Gili, President and CEO of Ur-Energy. Welcome, Matt.
Thank you, Lawson. Thank you very much. All right. We have a nice smaller crowd this morning, so I'm going to keep it nice and short, and then I'll leave plenty of time for questions. Anybody that's here probably has some uranium questions. All right. Normal disclosure, I'm going to read a disclaimer, pardon me, and read this at your leisure. Ur-Energy, who are we? We are America's fastest-growing ISR uranium producer, and we are rebuilding the Wyoming uranium district in a new era of nuclear energy. There's a picture here of our Lost Creek operations. This is our maiden operation. We brought this back into production over the last 18- 24 months, and we'll talk more about our second production hub at Shirley Basin. What is Ur-Energy? We have a lot of dynamic growth.
We have increased our operational capacity by 60% through July of 2026 with the addition of Shirley Basin. That gives us a licensed and constructed capacity of 2.2 million pounds a year. We have a licensed capacity of 4.2 million pounds a year. We are unrivaled execution. We are the ones that have been here the longest. Our team is the most experienced, and we have been in Wyoming mining uranium as people for the last 30 years, as an entity since around 2013. We operate completely with ISR technology, in situ recovery. So we're using wells, and we are pumping groundwater through our wells, coming back into our plant and capturing uranium. The operational advantages there is it's low cost, it's low risk, and it's rapidly scalable. And we're Wyoming. It is an incredibly pro-mining jurisdiction with an estimated 446 million pounds of reserves resources in the state.
Revenue generator. Again, we're a low-cost operation, so that certainly helps with the margins, and we have exceptional upside through our organic growth pipeline, as well as the potential for consolidation and M&A in the Wyoming district. So why does that matter? Well, we seem to be entering into a new era of nuclear energy. There are 438 operational reactors in the world right now. There are 79 additional reactors under construction, and there's 435 reactors that are in some stage of planning or proposed discussions. This is about energy independence, and this is a way for countries that don't have extensive petroleum reserves to be able to produce electricity for their citizens and their industries. And we're very proud to be part of that nuclear renaissance. How does this translate into a supply-demand curve? The supply-demand curve you see here is from UxC.
Internally, we often use the work that Brian Lee did for Goldman. In all scenarios, what it shows is a declining mine production curve. The international hub of uranium production over the last two decades has been Central Asia, and those mines are still fantastic mines, but they seem to be past their prime. We are seeing a growing demand for uranium, and there is nothing with a more inelastic demand than uranium. A nuclear reactor runs on one thing, and that is on uranium. Look, when you take this all together, you're looking at a projection, again, from Goldman, of a 1.8-billion-pound deficit over the next 20 years. We are in America, as we said. We're in Wyoming, and we are part of the race to reshore the U.S. uranium supply. They're bringing back.
If you're following the current administration in the United States, you're hearing constant encouragement to support the nuclear energy industry through all stages of the power cycle. We're in the uranium part of that power cycle. We consider uranium as a matter of U.S. national security. We're aggressively reshoring the supply chains. We have a large undeveloped resource base, which just requires us to go back into the mining of that. If you look at historically what U.S. has been able to do with uranium production, up until the 1980s, we were reliably producing 20- 30 million pounds of uranium a year in the United States.
After the price declines associated with the Kazakh and Uzbekistan operations coming into play, then a period of disinterest in uranium and the shutting down of some nuclear reactors, you saw the price decline rapidly, and you saw U.S. production almost come to a standstill. What you're seeing now is that resurgence of U.S. uranium production, and we are leading that charge. We're the fastest-growing ISR uranium producer in the United States. We're the yellow line there. We produced 225,000 pounds the first half of this year. We are increasing our production rate at Lost Creek, and we are bringing on the Shirley Basin operations. Why ISR? That's the methodology that we use versus conventional mining. One, it's very low capital intensive. A typical mine for us cost somewhere around $60 million-$80 million to bring online compared to a conventional operation.
