The Vancouver-based Max Resource Corp. has received permission from the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining to begin exploratory drilling on 3,900 acres of land it holds 20 miles northwest of Delta.

"We've been lining this project up for months now," Max Resource spokesman Leonard MacMillan said. "And if everything goes as planned - if the rig is available and the weather holds - we hope to begin drilling the first of six holes by the end of the month."

Max Resources is a junior mining company. Its financial resources are limited but it hopes to establish that there is enough uranium on its property to attract the attention of a larger company that would be interested in developing a mine. Max then could share in any proceeds in return for contributing its property to the project.

MacMillan maintains there is a good chance the company will find uranium. Its 196 claims initially were explored during the early 1980s by Phillips Uranium, but that effort was terminated because of continuing fallout from the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in 1979.

"We need to get in there and further delineate what we have," McMillan said, noting that Clancy J. Wendt, Max Resource's vice president of exploration, was with Phillips Uranium in the 1980s and supervised its drilling program on the claims.

Over the past several years, a looming shortage of uranium to fuel the nation's power plants has pushed up the price of the radioactive metal. Selling for well under $10 a pound a decade ago, the price is above $36 and projected to go higher.

The higher price has sparked a rush back to the mountains and deserts of Utah by prospectors who hope their Geiger counters will again start clicking and pointing the way to rich ore deposits.

There are six companies, including Max Resource, that have exploration projects in various stages of completion and permitting on state lands, said Jim Springer, spokesman for the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining.

There is a similar rush to explore federal lands in the state. "We've seen a half dozen projects out of this office alone," said Frank Bain, a geologist with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's office in Moab, which covers Utah's Grand and San Juan counties. "There hasn't been activity like that since at least the early 1980s."

Resource analyst Kevin Bambrough at Sprott Asset Management in Vancouver said uranium shortages loom for U.S. utilities that need to fuel their reactors. And that is especially true for those utilities that want to build new nuclear power plants.

"The supply is just not there," he said.

Bambrough said for utilities that want to bring on new plants, many probably will have a hard time contracting for the uranium they'll need. "It's difficult to do that. You'd have to go to mines that are not even there yet in order to try and contract for your supply."

For some junior mining companies, such conditions could present an opportunity, he said.

"But you have to realize the majority of those (junior mining) companies aren't going to be successful. And they should be looked upon with a lot of caution."

steve@sltrib.com