All eyes might be focused on oil's meteoric rise, but pound for pound, it is uranium that's burning up the charts.

The spot price, which hovered at around $15.40 per kilogram or $7 per pound five years ago, has climbed more than fourfold to around $66 per kilogram, or $30 per pound today.

Greg Barnes, an analyst with Canaccord Capital who follows the uranium industry, says he's bullish on uranium.

He credits much of the recent price spike to hedge funds and other corporate entities - such as Toronto-based Uranium Participation Corp., created to invest all of its assets in uranium rather than the exploration and development of the commodity - that are buying large amounts of the ore and holding it long term in speculation of where prices will go.

Lori Walton, president of Edmonton-based Firestone Ventures

He adds, however, that rising demand and high crude oil prices have likely bolstered interest in uranium.

"China is building lots of (nuclear) plants and there's speculation that the U.S. will announce the construction of a new plant," he says. "And when you've got $70 oil, people start paying more attention to these alternative sources of energy."

According to Canada's uranium-mining sector, an annual production shortfall of around 400 million pounds (182 million kilograms) is expected to grow over the next decade as world demand soars.

Saskatchewan - a uranium producer for decades - remains the big winner in the radioactive windfall, but analysts say Alberta's resources sector, rich in Texas Tea, could become a player as firms search for uranium jackpots in northeast and southwest Alberta. Even Manitoba, some speculate, could get in on the uranium action.

Northern Saskatchewan is home to some of the world's largest and richest uranium deposits and mining operations. According to the Saskatchewan Mining Association (SMA), proven uranium reserves in the province total 339 million kilograms at the end of 2004.

The province is the world's largest single producing region, with an annual output of 13.5 million kilograms, about 30 per cent of the total.

The association reports that in 2004, uranium mining generated $115 million in salaries, wages and benefits for its direct employees - of whom one-third were in Saskatchewan's north - while contractors and their employees received $63 million. Total expenditures, excluding salaries, were $137.6 million last year.

The SMA states that "the energy potential of Saskatchewan's uranium reserves is approximately equivalent to four billion tonnes of coal or 19 billion barrels of oil."

Cameco is the world's largest uranium producer, mining roughly 20 per cent of the supply. It is also invested in nuclear power plants and uranium enrichment projects.

"It's a significant resource for Saskatchewan," says Cameco Corp. spokesman Lyle Krahn. "I think we're able to produce the jobs and economic development that come along with uranium development. We're able to provide a lot of jobs and development in the North, where there aren't a lot of options."

The Alberta Geological Survey (AGS) says that in the Alberta portion of the Athabasca Basin, a notable prospect of uranium exists along the Maybelle River. "At the base of the Athabasca Group, steep brittle fractures in sandstone host disseminated to high-grade (uranium deposits.)" CanAlaska Ventures Ltd. was one of those companies to stake its claim in northern Alberta. The junior explorer, which got serious about uranium a year and a half ago when prices rose to around $10 per pound, also has amassed properties across northern Saskatchewan and into Manitoba.

"We've raised a reasonable amount of money and we've spent a large sum of money (around $3 million) this summer," says Peter Dasler, president and CEO of the Vancouver-based company. "We're serious about our exploration activities."

One of CanAlaska's key prospects, the Northeast Athabasca project, straddles the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border.

This under-explored region shows evidence of high-quality uranium deposits located on the surface, compared to the company's West McArthur play, just six kilometres from lucrative Cameco's McArthur River mine, where the ore is buried 1,000 feet below ground.

Dasler also points out that its Maybelle River properties in northeast Alberta look promising because they lie on the fringe of the Athabasca Basin, where most uranium ore is found.

"People work a lot around the edge (of the basin), and where there's a very big portion of that edge in Alberta - there's maybe about 150 to 200 kilometres of contact in Alberta," he says.

It's not just northern Alberta basking in uranium's potential. In southern areas around Fort Macleod and Cardston, a handful of junior mining speculators are searching for the ore buried deep below.

Lori Walton, president of Edmonton-based Firestone Ventures, says the concept isn't as wild as it sounds. During the 1970s, prospectors searched for uranium in southern Alberta, but later abandoned the hunt in the early 1980s when prices tanked.

The AGS then piqued interest again in 1994 when it published a comprehensive study of the province's mineral potential, in which it indicated commercial possibilities of deposits in the south.

However, it wasn't until prices surged last year that a group of junior mining companies decided to have a second look.

Walton, a geochemist and gemologist who in the past was involved in uranium exploration in Canada's North, acknowledges the highly speculative nature of Firestone's southern Alberta properties, but adds the commercial potential is still there.

"We know that out of every mineral prospect, only one in 2,000 actually becomes a mine, but when we look at the geology of southern Alberta and the fact that it hasn't been looked at with new ideas in the last 30 years, we feel pretty hopeful about the area."

If efforts by Firestone or other players turn up a commercial play, injection solution mining - in which a fluid is pumped into the deposit where it dissolves the uranium before carrying it to surface - will likely be the extraction method of choice, rather than open-pit or underground mining processes.

"That way the environmental impact is minimized, and it's a lot less expensive," Walton adds.

But recent high prices do little for junior companies such as Firestone, other than allow them to raise money, says Canaccord's Barnes.

"They're not selling uranium nor are they close to it - they won't be for a very long time. Speculative interest in the market, both on uranium and the equity side ... have given them opportunities to get money to do the exploration."

While bullish on uranium as a commodity, Barnes is still a little wary of stocks.

"Most (uranium stocks) are early-stage junior exploration companies, so it's difficult to put a proper value on them. And the bigger-cap producing names to a great degree are locked into lower prices for the next two or three years, so they're not benefiting yet from the higher prices we've seen," a fact that has failed to be reflected in the stock values, he says.

While he wouldn't go as far to call Cameco and Cogema Resources Inc., Canada's two uranium heavyweights, overvalued, he says the companies' shares "are not inexpensive.”

He also notes that because the two firms hedged production at lower prices a few years ago, they fail to reap the benefits of today's lofty spot price.

Cameco's Krahn, however, says that while the company did lock in prices a few years back when they were at an all-time low, it is slowly emerging from those contracts.

"Every year 35 to 40 per cent of the contracts expire and are replaced by much higher contracts.

"Next year we'll start to get to see much greater benefit from that and certainly the contracts we're signing today for the longer term will benefit us for many years down the road."

(John Ludwick can be reached at ludwick@businessedge.ca)