The low operating costs, our technical reports show us running around $50-$55 a pound, knowing that today the term price is $97 a pound. They come online rapidly. They're not without their struggles, and we'll talk, it's mining, but they come online rapidly. They have lower technical and executional risk generally, and they're very environmentally responsible. This is a picture of what an ISR mine looks like. That is the mine. Those are the drill rigs. Those are the header houses. This is a mining operation in Wyoming today, and when you're done, it'll just look exactly like that, only it'll have more sagebrush. We're in Wyoming. We have two centers. Casper is our hub. Casper is where our corporate headquarters are located. It's where I'm located. We have two operations, one in Lost Creek and one in Shirley Basin. The hub is Lost Creek.
Lost Creek has an operating capacity to drum 2.2 million pounds a year. The mine at Lost Creek has a licensed capacity of 1.2 million pounds a year. The Shirley Basin mine has a capacity of 1 million pounds a year. What we do at Shirley Basin is we load uranium onto resin, and then we truck the resin to Lost Creek for the precipitation and for the drying and drumming. We look at Wyoming as a district-scale uranium play. Wyoming is the current center for uranium production for the U.S. It's the largest single area of uranium production in the U.S. We're surrounded by other uranium operations. Our operational properties consist of Shirley Basin and Lost Creek. We also have the Lost Soldier, we have the North Hadsell, and we have Lucky Mc. Those are properties that are in exploration and/or development.
We have a strong organic pipeline, but we also have a lot of neighbors. We have a lot of pieces of other properties that are in our basin areas, and we're always looking for chances for consolidation through M&A or other mechanisms. I do want to touch again, we have increased our operational capacity by 60% through the addition of Shirley Basin. That gets us to an operational capacity of 2.2 million pounds a year, and we have a licensed capacity of 4.2 million pounds a year. We could add on to the Shirley Basin plant and bring that operational capacity to the 4.2 million pounds of licensed capacity. This just shows you the details of the technical reports on Lost Creek and Shirley Basin. Very proud. Again, when you're looking at our competitors, very proud we put out technical reports with economics.
Not all of our peers do that. We're very proud to be transparent. We're very proud of the operations we have. They're modest in the world scheme, they're very important to us, and they provide us with a potential for very serious cash flow. Again, I'm stressing this low impact. This is what a well field looks like in the Wyoming desert. Again, we're going to touch on our organic low CapEx growth pipeline. We have Lost Creek, we have Shirley Basin, we have the Lost Soldier property, which we'll put out a technical report on at the end of this year. Lost Soldier had a previous resource estimate done in 2006 of 14 million pounds of resource. We're redoing that for ISR, and we'll have that available for review and publication at the end of this year with full economics.
This just shows you, I don't have enough time. I don't want to go over time here, so I'm going to let you look at this at your leisure, but this just describes each of our properties and what is their status, their catalyst, and their production potential. Again, Shirley Basin and Lost Creek are today in operation. Lost Soldier is coming out with a technical report at the end of this year. Lost Creek South is immediately to the south edge of Lost Creek, and the roll-fronts do continue into the Lost Creek South area, so a very prospective area. North Hadsell is completely greenfield, but when we did the drilling this year, 13 of our 33 holes hit ore-grade mineralization for uranium. Just telling you about our timeline here. The hub and spoke, that's our platform. Again, the hub is Lost Creek.
The spokes are the Lost Creek Mine and the Shirley Basin Mine. Lost Soldier is about 8 miles from Lost Creek, so with a successful construction decision on Lost Soldier, you'd expect that to be our third spoke into the Lost Creek hub. Our pride is our team. We have the experience, we have the knowledge, we have the depth, we've been around the longest, we've maintained the Casper roots, and we're very proud of the team that we've assembled. Here's our capital structure, 400 million shares outstanding. Strong. We are 85% institutionally held, and the first thing you'll see there is we are 6% held by enCore Energy. Ur-Energy, an American ISR platform built to scale. We're producing and scaling up now. We have a licensed capacity advantage.
Low cost, organic growth, team and permitting edge, and we consider ourselves to be the M&A partner of choice for consolidation of the U.S. uranium industry. Thank you, Lawson.
Thank you very much, Matt. Could you maybe walk us all through the pathway to 4.2 million pounds, when you think you'll get there, and what the steps are?
