Germany Chancellor plans lithium deal with Serbia after Rio ruling
Olaf Scholz plans to visit Serbia this week to secure supplies of lithium that are critical for the nation’s energy transition and auto industry.
Cameco (NYSE:CCJ) announced on Wednesday that it signed signed a memorandum of agreement with its partner, Kazatomprom, to increase annual uranium production at the Joint Venture Inkai Limited Liability Partnership (JVI) from 3.9 million pounds to 5.2 million pounds.
The Inkai in-situ recovery uranium mine and processing plant is located in central Kazakhstan and is operated by JVI, 60% owned by Cameco and 40% owned by Kazatomprom, the Kazakhstan government owned national atomic company.
Under the memorandum of agreement, Cameco’s share of Inkai’s annual production will be 2.9 million pounds with the processing plant at full capacity. The company will also be entitled to receive profits on 3.0 million pounds.
“This agreement allows for increased production at Inkai to the designed capacity of 5.2 million pounds and advances us toward our goal of doubling annual production to 10.4 million pounds,” said Tim Gitzel, president and CEO of Cameco. “Clearly, Inkai will play a significant role in our plan to double uranium production to 40 million pounds by 2018.”
To implement the increase, Cameco will need a binding agreement finalizing the terms of the memorandum, government approval and an amendment to the JVI resource use contract.
Image from Cameco is a fuel bundle used to generate electricity in Candu reactors
