Dual-listed Aura Energy is seeking compensation from Sweden for the financial losses that it incurred as a result of the country’s uranium ban that came into effect in August last year.
Aura provided Sweden a written notification under the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), which is a multilateral legal framework promoting cross-border cooperation in the energy sector, comprising 54 signatories, and which presupposes that signatories respect fundamental legal principles.
“The ECT provides a level playing field of rules to be observed by all participating governments, thereby mitigating risks associated with energy-related investment and trade,” the company said in an announcement on the stock exchange.
A 2012 scoping study for the Häggån uranium project was based on an inferred resource estimate containing 631-million pounds of uranium oxide (U3O8), as well as nickel and molybdenum. The study calculated a production rate of 7.8-million pounds a year of U3O8.
The project had a net present value, at a 10% discount, of $1.85-billion, based on a U3O8 price of $65/lb.
The Häggån project area also hosts Aura’s battery metals project, which has a mineral resource of two-billion tonnes at an average grade of 0.3% vanadium pentoxide, including an indicated 42-million tonnes of ore, at a 0.2% cutoff grade, averaging 0.35% vanadium pentoxide for a contained 320-million pounds referred to as the Northwest high-grade zone.
The main arguments put forward by proponents of the ban concerned the environmental impacts of uranium exploitation and the risk that radioactive pollution posed to human health.