Part Two: Will Cameco Supply the Uranium for New Mexico’s Proposed Enrichment Facility?

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Author: James Finch

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This development could further irritate at least one New Mexico legislator. State representative John A. Heaton from Carlsbad, New Mexico, and who also sits on New Mexico's Energy and Natural Resource Committee, was adamant about U.S. independence from foreign energy sources. He told StockInterview.com, "We need to use the assets we have and not be dependent upon foreign countries. I worry a lot about the dependence we have on other countries."

In this instance, Heaton may be getting a double-whammy of foreign dependence. Not only is Urenco Ltd a foreign-owned and controlled company (a Dutch/ British/German consortium), but the uranium its New Mexico facility would be enriching could come from at least one foreign source, Canada. Because the uranium ore might be sourced from Cameco, yet another country's uranium could be supplying the New Mexico enrichment facility: Kazakhstan.

Cameco plans to boost uranium mining in this former Soviet country to a level which might approach its uranium production in the Athabasca Basin. Kazakhstan recently joined the "Putin Alliance" of uranium-producing countries. On June 22nd, Kazakhstan signed a contract worth $1 billion to supply Russia's Tekhsnabexport to supply Russians with uranium through the year 2020. The Economist Magazine's Economic Intelligence Unit recently issued a caution on this country.

We asked our uranium industry analyst, David Miller, about this new twist in the LES/Urenco story. Miller is a third-term Wyoming legislator, who is an original member of the Wyoming Energy Commission and a past member of the National Council of State Legislator's Energy Committee. Miller is also president of Strathmore Minerals, a company which is now advancing its properties through the permitting process in New Mexico. Miller told us, "The State of New Mexico may miss out on the hundreds of millions of dollars of tax revenues from potential severance, ad valorem, sales and other taxes the domestic industry would pay to mine uranium in New Mexico. Instead, the foreign uranium pays zero taxes to enter the state for enrichment."

Ominously, Miller asks these questions, "The real question for New Mexico is this: What happens to the part of the uranium that does not go onto the fabrication plant? Does it stay in New Mexico? Is it shipped back to Russia, Kazakhstan or Saskatchewan?"

Miller recommended that New Mexico legislators demand the LES plant be fed uranium mined in New Mexico, not in Canada or Kazakhstan. "If this were to happen," Miller wrote in an email to us, "thousands of new mining jobs would be created in areas of New Mexico which need the most economic development." Once the world's leading uranium producer, New Mexico's Grants Uranium Belt is again being explored by more than a dozen companies. Some hope to permit and operate new uranium production centers in New Mexico.

James Finch contributes to StockInterview.com and other publications. Visit http://www.stockinterview.com to read more articles by James Finch.

James Finch is a contributing editor for StockInterview.com and other publications.
http://www.stockinterview.com