Okay. I touched on it a little bit with the slide that talked about the growth and the catalysts. Shirley Basin, Lost Creek, when both of those mines come into full production, that'll get us to 2.2 million pounds. Lost Soldier, I'm being very careful here with my wording, but I can see a path there where that brings on another 750,000-ish pounds. The growth from past there is going to be through consolidation in the region. That's going to be our natural path. There's stranded assets, there are parts of other entities that are around. With having the hub and spoke in place in those two basins, we are the only operating entities right now in the Great Divide Basin and in the Shirley Basin. So by having those hubs, we're the natural partner of choice in those areas.
Could you then maybe walk us through the pathway just to the initial 2.2 with Lost Creek and Shirley? When do you think it's realistic to get there, and then what are the milestones that we should be watching for?
Yeah. Look, we're doing ramp up, and you know how ramp up is. Mining can be hard, but right now we are seeing everything is in place, and there are no issues that are arising that are not solvable issues. We see, I'm being very careful with forward guidance. We don't put out forward guidance. But I do see a path where we are up to full operational production near the end of 2028 for our two properties, and I would expect that number to be right around 2 million pounds a year. I'm being very careful here with that. That is not guidance. That is just what I foresee.
I think that's actually well aligned with what UxC puts out too, and what I've seen from some other analysts' work. With the $55 per pound all-in cost, a question I always get as an analyst covering the uranium sector is how pernicious is inflation? How sustainable is $55 per pound, and where are you seeing the most cost inflation?
Okay. The interesting thing about an ISR operation is it's mostly labor and electricity. In our operation, the only lixiviant that we add to our water that we're pumping through the ground is oxygen and carbon dioxide. And literally just oxygen and carbon dioxide. We do add some baking soda at times. So we're very low on the amount of reagents that we're adding, so our reagent inflation isn't a large driver. The only diesel that we use is the diesel associated with the drill rigs, so that's not a large driver. Labor's a driver. Labor inflation is a real thing. Wyoming is not a very populous state, and there is virtually no one that lives in the state of Wyoming that wants a job that doesn't have one.
We always have a good competition with the oil and gas industry on attracting people, and we provide a very competitive wage. Really, the sustainability of our cost per pound feels very secure. We do recognize labor inflation. What we do see is our, I'm going to use the uranium term price as the benchmark. I've only been doing uranium since July 1st of last year, and when I joined July 1st of last year, the term price was in the high $70s. Now the term price is in the high $90s. You're seeing the effects of this supply-demand curve. You're seeing the effects, if you're following uranium, you're seeing that Central Asia is starting to lean towards India and China for where they want to supply uranium.
You're seeing the rest of the world thinking very seriously about where are they going to get uranium. The conversations with the utilities, we sell to utilities. There's nothing dramatic. We sell to U.S. utilities. We do have a European customer, but by and large, we sell to good old American utilities. You're seeing the conversations really switch from price to surety of supply.
That is helpful context, but just to pick up on a point you made about your customer base. In early September, there was an RFP, a request for proposal, for those that aren't familiar with the term, from a government agency.
Yeah.
Seeking several million pounds of uranium. Was Ur-Energy able to take advantage of that RFP?
Yes. Myself and the colleague that follows, we were the first responders to that RFP. We are U.S. producers, and we are here today producing uranium. When the RFI, and I am being very careful, it was an RFI from an NNSA just asking, "Okay, who are you and what can you do, and what would need to happen for you to be able to produce uranium?" Our answer is, we are here, we are making uranium today. We would love to be your supplier of choice for uranium for the U.S. defense needs. Being careful when I say defense needs, we are talking about the powering of the nuclear fleet, not necessarily making bombs.
In that vein of partnering with your government, has there been any approach from any agency in the government in terms of helping fund some of your operations?
As part of the nuclear industry, there is a huge amount of funding potential there from different parts of Department of Energy in particular. There is a lot of funding there. As Ur-Energy, we have not needed to raise money for the construction of new operations yet. When we get into Lost Soldier, assuming a positive construction decision, that would be the likely time to start engaging with different funding sources, and one of them could very well be the U.S. government.
Okay. Fantastic. Thank you very much for being here, Matt. This was very interesting.
Thanks, Lawson.