(PRWEB) July 11, 2006 -- In a taped telephone interview, Louisiana Energy Services’ (LES) President Jim Ferland denied a secret deal between his wholly owned subsidiary of European-based Urenco and Canadian uranium miner, Cameco Corp. Ferland told StockInterview.com, “Cameco thought, at one time, about investing in the project. Cameco had a memorandum to basically investigate whether or not it made sense to invest, and chose not to.”
“ The majority of the uranium mined today is coming from either Canada or Australia. ”
Still, Ferland agreed Canada would be the likely source of the uranium, “The majority of the uranium mined today is coming from either Canada or Australia.” He admitted, “I don’t know exactly where it is going to be coming from, I’m just guessing, because obviously no utility is delivering anything to us at this point, that most of it is coming from Canada or the (ConverDyne, Illinois) Metropolis facility.”
When asked if the uranium might come from Kazakhstan, Niger, Namibia or elsewhere, Ferland told StockInterview.com, “I’m sure the U.S. utilities will comply with whatever laws or regulations that are out there, about where the source material can come from.” Ferland insisted it was up to the U.S. utilities whether or not they chose to purchase foreign- or U.S.-mined uranium.
Ferland believes the LES National Enrichment Facility in Lea County, New Mexico is on track to start delivering a “relatively small amount” of enriched uranium by early 2009. The facility is not expected to be producing at full capacity until 2013. Ferland told StockInterview.com, “Ballpark, we’ll roughly come up with 20 percent of our output per year.” LES had announced the facility would produce about 3 million SWU per year, at full capacity. Based upon Ferland’s calculations, LES would deliver about 600,000 SWU during its first full year of production, about five percent of U.S. utility requirements for enriched uranium.
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To read the complete interview with Louisiana Energy Services President Jim Ferland, and the feature article entitled, “The Complete Lowdown on Louisiana Energy Services: A Candid Conversation with Jim Ferland,” please visit StockInterview at
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(SOURCE: StockInterview.com)
