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Cameco’s CEO Tim Gitzel says the uranium deal with India will strengthen prices and solidify operations in the province’s north.
Over nine years the Saskatchewan company will ship $2.6 billion in uranium to India, replacing a five-year deal signed in 2015. According to the province, the current agreement is nearly 10 times the value of the previous one.
Read more:
- Saskatchewan Premier Moe says uranium deal with India marks ‘great day’
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Gitzel, who was in India with Prime Minister Mark Carney and Premier Scott Moe to finalize the deal Monday, said the agreement “broke the ice” on a political level.
The agreement will provide India with 22 million pounds of uranium ore concentrate, representing a portion of the approximately 230 million pounds currently under contract, which was reported in Cameco’s latest quarterly results.
Gitzel said the deal with India will solidify operations in northern Saskatchewan, noting some production will come from McArthur River, Key Lake and Cigar Lake.
According to Gitzel, 50 per cent of Cameco’s employees are from northern Saskatchewan with hundreds of millions of dollars spent on contractors and subcontractors.
“We help in the communities,“ Gitzel said. “It’s a great, great deal for Saskatchewan.”
Gitzel called the deal with India “a really interesting story,” comparing the country’s population of 1.4 billion to Saskatchewan’s population of around one million.
“Today (India) runs about eight gigawatts, so 8,000 megawatts of nuclear power,” Gitzel said.
“Their plan is to go to 100,000 megawatts of nuclear power in the next 20 years. It’s just astronomical growth and scale that we can’t even hardly comprehend in Canada and Saskatchewan, so they’re going to need a lot of our product.”
Gitzel said he is glad to see relations between India and Canada improving, noting the Premier didn’t visit India just to discuss uranium but also agriculture, lentils and peas.
“It’s going to be a big market for Saskatchewan,” Gitzel said.
The CEO said the uranium market is tight and the deal should strengthen uranium prices. Over the last five years, Gitzel said there’s been tremendous growth in the demand for nuclear energy.
“As new reactors are built, we need to be able to supply them with uranium,” Gitzel said.
Gitzel pointed to Cameco and Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. partnership with the American government to help build nuclear reactors in the United States.
The U.S. government will arrange financing as well as facilitate the permitting and approvals for at least US$80 billion worth of new Westinghouse nuclear reactors in the U.S., under the agreement.
Westinghouse was acquired by Brookfield and Cameco in November 2023.
Gitzel said Cameco is signing contracts that run until 2040 as more customers want to secure their supply.
“They see what the world looks like these days (and) it’s not very pleasant in a lot of areas of the world,” he said.
Gitzel said energy security is becoming extremely important in countries around the world.
“If you have nuclear power, you can store three, four or five years of fuel right on site in your country,” he said.
“It looks like a pretty bright future for Cameco, Saskatchewan, northern Saskatchewan, and indeed, for Canada.”
– With files from The Canadian Press
