International Partners Launch Uranium Exploration Project in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin
A new uranium exploration initiative is set to begin this month in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, led by a local drilling crew and backed by an international partnership spanning Canada and Australia, Cowboy State Daily reports.
The effort could potentially identify one of the largest uranium resources in the state.
Single Water Services, a Glenrock-based drilling company, will begin mobilizing equipment and personnel to the Pine Ridge project site north of Glenrock in mid-July. The campaign will involve drilling dozens of holes to a depth of up to 1,600 feet, totaling 125,000 feet of exploration drilling. The goal: to determine the commercial viability of what may become Wyoming’s second-largest uranium deposit.
“We’ll probably get mobilized out about Friday before the 21st and get some pits dug and be ready to start drilling on the morning of the 21st,” said Levi Single, owner of the drilling company.
His four-person crew will work alongside Hawkins CBM Logging of Cody, which will provide subsurface data using advanced geophysical tools.
The Pine Ridge project is being developed through a joint venture between Snow Lake Resources, a Canadian company listed on Nasdaq, and Global Uranium and Enrichment Limited, based in Australia. Snow Lake also holds a nearly 20% equity stake in its Australian partner. Together, they hope to define an exploration target of up to 50 million pounds of uranium — a scale that would place the deposit among the top in the state.
Snow Lake CEO Frank Wheatley explained that the company pivoted from lithium to uranium exploration in response to market trends and evolving energy policy.
“Given that the lithium market is depressed right now, about a year and a half ago we shifted our focus to uranium,” he said.
He added that recent US executive orders have increased support for uranium as a critical mineral.
The Pine Ridge property spans approximately 37,000 acres and lies about nine miles from Cameco’s Smith Ranch Mill, one of the country’s top uranium production facilities. Historical drilling in the area — over 1,200 holes conducted by past operators — has already mapped promising geological formations suited for in-situ recovery, the extraction method that Snow Lake intends to use.
Unlike traditional mining, in-situ recovery involves injecting a solution into underground ore bodies to dissolve uranium, which is then pumped to the surface. This technique is considered less invasive and is already employed in several Wyoming operations.
Drilling at Pine Ridge will continue into next year, with the objective of producing an initial mineral resource estimate by the end of 2025. The early focus will be on the southern part of the project area.
The Wyoming project is part of a broader international portfolio for Snow Lake, which also includes the Engo Valley Uranium Project in Namibia. That site, last explored in the 1970s, is expected to yield a resource estimate later this year.
In addition to uranium exploration, Snow Lake is considering a move into the nuclear energy technology sector. The company has signed a memorandum of understanding with US-based Exodys Energy to explore potential development of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), a type of compact nuclear reactor. Wyoming is one of several states under consideration for future SMR-related development.
