Guess what? Our recent investigation shows the uranium to be enriched in the LES/Urenco proposed enrichment facility in Lea County, New Mexico may come neither from uranium properties in New Mexico nor anywhere else in the United States. Just as New Mexico’s nuclear/uranium mining renaissance was ready to get underway, a deal may have already been cut to enrich uranium mined in a foreign country. Louisiana Energy Services (LES), through the consortium’s general partner Urenco Ltd., may have struck a deal with Canadian-based Cameco Corp. Will this uranium come from Canada or Kazakhstan?

According to New Mexico State Senator Carroll H. Leavell, the uranium ore to be enriched at the facility near Eunice, New Mexico facility would be coming from outside the United States. Senator Leavell told StockInterview, “The uranium ore will be coming out of Saskatchewan.” When we asked if the uranium to be enriched in New Mexico would come from the Athabasca Basin, an area hosting the world’s richest grades of uranium and which is also located in northern Saskatchewan, Senator Leavell claimed he wasn’t sure where the Athabasca Basin was. But he told us that Urenco Ltd informed him the uranium was coming from that western Canadian province.

We can only speculate the uranium producer might be Cameco Corp. On July 22, 2002, Cameco signed a Memorandum of Agreement with LES, along with Urenco Ltd, Westinghouse Electric Company, Fluor Daniel and the affiliates of U.S. utilities: Exelon, Duke and Entergy. In an email response to our inquiry, earlier this week, Netherlands-based Urenco Ltd Communications Coordinator April Wildegose-Mistry informed us, “Cameco Corp was part of the original LES project. They pulled out around March 2003 as they needed to focus on other business issues.”
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