Today, Ur-Energy, considered by many to be North America’s premier junior uranium mining company, reported that wholly-owned subsidiary NFU Wyoming, LLC successfully completed an important asset exchange agreement with Uranium One Americas, Inc. covering certain federal unpatented mining claims, as well as State of Wyoming Mineral Leases adjacent to the Company’s Lost Creek Property (licensed by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and permitted with the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality).
This agreement provides for the transfer of the property interests, which extend to the N, SE, and SW of the Lost Creek acreage. Post-transaction this agreement will bring the total URG footprint up to a contiguous 39k acres. Tacking on the two Wyoming State Mineral Leases and 175 federal mining claims covered in the agreement adds considerable weight to the already winning strategy employed by URG in Wyoming. An emphasis on the roll front style uranium projects that have abundant in-situ recovery potential has helped URG differentiate its North America strategy from the competition.
President and CEO of URG, Wayne Heili, called it a mutually beneficial scenario for both companies and underscored the congruency of the acquired property interests with the company’s overall regional resource base expansion objectives.
Uranium One will also be providing geologic data on the area associated with the agreement that will serve to flesh-out URG’s existing, massive database of some 1k historic drill holes within the area. The augmented database will serve as a guide for the URG technical team in making determinations about resources for the newly acquired property interests, anticipating an updated NI 43-101 for Lost Creek that will include the new resources.
In consideration, Uranium One stands to acquire a key geologic database with over 3k unique drill hole logs, over 200 report maps and cross-sections that will be instrumental in development of their Allemand-Ross project in the Powder River Basin. The URG Southwest Powder River Basin drill hole database is a superb deal for the company to make in exchange for choice acreage, reinforcing its footprint at a site with a bright future.
Projections for Lost Creek’s development arc look excellent and ongoing planning/permitting positions the company not only for solid production numbers, but will also allow the implementation of 2M lbs per year of in-situ uranium processing infrastructure. Such facilities would augment an already impressive footprint of US/Canadian acreage under URG control.
Uranium mining, especially in highly-accessible markets like the U.S., has drawn increasing interest of late, with the first new U.S. reactors in three decades recently being approved, and global markets shifting more towards fundamentals, raw inputs and materials amid continued sovereign debt concerns. US DOE is also emphasizing smaller, safer reactors and this lays the groundwork for moves like the Bechtel Corp., Babcock, and Wilcox action to exploit their own patents on emergent, next-gen, small modular reactor tech. Indeed, a recent Siemens report indicated it could cost Germany as much as $2T to drop nuclear by 2030, something unthinkable amid persistent concerns over European sovereign debt in particular.
With some 20% of U.S. power coming from nuclear, the attraction of the uranium sector, whose performance has been suppressed since Fukushima (nevertheless essentially returning to performance parity with the S&P), is growing as investors take a closer look at undervalued uranium miners.
For more information on today’s agreement, or to stay up to date with the latest developments at Ur-Energy Inc. please visit the company’s website at www.Ur-Energy.com
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