By Kim Hyun-cheol
Staff Reporter
Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) and its affiliate Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) have decided to buy a 10-percent stake in the world's second-largest uranium mine in Niger for 300 billion won ($257.3 million).
A KEPCO board meeting Thursday confirmed that the pair of state-run firms will invest in the project by purchasing newly issued shares of Areva NC Expansion of France, which owns 67 percent of the Imouraren mine, KEPCO said. The deal will be signed early next week, and finalized before the end of the year.
With the deal, KEPCO and KHNP will secure the right for some 18,000 metric tons of uranium deposits at Imouraren, and will bring in 700 tons of the mineral annually over 24 years starting from 2013.
The annual figure accounts for nearly 15 percent of the nation's uranium consumption for a year. Korea is currently operating 20 nuclear power plants, and is estimated to need 5,000 tons of uranium next year.
Its uranium consumption is expected to rise to 6,000 tons in 2016, when building of an additional eight nuclear plants will be completed.
This deal will also further raise the self-sufficiency of Korea's uranium development to 22.5 percent, according to KEPCO. Earlier in June, the Korean utility company acquired a 17-percent stake in the Canada-based uranium mining company, Denison Mines.
Areva NC and the Niger government currently own the mine in West Africa. It is estimated to have deposits of more than 200,000 tons, trailing only Australia's Olympic Dam mine globally.
After a three-year period of development, Imouraren will produce 6,000 tons of uranium per year from 2013, and the annual volume will further grow to 8,000 tons from 2019 through the expansion of its smelting facilities.
This is part of KEPCO's plan to beef itself up to a globally competitive energy firm. "Luck helped us as much as our strategic efforts to purchase a stake in the Imouraren mine, as few promising uranium mines came on the market for sale in anticipation of the economic recovery," CEO Kim Ssang-soo said in a statement.
Earlier this year, with the announcement of the expansion plan, Kim said that the period until next year was the best time to give it a shot at mergers and acquisitions for overseas natural resources.
On top of this deal, KEPCO is exploring two uranium mines in Canada and also plans to take over a couple more mines or mining companies next year in resource-rich regions such as Africa and Central Asia.
hckim@koreatimes.co.kr
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