Not “Virginian” Enough? Dial Buford

The problem is that Virginia Uranium, the Chatham-area company, wants the General Assembly to get rid of a two-decades-old moratorium on uranium mining so they can exploit the radioactive mineral’s wealth found underneath two farms owned by the principals of the firm. The chairman is Walter Coles Sr., a former Agency for International Development official who recently gained notoriety by taking a dozen or so legislators on an expenses-paid trip to visit Paris and an abandoned uranium mine also in France.

Virginia Uranium, however, has been absorbed by a Canadian firm that used to be called Santoy Resources and has the new moniker, after its 2009 merger, of Virginia Energy Resources. So, it’s “Virginia” this and “Virginia” that for a firm that is actually based in Vancouver, British Columbia, 3,000 miles away and whose stock is traded on the Toronto bourse, not in the
U.S.

This is embarrassing because the Coles and their ilk are promoting the uranium mining plan as “Virginian.” Opponents to the mining, who fear it will ruin the rolling hills of Southside and the water supplies of several Tidewater cities, like to point that out.

What to do? Call in S. Buford Scott, according to Richmond Times Dispatch columnist Jeff Schapiro. Scott, the chairman of the Richmond brokerage of Scott & Stringfellow, is apparently recruiting high-asset investors in this state to pony up at least $25,000 each to help with the mining effort. The goal is $2.4 million and to use these anonymous investors to lobby the
General Assembly behind closed doors and, of course, anonymously, to lift the uranium ban, according to Schapiro.

I was curious about the Canadian background aspect, so I called up Tony Perri, the investor relations man of Virginia Energy Resources in Vancouver. Perri was pleasant. His voice has a Canadian lilt and not a “Virginia” drawl. He told me that the firm has raised about $17 million. He works out of an office with just a few people. They are trying to get some uranium mining started in Canada, too. Why Vancouver? “Because it’s the home of thousands of publicly-traded mining companies,” he says. Publicly-traded in Canada, that is.

Virginia Energy Resources’s stock symbol is “VAE” and the stock was going for about 17 cents (Canadian) today. Back in 2007, when global uranium prices were skyrocketing and the plan was hatched, the stock, then that of Santoy, was around $8 a share (Canadian).

So one can see why there’s still another reason to drum up Old Dominion investors — the recent nuclear disaster in Japan, coupled by Germany’s decision to shut down its nuclear reactors in the future has gutted the world market for uranium. In Virginia, France’s Areva nuclear service firm will not be hiring hundreds of workers in Newport News as planned and Dominion still is nowhere on plans for a third reactor at its North Anna plant.

It could be that S. Buford Scott’s investors could lose their shirts. Could be. But using Old Money Virginians to work behind the scenes to push this questionable and possibly environmentally disastrous project stinks just as much as the freebee trips to Paris. And it’s all so “Virginian.”

Peter Galuszka