All the pieces are falling into place for Anatolia Energy to make a spectacular shift from explorer to developer within months.

The company's Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) of its Temrezli uranium project in Turkey indicates a very low-cost, high return project, at a time when Turkey is working to develop its nuclear power options and the uranium price is finally starting to lift.

An oversubscribed $A6 million placement has the company fully funded to its development decision and its Pre-Feasibility Study is expected to be finalised before the end of 2014.

Anatolia also has a pipeline of uranium prospects in Turkey, including the promising Sefaatli project just 40km south-west of Temrezli.

Corporate development executive director Paul Cronin said Anatolia's in-situ recovery (ISR) Temrezli project would have a rapid start and the company was aiming for first uranium production in 2016.

"We are very low cost and very near-term regarding our route to production at Temrezli," he told RESOURCESTOCKS from London.

"It is going to be one of the lowest cost uranium projects in the world, at a time when uranium prices don't support many new projects."

Temrezli has a total JORC resource of 5.2 million tonnes at 1,157 parts per million for 13.3 million pounds of uranium.

The shallow resource has an average depth of 100 metres and it remains open.

The PEA has put the mine life at 10 years, producing 1Mlb pa of U3O8 with an upfront capital expenditure of $US30.2 million and a cash cost of $US20.22 per pound.

At a time when the uranium spot price is hovering around the $US35/lb mark, Temrezli's economics are appealing, Cronin said.

"I think over the remainder of this year we'll see the spot price normalise into the high $US30s or low $US40s," he said.

"But more fundamentally, where do we think the price will head in the longer term?

"We know there is a supply shortage looming because it's impossible to bring on any new uranium projects - with the exception of low-cost ISR projects - and typically they don't have large output.

"So we do know before we start to see a response from bigger projects, we'll have to see a higher price in 2016 or 2017 at the latest, otherwise we're going to see a real shortfall of uranium."

By this point, Anatolia plans to have Temrezli into production and selling into a strong market.

"The low-cost nature of our ISR project allows us to move forward but the timing of the project is really the key to our advantage," Cronin said.

"We'll come into production at a time when 90% of analysts around the world are saying uranium prices should be up at $US60-$US80/lb."

Anatolia's planned ISR process at Temrezli is to pump an alkaline-based solution into the ground, then extract it to the surface after liberating the uranium from the sandstone.

The process doesn't remove rocks, create any dust or tailings and has a low environmental impact, the company says.

Anatolia's board has a wealth of ISR knowledge, and international mining, exploration, management and specialist experience at its fingertips.

Managing director Jim Graham has been involved in many ISR uranium projects around the world and is complemented by chairman Dr Hikmet Akin's international and Turkish uranium experience.

"We have a very experienced team in terms of in-situ recovery of uranium," Cronin said.

"We're now refining our well field design for Temrezli and this is being driven not just by the geological model but also the hydrologic model that we're building at the moment.

"We're conducting a series of hydrologic tests to confirm the way we're going to construct the well field and we'll probably see a faster ramp up than originally anticipated."

Better yet, Cronin believes the potential at Anatolia's nearby Sefaatli uranium project could eclipse Temrezli.

Anatolia began a 6000m drilling program at Sefaatli in October to target previous high-grade uranium intercepts.

Drilling in the 1980s at Sefaatli discovered Turkey's largest uranium mineralisation outside of the Temrezli deposit.

"Temrezli is our core project but in addition, Sefaatli is what we see as a company-maker," Cronin said.

"Its total area is much larger, there has been some historic drilling there and every hole we have drilled last year encountered mineralisation.

"Our strategy is to prove up our resource at Sefaatli and build a satellite project there that will be able to ship pregnant resins into our Temrezli plant.

"If we get to that point by 2017, Anatolia, and Turkey, will become a relatively sizable uranium producer and that will spark further uranium opportunities in country."

Turkey is committed to reducing its reliance on imported oil and gas and wants to meet a growing proportion of its energy needs from nuclear power.

"The Turkish government is building four nuclear reactors at the moment, it has signed contracts for a further four and it's looking for a site at the moment to build a further four again," Cronin said.

"So by 2030, it's quite reasonable to expect there'll be 12 or more operating nuclear reactors in Turkey that will need to have a fuel supply."

Savvy investors have been keen to get exposure to Anatolia and Cronin said the company was overwhelmed by the response to its recent share placement.

"We were initially looking to raise $A4 million to drill Sefaatli and finalise Temrezli and we had to increase it to $A6 million to accommodate some of the over-interest," he said.

"It's a good sign that Australian equity markets are recovering for resources and Australian investors are now looking for some uranium exposure - it's been out of people's minds for a number of years."

He said there were very few developing ISR projects around the world that investors could gain exposure to.

"I think it's very important at this stage of the uranium cycle to invest in low-cost uranium projects because they are the ones that can proceed to a certain extent by being price ambivalent," he said.

"Anatolia's low-cost status is what separates it from its peers.

"It's at late stage development with the intention of being fully permitted in the second quarter of 2015 and if that's the case, we'll have our uranium operation fully financed and up and running in 2016.

"It's likely to be one of the only uranium projects that will get built between now and 2017-18, as a non-ISR uranium project can take up to 15 years to get up and running."

He said Western Australia's most advanced uranium project, Toro Energy's Wiluna project, was still several years shy of production and some of the recent big uranium discoveries in Canada's Athabasca Basin were at least a decade away.

"They'll certainly miss the boat in terms of the best pricing environment and we hope we'll come into production just as the uranium price recovers and deliver very strong cash flows on the back of that," Cronin said.

"We're very well-placed in terms of our management, jurisdiction, and our balance sheet to be able to push the project forward and meet key revaluation milestones over the coming months."

*A version of this report, first published in the November/December 2014 edition of RESOURCESTOCKS magazine, was commissioned by Anatolia Energy.