SOURCE: Paydirt

DATE: August 1998

Wyoming maintains top spot in production of domestic uranium

Wyoming maintains top spot in production of domestic uranium

Wyoming held its Number One position among all states regarding the nation's production of uranium in 1997.

Joining Power Resources and Cogema Mining as an active in situ leaching (ISL) uranium producer is Rio Algom Mining, which brought its new Smith Ranch well field and processing center on line last year.

Power Resources, at its Highland Mine in Converse County, topped the Wyoming mines with production of 1,551,316 pounds of uranium oxide for the year. Cogema's Christensen Ranch ISL project, feeding the Iragaray Mine in Johnson County, throttled back to 507,800 pounds of U3O8 , reflecting lower spot prices.

Rio Algom brought its well field and mill into production last summer, shipping the first loads of yellowcake late last year, and that production will be included in the 1998 ISL totals. The $43 million Rio Algorn Smith Ranch Mine is the first uranium mine and mill project to be permitted and brought into production in recent years.

The three Wyoming producers are all ISL operations, as is the Crow Butte project, across the Wyoming state line in western Nebraska.

While ISL reigns today, US Energy/ Crested Corporation, in partnership with Kennecott Uranium, has two mine and mill projects nearing the start of production.

Fueled partially by a $5 million cash payment from Nukem/Cycle Resources, US Energy/Crested is permitted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to move its Shootaring Canyon Mill from standby to active status. That project, near Ticaboo, Utah, awaits only a wastewater discharge permit from the state.

Beneath Green Mountain, US Energy has 80 workers driving twin declines toward ore which will be intercepted at 6,500 foot.

As with other Wyoming minerals, consolidation is the rule of the day. Cameco, having bought Power Resources last year, is in the process of closing on its purchase of Uranerz, which will give Cameco most of the huge McArthur River uranium deposit in northern Saskatchewan (see PAY DIRT, Feb. '98), plus control of Crow Butte.

Hanging over the uranium business is a low spot market price. Since the US Uranium and Nuclear Conference in the spring of 1997, uranium has fallen from around $16 a pound to under $11 a pound on the spot market.

That's likely to change, since world uranium consumption is almost twice worldwide production.

Wyoming uranium producers, including Nebraska and US Energy, plan to be ready to capitalize on the next rise in uranium prices, a move that could happen any time within the next 12 to 24 months.

The Wyoming Legislature extended the tax break for uranium, a sliding scale triggered when the spot price by two market makers tops the $14/ pound threshold. Producers willingly paid the severance tax during the brief months of 1997 when the price broke upward through that preset level.

Direct employment in the Wyoming uranium industry is reported at 344 people, plus 11 contractors employing 268 workers that are working mainly in support of ongoing reclamation projects at five mine and mill sites.

There are other ISL projects in Wyoming in advanced stages of exploration, including Power Resources' Gas Hills Project.

(From The Riverton Ranger)

Photograph not scanned. Caption is below

Wellfield No. 3 at Rio Algom's Smith Ranch ISL Uranium Project in the Powder River Basin of northeastern Wyoming.