Laramide Resources has terminated its agreement with Aral Resources for the Chu-Sarysu Basin uranium project in Kazakhstan due to government policy changes.
On December 26, 2025, the President Kazakhstan signed into law changes to the Subsoil Use Code, which materially increased the level of minimum ownership of any newly discovered uranium resources by the national company, Kazatomprom.
As a result of these changes, Laramide believes an economic case for foreign direct investment in uranium exploration no longer exists in Kazakhstan.
Marc Henderson, Laramide CEO, said: “Political risk, country risk, and in the worst-case nationalisation risk are all known unknowns in the resource business, but generally don’t impact new entrant players (such as Laramide) until obvious value gets created.
“However, in what may be a world’s first, Kazakhstan appears to have moved pre-emptively to ensure national ownership and control of any new uranium discoveries before they are actually even made.
“If Kazatomprom has a unique and singular track record of exploration success, perhaps this new strategy might make sense, but their own history suggests otherwise and was confirmed by their November 2025 investor presentation, which shows their resource base beginning a period of rapid decline in only a few years’ time, with complete exhaustion by 2057.”
Laramide signed its agreement with Aral Resources in September 2024 for exploration access to over 5,500 kilometres in the Chu-Sarysu Basin, one of the globe’s foremost greenfield exploration opportunities for uranium discovery.
The basin was relatively underexplored, with geology for discovering large, low-cost roll front uranium deposits, but also the potential for the discovery of copper deposits and other critical minerals.
Laramide has been funding greenfield exploration programs to identify the highest priority initial drilling targets for uranium mineralisation since the fourth quarter of 2024.
The company submitted the required exploration work plans to Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Industry and Construction and sought the remaining permits needed to proceed with drilling activities.
However, delays in receiving necessary work permits meant that no drilling commenced in the fourth quarter of 2025, as planned.