The share price of North West Queensland vanadium and oil shale explorer QEM Limited went down when it traded for first time on Australian Securities Exchange last week.
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QEM debuted at its issue price of around 20 cents which jumped 5 per cent in the early trading session to trade at 21 cents before finally closing 7.5 per cent lower to 18.5 cents on its first trading day and was down further to 15.5 cents late on Monday.
The Perth-based company’s main focus is the development of 100% owned Julia Creek Project, covering 176 sq km of tenements.
It’s $5 million initial public offer was over-subscribed as it looks to advance its North West Queensland operations with a market cap of $20 million with plans to use the newly raised cash to advance exploration at Julia Creek where it is targeting vanadium and oil shale prospects.
The prospects are in the Toolebuc Formation which QEM says is one of the world’s largest deposits of vanadium and shale oil, with an estimated total global resource in excess of ten billion tonnes of vanadium.
QEM chair John Foley told industry media the IPO would allow them to complete drilling and undertake investigations into vanadium and oil shale processing.
The Julia Creek project has three wholly-owned exploration permits covering 176 sq km and is near the Flinders Highway and the Great Northern Railway line enabling access to the port of Townsville.
Along with the nearby Richmond Vanadium project owned by Intermin Resources and Chalice Gold Mine’s Flinders River Project, they are hoping to take advantage of recent changes in Chinese policy which seen a dramatic decline in production in the world’s leading vanadium export nation.
Demand for vanadium is expected to grow significantly in the next two decades from renewable energy storage systems and steel making.
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