621 Uranerz First let Uranerz (as it's universally called) explain itself! Its avowed business is to "search world-wide for uranium ore, exploit and concentrate the ore and other minerals, and market these products" (1). Now let's dig a little deeper. The company is controlled by two of West Germany's largest "hard energy" enterprises. C Deilmann operates world-wide in petrol and natural gas with subsidiaries involved in deepwell drilling, mechanical engineering, sugar refining and refinery construction. The Rheinbraun group controls about one-third of West Germany's electrical generating capacity, is the largest exploiter of lignite coal in the world (supplying, as of 1980, 85% of coal for the country's electricity production), while RWE operates two nuclear power stations and is the largest supplier of electricity in West Germany. Founded in 1898, RWE is a mixed private/public enterprise which also had an original share in Nukem along with RTZ, Metallgesellschaft, and Degussa - hence, too, in Transnuklear (2).
Incorporated a year after its stablemate Urangesellschaft (1968), Uranerz has proved itself more adept at locating uranium deposits, forging contracts (in the late '70s it was providing no less than half West Germany's uranium needs from the Rabbit Lake mine) (3), raising loan capital and purchasing partnerships which enable it to be the operator (as at Key Lake) while avoiding many financial risks.
Its explorations have encompassed Africa - especially Ghana (4), Australia, the USA and, above all, Canada. Here its participation in Rabbit Lake (recently given to Eldorado) (5) and Key Lake - plumb in the middle of two of the world's most promising uraniferous zones (6) - has catapulted it near to the top of the West's yellowcake production league. The Key Lake orebody went on stream in October 1983 (7) and is now the world's biggest single producer.
Uranerz's interests in Canada didn't start with Saskatchewan. In 1974 it took a 10% undivided interest in the Agnew Lake Mines operations of Kerr Addison, thus entitling it to 10% of the product. Due to declining solution grades at the mine, Uranerz had to borrow uranium from Eldorado Nuclear which it later repaid (9); Agnew Lake itself folded in 1983 (10).
In 1980, together with Societe de Developpement de la Baie James of Quebec, it embarked on a drilling programme in the Gayor Lake region of James Bay (11). A little later, also with Baie James and Seru Nucleaire, Esso Minerals, Pancontinental Mining and Soquem, it was part of a JV investigating uranium in the Otish mountains of central Quebec (12).
By then Uranertz was among the top ten most active uranium explorers in Canada (12), a position it has not ceded (31). This was a point not lost on certain anti-nuclear activists in the country. In early spring 1980 a molotov cocktail was thrown through the windows of the Uranerz offices in La Ronge, Saskatchewan. It failed to ignite, but the company shelled out C$10,000 on bullet-proof glass (13).
In 1983 the company obtained a C$120M financing package from three Canadian banks (including Barclays Canada) to continue its uranium exploration activities in Canada (14).
These took it into hot water during the late '70s when, along with a dozen other producers, it was charged by the TVA with price fixing in the cartel case (15).
It was also cited for price fixing by the Canadian government in 1981, in a remarkable instance of state authority tying itself up in legal knots (16). However, in early 1984, charges were dropped, after a ruling that state-owned companies similarly charged could not be prosecuted because they were "above the law" (7, 17).
The company's other main exploration project at this time was at Maurice Bay near the old Uranium City (see Eldordo Nuclear) in the Athabasca region of Saskatchewan (located by the Key Lake partners in 1977) (18). In 1980 the Canadian government stated that Maurice Bay was now owned jointly by Eldor Resources and the SMDC (18). However, according to the Saskatchewan Uranium Traffic Network (20) in 1981, Uranerz still owns an "unknown percentage" of the project. Uranium Traffic also states that Uranerz's uranium, destined for the RWE - after processing at Port Hope under the Canadian policy of "hexing" as much uranium as possible in Canada (6) - went to the Soviet Union for enrichment and to Exxon Nuclear's facility in Washington state to be turned into fuel pellets before ending up in RWE's West German reactors (19).
Further south, in the US of A, the company has also not let the grass grow under its (or anyone else's) feet. In the early 1980s Uranerz planned to lease 33,000 acres of Indian reservation land near Hayward, Wisconsin from the Lac Courte Oreilles Anishinaabe (Chippewas). The Indians, however, resisted the approach, fearing for their fishing waters (21).
