Trigon Uranium joins potash pile-in

Surging prices for potash are turning even uranium exploration companies into plays on the coveted commodity. Trigon Uranium (TEL-V, TELWF-O) is just the latest to jump on the potash bandwagon to take advantage of the boom in worldwide fertilizer demand.

The Colorado-based uranium explorer active in the southwestern United States has taken a 50% interest for an undisclosed sum in Intercontinental Potash Corp., a privately funded Canadian company.

The announcement sent Trigon shares up 55.3%, or 13 apiece to 36.5, in mid-day trading, on a trading volume of 1 million shares.

Intercontinental Potash owns 100% of U. S. Potash Corp., a privately held Colorado-based company that holds exploration and mineral lease applications covering about 86,000 acres stretching across the “four corner states” of Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico.

Trigon will provide management services in: exploration and development land acquisition; geological and exploration planning; and financial and administrative services to both Intercontinental Potash and U. S. Potash Corp.

The move into potash comes just two years after Trigon declared it was diversifying into uranium. In April 2006, Trigon told shareholders that it was adding uranium to its existing diamond exploration portfolio to diversify risk and create value faster.

“While the returns generated by diamond deposits can be great, diamond exploration is a very expensive, lengthy and time-consuming process,” the company’s president and chief executive, George Poling, said in a statement at the time.

Now Trigon is trying to stay one step ahead of the curve with its foray into potash.

The company says its focus on uranium exploration in the same “four corner states” in which Intercontinental Potash Corp. and U. S. Potash Corp are active gives it “considerable business and geological capabilities” in the area that it can bring to bear on potash and potash-related minerals exploration.