Laramide Resources (TSX:LAM,OTCQX:LMRXF) has pulled out of a greenfield uranium exploration venture in Kazakhstan, citing policy changes that it says have effectively shut the door on economically viable foreign investment in the country’s uranium sector.
The Toronto-based company announced on Tuesday (January 20) it has terminated its option agreement with privately held Aral Resources for the Chu-Sarysu Basin project, ending its involvement in what it had previously described as one of the world’s most prospective under explored uranium regions.
The option agreement, which was signed in September 2024, gave Laramide access to 22 exploration licences covering more than 5,500 square kilometres in the Chu-Sarysu Basin. The region hosts several of Kazatomprom’s largest producing mines and is known for geology suitable for low-cost, in-situ recovery uranium deposits.
Laramide had been funding early-stage exploration work since late 2024 and was preparing a 15,000-metre, multi-rig drill program that was scheduled to begin in the second half of 2025.
That program never got off the ground. Laramide said delays in securing drilling permits from regional authorities meant no drilling took place as planned in the fourth quarter of 2025.
Although the final permits were granted on December 24, the regulatory landscape shifted almost immediately afterward. 2 days later, Kazakhstan’s president signed into law amendments to the Subsoil Use Code that materially alter the economics of uranium exploration for new entrants.
Under the revised framework, Kazatomprom is granted priority rights over prospective uranium areas, stricter minimum ownership thresholds in new production agreements, and enhanced control over extensions, reserve increases, and additional exploration at producing deposits.
Laramide said those changes, combined with higher holding costs following an earlier increase in annual property taxes, undermine the investment rationale for continuing exploration in the country. The company has ceased all funding related to the project with immediate effect.
“Motivated by an effort to address, and ideally reverse, the obvious and severe decline in the resource base of Kazatomprom, their national uranium company, it appears Kazakhstan may have scored a spectacular own goal with their recent de facto nationalisation of future uranium exploration in country,” Marc Henderson, Laramide’s president and chief executive, said in a statement.
“However, in what may be a world’s first, Kazakhstan appears to have moved pre-emptively to ensure national ownership and control of any new uranium discoveries before they are actually even made,” Henderson added.
Kazatomprom, the world’s largest uranium producer, has acknowledged the legislative changes and framed them as measures to improve subsoil use in the hydrocarbon and uranium sectors.
In a statement outlining the amendments, the company highlighted new provisions that raise the minimum ownership stake required in new uranium production agreements to more than 75 percent, up from 50 percent previously, and impose additional conditions tied to technology transfer for extensions and reserve increases.
For Laramide, the company said it will now focus entirely on advancing its two development-stage uranium assets: the Churchrock-Crownpoint project in New Mexico and the Westmoreland project in Queensland, Australia.
Securities Disclosure: I, Giann Liguid, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.