Bannerman Energy inks Scoping Study to expand Etango Uranium project

Bannerman Energy (ASX:BMN) has completed a Scoping Study assessing potential expansion options for its flagship Etango Uranium project in Namibia.

The authors of the study ultimately looked at two routes to ‘expand’ the project – by increasing throughput capacity to 16Mtpa, or, by extending LOM from 15 years to 27 years.

The company’s given these two possible expansion methods their own names – “Etango-XP” and “Etango-XT” respectively.

The “XP” plan for Etango – a boost to throughput – would cost Bannerman US$325M and see a sustaining cost of US$42.5/lb.

The “XT” plan, meanwhile – increasing LOM – would have no capex requirements and would see the sustaining cost slightly higher at US$45.3/lb.

The company cited a potential 95.2Mlbs of ore being part of that plan but did not include any resource information in its scoping study release on Monday.

“In short, the long-term scalability of the world-class Etango resource remains highly robust under the base case Etango-8 approach to initial project development,” Bannerman Chief Executive Officer Gavin Chamberlain said of the proposed plans.

Executive Chair Brandon Munro made it clear that the company is eyeing higher uranium prices.

“What the Scoping Study emphatically evidences is the significant underlying value residing in Etango’s huge in-ground leverage to, and scalability with, higher uranium price outlooks,” Munro said.

Post-tax IRR remained largely the same across both scenarios.

BMN shares last traded at $3.16/sh.