In Australia, Uranerz's exploration for uranium has been mainly confined to the Northern Territory. However, only a few months after the South Australian government announced a ban on uranium exports in March, 1977, Uranerz became one of four companies still allowed to prospect in the state. In the Adelaide Hills area, "local communities were horrified when ... Uranerz served notices on 200 property owners demanding access to their lands" (22). Despite landowner protests and writs in the Warden's Court, Uranerz was allowed to stay, and indeed the following year the Mining Act was altered to enable uranium companies to hang onto their leases longer, without starting work (22). When the ban finally bit, the Dunstan government fell. The Liberal leader David Tonkin had promised Uranerz on a visit to West Germany that his party would drop the uranium ban if it won the elections (23) and, in September 1979, it did. However, Uranerz's Alligator River project (a JV with AOG Minerals) is stalemated. Called a "grass roots prospect" with no known figure for reserves, in late 1982 the partners were still waiting to proceed to negotiations with Aboriginal land owners on four of their areas (24).
At Mount Fitch in the Rum Jungle district of the NT, Uranen was partnered with AOG once again. Its 1981/82 exploration programme was confined to three prospects on land previously mined by Territory Enterprises Pty Ltd (the subsidiary of Con Zinc which, in 1962, was merged with Rio Tinto to become the infamous Rio Tinto-Zinc) (25). Reserves in 1981 at this prospect were given as 3.5 million tonnes of ore grading 0.4kg/tonne in an open pit designed to reach 110m depth. About 1400 tonnes of U3O8 were located at prospect EL 1562. Prospect EL 1563 has been affected by Aboriginal land claims, contested in the courts between the NT government, the Northern Land Council, CRA, Peko Wallsend and local pastoralists (24). These lie within the Finnis River area, heavily polluted by the Rum Jungle operations during the 1950s and 1960s (26).
Together with MIM, Uranerz holds a third uranium prospect in the Northern Territory in the Amadeus Basin, 28km south of Alice Springs, called Angela. Between 5,000 and 10,000 tonnes of uranium oxide reserves are considered to lie in this area, but only limited work was carried out on it up to the end of 1983 (24).
At the same time it was preparing to move in in Australia, Uranen obtained a unique agreement to prospect for uranium in Tanzania. It had already been exploring one third of the country's land mass. The agreement gave the West German company exclusive exploitation rights in return for a fixed royalty to the Tanzanian government, and an additional profits tax related to the return on invested capital (27). The government also has the right to acquire a 51 % interest in any JV set up, should uranium be mined. Tanzania would impose conditions on the export of uranium "ensuring its use for peaceful purposes and to prevent its being shipped to South Africa, Namibia or Zimbabwe" (27). In the early 1980s, Uranerz planned exploration for uranium in the southwest part of Bolivia, but no further details have been reported since (27).
In the late 1980s and early 90s, Uranerz expanded considerably in Canada. It bought 20% of Midwest Lake JV (see Denison) in 1988 and advanced its Eagle Point South uranium projects (Cameco 50%, Uranen 50%) towards production - with a probable annual rate of output of 3,000-4,000 tonnes, to serve the Rabbit Lake mill (29). Two years later, Cameco, in JV with Uranen and Agip Resources at McArthur River, Saskatchewan, announced the discovery of a 45,360 tonne uranium deposit, averaging 3% uranium (30).
The company also moved into gold with the opening in 1985 of the Star Lake mine in Northern Saskatchewan (partnered with Starrex Mining Corp). Although that deposit was depleted by 1989, Uranen then became involved in a feasibility study for the Contact Lake gold deposit (along with Cameco and Westward Exploration) (31).
By 1990, Uranen had also established itself as one of the ISL (insitu leaching) companies in the USA, with plans to process uranium at North Butte and Ruth (Wyoming) (32).
Nor has the company's devotion to Australian uranium and gold exploration diminished. Together with the Japanese company, Kumagai Gumi Co Ltd, it continues its exploration of the East Alligator region; has a JV with Idemitsu Kosan Queensland Pty Ltd in Patterson Province (northern Western Australia); and continues to hold its interest with MIM in the Angela uranium deposit (33).
Gold production from the Grant's Patch project (Uranen 50%, Glengarry Resources NL 50%) started in February 1990 (34).
Uranerz became the first exploration company since the passage of the NT 1976 Land Rights Act, to sign an agreement with the Northern Land Council. The deal was sealed some ten years later, enabling Uranerz to explore for uranium, gold and platinum in the Myra Falls area of western Arnhemland. Yunupingu, chair of the NLC, complimented the company on the agreement by saying:
" [This] should silence once and for all the critics of Aboriginal people, land councils and land rights. It proves that we have a responsible attitude to mineral development ..., when a mining company respects Aboriginal people and their land and is prepared to sit down and talk" (35).
SOURCE: "The Gulliver File - Mines, people and land: a global battleground" by Roger Moody.
Published in 1992 by Minewatch, 218 Liverpool Road, London Nl ILE, UK, and WISE-Glen Aplin, Po Box 87, Glen Aplin Q 4381, Australia.
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