TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – US uranium producer and project developer Uranium Energy Corp (UEC) received all required permits to produce uranium from new resource areas at the Palangana in situ recovery (ISR) mine, in Texas, after it obtained a larger mine permit and aquifer exemption from state authorities.
The Corpus Christi, Texas-based company said on Wednesday that the expanded mine area boundary was now 3 530 ha, compared with 2 509 ha previously, and included Production Area-4 (PA-4), where the company had completed 296 drill holes to delineate three mineralised trends.
UEC was busy finalising the wellfield design in preparation for installing the first module inside this new production area.
The company also reported that it had made an important stride in advancing the Burke Hollow project, after the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) had issued two Class I disposal well draft permits, which indicated that a successful technical review had been concluded.
“We are very pleased to make it through the rigorous technical review process of an ISR application. This milestone represents one of the four major permit reviews necessary to see the Burke Hollow project come to fruition and we are all encouraged by the progress,” UEC VP for environmental, heath and safety Craig Wall said.
The mine permit and aquifer exemption applications for the Burke Hollow ISR project were currently in the later stages of technical review with the TCEQ. The project contained a National Instrument 43-101-qualified inferred resource estimate of 5.12-million pounds of uranium, at an average grade of 0.09% uranium oxide.
Burke Hollow had the potential for additional resource expansion with two new prospective mineralised areas discovered by recent drilling and a previously identified exploration target still to be explored and delineated.
The project currently comprised more than 8 000 ha, after the company recently acquired a 740 ha lease which was historically explored by Nufuels (Mobil) in 1982.
President and CEO Amir Adnani noted that UEC was well positioned for the ongoing expansion of uranium throughput at its centralised Hobson processing plant when full-scale production resumed. "With the Burke Hollow project making significant resource and permitting progress, there's a substantial pipeline developing to support our hub-and-spoke growth plans,” he said.
UEC’s Hobson processing facility was central to all of its projects in South Texas, including the Palangana ISR mine, the permitted Goliad ISR project and the development-stage Burke Hollow ISR project. The company also controlled a pipeline of advanced-stage projects in Arizona, Colorado and Paraguay.