Jaguar Uranium Gets Key Permit
Jaguar Uranium Corp. announced it has received its Environmental Impact Assessment permit ahead of schedule for its Laguna Salada project in Argentina. The approval from the provincial Ministry of Environment is a key step for the project's development.
The newly acquired permit covers the "Guanaco" portion of the Laguna Salada project, which holds the majority of the site's historical resources. A 2011 estimate calculated 6.3 million pounds of indicated uranium resources and 3.8 million pounds of inferred resources for the total project, with the Guanaco zone containing approximately 88% of that amount. The uranium and vanadium mineralization is found in a shallow, unconsolidated gravel layer, making it potentially amenable to low-cost extraction methods. This project has a history dating back to a 1978 airborne survey by Argentina's National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA). More recently, a 2014 Preliminary Economic Assessment for the entire Laguna Salada project estimated a potential annual production of 640,000 pounds of uranium over the life of the mine, with a cash cost of about $21.62 per pound after vanadium by-product credits. Jaguar Uranium is a recent entrant, having just completed a $25 million IPO in February 2026. The company's strategy is to advance a portfolio of South American uranium assets, and this permit allows them to immediately launch their "Phase 1" exploration campaign at Laguna Salada. The approval allows for geophysical surveys, surface sampling, trenching, and drilling. The project operates in a complex political environment. Chubut province has a law, Ley 5001, which has banned open-pit mining and the use of cyanide since 2003, a measure strongly supported by local environmental groups. This has historically stalled projects like Pan American Silver's large Navidad silver deposit in the same province. However, Chubut's Governor, Ignacio Torres, is actively pushing to reactivate uranium mining. He has been in discussions with the national government and the state-owned energy company YPF to create a new subsidiary, "YPF Nuclear," with a focus on developing Chubut's uranium resources, including the large Cerro Solo deposit. Torres argues that extraction methods like in-situ recovery would not violate the existing mining ban.
