TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – New York-listed Uranium Energy on Thursday announced an inferred resource estimate for its Burke Hollow in-situ recovery (ISR) project, located in Bee County, Texas.

The company said drilling to date had outlined an inferred mineral resource, using a 0.02% cutoff for triuranium octoxide (U₃O₈), of three-million tons grading 0.047% U₃O₈ which contains an estimated 2.9-million pounds of the yellow powder. The project also hosts an exploration target of 1.8-million to 7.2-million pounds of total contained U₃O₈.

"We are excited about the current and future development of the project, and the fact that this discovery represents a new uranium subdistrict within the Goliad Formation trend of the South Texas uranium belt. With only 30% of the property explored so far, we already have a strong base to develop from and plenty of opportunity for resource expansion," Texas exploration manager Andy Kurrus said.

Uranium Energy said the National Instrument 43-101-compliant technical report concluded that the project represents a significant uranium deposit, and that mineralisation is hosted in fluvial sand and silty-sand facies fixed by the presence of a well-defined reduction-oxidation boundary.

The company operates the Hobson processing facility, which is central to its projects in South Texas, including the Palangana ISR mine, which had recently expanded its initial production, and the Goliad ISR project, which is now fully permitted and in construction.

Uranium Energy uses ISR, which is an injected-solution mining method that reverses the natural process that deposited the uranium in the sandstones. On-site groundwater, fortified with gaseous oxygen, is introduced to the uranium orebody through a pattern of injection wells, which dissolves the uranium from the sandstone host.

The uranium-bearing solution is then brought back to surface through production wells where the uranium is concentrated on resin beads for trucking to the company’s Hobson processing plant to be concentrated further and dried into yellowcake for market.

On Thursday, the company’s NYSE-listed shares, which had lost 38.87% of its value in the past year, traded 3.35% lower at $2.31 apiece.