Wyoming Uranium Miner Grows Resource, Delays Ramp-Up to 2027

Peninsula Energy has grown the uranium resource at its Lance project in Wyoming to 59 million pounds of U3O8, even as The Northern Miner first reported that the mine’s production ramp-up is running behind schedule. The two threads, a bigger resource and a slower start, are really one story: Lance has more uranium in the ground than operators thought, and getting it out of an in-situ recovery wellfield on schedule is proving harder than planned.

What changed in the new resource estimate?

The updated estimate, prepared by independent consultant WWC Engineering under the JORC Code with an effective date of December 31, 2025, puts Lance’s total resource at 15.5 million measured and indicated tonnes grading 0.05 percent U3O8, for 16.2 million contained pounds, plus 38.5 million inferred tonnes grading 0.04 percent, for another 41.7 million pounds. The gain was modest company-wide at 1.7 percent, but concentrated where it matters most right now: the already-producing Ross area, where delineation drilling in Mine Unit 4 lifted the local resource almost 16 percent to 7.4 million pounds. Peninsula’s Kendrick and Barber areas, both earlier-stage, remain unchanged and still hold most of Lance’s total pounds. According to Canadian Mining Journal, which republished the announcement, chief executive George Bauk said the company plans to keep drilling systematically across Lance, including further work at Kendrick, to sharpen its understanding of the broader resource.

Why is the ramp-up taking longer than planned?

Lance uses low-pH in-situ recovery, and the company’s own June 2026 Quarterly Activities Report shows why the timeline slipped. Wellfield flow rates in Mine Unit 1 and Mine Unit 3 ran below forecast, and the first header houses brought online in Mine Unit 4 dealt with gassing issues that limited uranium capture on resin. Quarterly production came in at just 13,889 pounds, well short of plan, and Peninsula withdrew its full-year 2026 guidance rather than chase a number the wellfields could not yet support. The company was careful to reconfirm 2027 guidance of 500,000 to 600,000 pounds U3O8, arguing the setbacks are commissioning hurdles rather than a problem with the resource itself. There is a genuine bright spot buried in the same report: one of the newer Mine Unit 4 header houses recorded average head grades of 50 to 60 milligrams per liter U3O8 during May and June, more than double the historical average from the site’s earlier alkaline-leach operations, evidence that the low-pH process works once a wellfield is fully broken in.

How does in-situ recovery mining work at Lance?

Unlike a conventional pit or underground mine, ISR leaves the ore in place. Peninsula pumps a mild leaching solution through wells drilled into the sandstone-hosted uranium deposit, and pumps the uranium-loaded solution back up to a surface plant, where it is stripped onto resin, eluted, and dried into yellowcake. It is a quieter, smaller-footprint style of mining than the giant Powder River Basin coal or trona operations that put Wyoming on the mining map, and it is also the technique behind Ur-Energy’s Shirley Basin and Lost Creek operations elsewhere in the state, part of what makes our Wyoming master report read almost nothing like the state’s coal history.

What comes next for Lance?

Peninsula has funded the next stretch of ramp-up with a US$56 million package, split between an institutional placement, a shareholder entitlement offer, and a new convertible note facility, and finished the June quarter with roughly US$22.1 million in cash. The company is also weighing a final investment decision on a fifth mine unit before the end of 2026. None of that guarantees a smooth 2027, but it does mean Peninsula has a bigger resource to draw on and the balance sheet to keep fixing the wellfield chemistry that has slowed it down so far. For a state that already leads the country in uranium reserves, that combination matters more than any single quarter’s output.