of circles on that pipeline or corridor, but it gives us that focus to really round out on what we're doing up in the Nabarlek area.
No less important is to the south of the southern part of the McArthur Basin is Murphy West project, where we're earning in on a large ground package located to the east of Laramide's Westmoreland uranium deposit in the Northern Territory is where we're exploring. Westmoreland is obviously in Queensland, but the continuation of that geological package, we've been doing a work. We've had boots on the ground last year doing geochemistry. We've flown radiometrics and magnetics. That's identifying areas of interest. The boots on the ground have been doing geochemistry, and we're applying pathfinder geochemistry similar to what we know about Westmoreland deposit and the work that we've done there with collaboration with Laramide. The targets that we're seeing there in these areas in the red boxes are becoming a focus point for drilling for 2026.
We're refining these targets and for reason to show is two of these targets up in the north. We haven't gotten into fancy names yet, they're just areas H and areas G and areas B. Areas B on the left-hand side, what you're seeing is radiometrics. There's a radiometric anomaly, which is the solid color. That got our interest. The magnetics, which is the gray underneath, got our interest because there's a fault zone associated with that radiometric anomaly. The boots on the ground has then applied uranium pathfinders, that's not uranium in that pathfinder list, but uranium pathfinders similar to Westmoreland. We're seeing geochemical anomalies that pinpoint straight over the top of these radiometric anomalies, and the data will show you as you move away, so too does the anomaly move away.
With these multiple layers of reasons, we become pretty keen on this area. We have a little bit of refinement to do with these targets, specifically because of the scale. You've got 1 km, 2 km scale bars down there. These are large, long targets where we're gonna drill our first holes. We've got a budget for the drilling, but we'll likely get on the ground, do some gravity, and just like what we did with Sandfire and Big Radon, is see if we can just fine-tune the drill targets ahead of the dry season and get the rigs on the ground and start working this target in conjunction with what we're doing up in the Nabarlek area. It's a watch this space. It's early days.
We've got to prove that something lies beneath, and we're keen to see what happens with that work that we're going to do. None of this can be made achievable from a momentum point of view without being on the ground and being familiar with the area and also having good relations and good understanding between both sides of the fence, whether it's DevEx and the government, and understanding what the government requires to be in order to drill and lodge our drilling permit applications, or likewise with our traditional owners, our community, our landowners in the area, and building that working relationship so that we understand what is important to them, and likewise, they understand what's important to us, and so that relationship keeps working in tandem with each other.
All important and all important pillars for what Marnie alluded to earlier in the presentation, but important for DevEx because this gives us that ability to keep a strong momentum with what we want to do. Marnie, I might leave you to round up.
All right. Well, I think Brendan's covered the detail of what our plans are for this season really well. All I wanted to say is how proud we are of the work that's been completed to develop this strategy. As I said, it's been fantastic to watch the team work through this in the office. It's, as I said, it's been geofence, we're really looking forward to delivering the results to our shareholders over the three-year period that we've outlined. We will let you know as soon as drilling commences, we will provide regular updates on our progress. We are well-resourced to deliver this, including with diesel, we are funded to deliver the full exploration strategy. We really do thank you for your ongoing support. I'll now hand over to Nicholas to facilitate the Q&A.
Thanks very much, Marnie. Just a reminder to everyone who's listening, for those who are on the teleconference, if you'd like to ask a question, please press the star key followed by one on your telephone keypad. For those who are on the webcast, please use the live Q&A tab located on the right-hand side of your webcast screen. We'll deal with telephone questions first. If I could just hand over to Cam to check if there's anyone on the call there.
Thank you. We are showing no questions at this time. Just a reminder, if you would like to register for a phone question, it is star then one on your phone, and then just waiting for your name to be announced.
Thanks, Cam. We might deal with a couple of the webcast questions first, just while we wait for the teleconference questions to form. Marnie, you did mention diesel. There was a question from a shareholder just on that note. We've been hearing a lot about, obviously, diesel constraints and fuel supply constraints. Can you just elaborate a bit on that and how secure your access to diesel supply is?
Yeah, thanks for the question. Yeah, we got on the front foot of this. It was probably a couple of months ago, wasn't it, Brendan? Once we started to see what was happening play out. I wanna call out, Steve, one of our senior fieldies, has worked really hard to secure that diesel. He's been using a lot of his networks, and trying to find storage has actually been the biggest challenge for us. We're confident we've got the diesel procured personally and also through our drilling partners to support this full program this year.
Fantastic. Thanks, Marnie. Another question that's just popped up just on your acquisition strategy. I think the reference to one of your last bullets in your preso where you say you're targeting value accretive acquisition opportunities. Question is, are there particular regions that you're focusing on? To put it another way, where would you not go?
Let's just talk about the regions we would go. Our focus for that is in Australia and the Americas, more broadly is the way that we've been looking at it. Brendan and the team have built up a fantastic database over many years of potential targets, so we've really leaned into that and given that a refresh. We are looking at hard rock, so we like the simplicity of that. Unless, you know, the ISR comes with a broader acquisition. For us, it's hard rock. The other point that we look at there is simple metallurgy. The reason we do that, seeing sort of hard rock mines are easier to build and to bring online, then simple metallurgy is a known metallurgical process.
This is all about what we've talked about with the investment thesis for DevEx, is bringing online that uranium to fill into that supply deficit. Having those formed, firm foundational partnerships with stakeholders to support permitting and delivery, having a simple simplicity in our mining processes and metallurgical process so we can ramp- up and deliver into that supply gap.
I'll just add to that, is part of what the ambition that Marnie presented earlier is also this AUD 10 million per annum producer, and it's a nice round number. What it does is it gives us the ability to focus on assets where we can also grow out from as well. When we read that, you can look at some uranium assets in certain jurisdictions, and we jurisdictionally want to make sure we're in the right areas for production. You wanna also see that ability to grow out from that makes sense with as a keystone foundation. Similar to Nabarlek, a more advanced acquisition is what we would be looking for, where you can grow out from.
You can see, no different to gold M&A or anything else, you can see that growth pathway to achieve that goal rather than isolate yourself in another small jurisdiction. Known endowment is very important.
I think the other thing, just to add to that, is this is where the partnership of partner of choice really comes in as well. Brendan has been for years, and my work has been really focused on building relationships across the industry in my first five months. That's really important, 'cause I firmly believe there is an opportunity for companies to realize greater value for all of their shareholders through working together. Structuring around what those opportunities look like, we're open to many different structures to deliver that value for other companies and for ours collectively because of the need that we see coming in in the uranium market.
Excellent. Thanks, Marnie. I might just ask Cam to quickly re-prompt on the telephone queue before we deal with our next webcast question here
Thank you. Showing no questioners at this time, a reminder you can register by pressing star then one on your phone and waiting for your name to be announced. Thank you.
Thanks, Cam. Marnie, the next question here on the webcast is, "Can you please explain the Cameco clawback terms to investors and the pros and cons of this? For example, is it a large proportion of the potential exploration area?
I might pass on to Brendan for that one. He's got intimate knowledge of these terms.
Yeah. The clawback relates to the immediate areas surrounding the Nabarlek mining lease where we've been exploring. A clawback offers the ability if DevEx was to make a big discovery over a certain size, and the details are in there, that they can come back and buy back in at a, at a multiple. I think from memory it's 4x or 5x the value of the cost of exploration in that area. It's not for the larger area. For example, Sandfire has no clawback. The new tenements that we're getting granted does not have clawback and likewise to the south, not. If you go, if people want the exact details, I believe it's in the back in the, in our announcements in table ones.
Excellent. Thanks, Brendan.
Oh, sorry, Nick. Can I just sort of add to it that, you know, seeing Cameco back in isn't necessarily a negative thing. To be honest, you've got a well-established uranium explorer in coming back into the area and for the ground that we've got. You know, we would certainly like to mine it ourselves as well.
Absolutely. Another question from a shareholder here: "Do you have a clearer date for the start of drilling yet?
Once it dries out.
The sun. We look at the sun. We're, we're just watching the lows, and at the moment it looks like it's drying out. Then, I would say we're currently scheduling, the team are on the ground looking at the roads and the tracks and just fixing up access into the area. We're currently aiming for around, I'll give you a rough time, but just north of, just north of the 15th of June, around about the 20th of June, subject to weather and access.
Excellent. Just a follow-up to that, when could we start to expect assay results or results from the field?
Always an important question. Hopefully from the first meter when we get the best result. The program we do, naturally we also do downhole gamma. We get results. The plan is that when we see significant results, we'll keep our shareholders informed, but we'll also keep our shareholders informed along the way on how we're progressing. Where we wanna be drilling as quickly as possible and start drilling, naturally as fast as possible where that access is. I've got a hit list that we would wanna be drilling these targets on, the ones we have preferred and that, likewise, the drill rig will determine where it wants to go first in that area.
Fantastic. I think we've cleaned up all the webcast questions. I'll just check one more time. It doesn't look like we've got any on the, on the telephone. Marnie, I might just hand back to you to close us out with some final comments.
Excellent. Thank you, Nick. Thank you everyone for joining this call and for those of you that watch the recording. As I said before, when we initially released our revised strategy in February, we said we're laser focused on uranium and that we would come back to the market by the end of April to show us, to show the market what our three-year exploration strategy would be. We've met that commitment. I'm really pleased at how our pipeline looks. It shows, for me, the prospectivity of this land position we have and really shows the weight and the strength of the acquisition of both the Alligator Energy leases and also the Rio Tinto applications.
The other thing that's really stood out to me in this process is the power of different perspectives and different views to really build what we believe is a solid pipeline of prospectivity across not just this year, it's also next year and the following year. We're really looking forward to delivering that to you and providing you with regular updates on how we're progressing. I really thank you for joining the call, and also call out to Brendan and his team for the great work pulling this together. Thank you.