The United States government has ordered a Chinese-backed cryptocurrency mining company to stop constructing a mine in Wyoming.

According to the May 13 order signed by President Joe Biden, MineOne Cloud Computing Investment and its partners will be required to divest the property located near the Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

MineOne Cloud is majority-owned by China. The company acquired the land in June 2022 and was preparing to set up a crypto-mining operation.

“There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that MineOne Partners Limited, a British Virgin Islands company ultimately majority owned by Chinese nationals […] might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States,” the order stated.

The order also requires the firm to remove all installed equipment from the site. It also bans Chinese-linked entities from accessing the site, which is situated closehttps://crypto.news/uniswap-founder-urges-democrats-to-immediately-change-bidens-approach-to-crypto/ to the U.S. air base.

MineOne has 120 days to wind up operations and sell the property. The firm is also prohibited from transferring these assets to any third party.

The mining site was initially flagged in October 2023 by tech giant Microsoft, which operated a data center in the area.

Microsoft issued an alert to the Federal Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, raising concerns that the site could be a “full-spectrum intelligence collection operation.”  

“We suggest the possibility that the computing power of an industrial-level crypto-mining operation, along with the presence of an unidentified number of Chinese nationals in direct proximity to Microsoft’s Data Center and one of three strategic-missile bases in the U.S., provides significant threat vectors,” Microsoft stated in its report.

The report followed an investigation by the committee that identified national security risks.

Over the past years, the U.S. has seen multiple Chinese-owned crypto-mining farms migrating to the nation following a ban in China in 2021. Some regions in the U.S. offer cheap electricity rates, which is a major selling point for these entities.

According to a New York Times report, Chinese-owned mining farms were reported in at least 12 states, including Texas, Wyoming, Arkansas, and Ohio.

Last month, the Biden government initiated a crackdown on the cryptocurrency mining sector with a 30% tax on electricity use by the miners. The move was met with criticism, with Senator Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican, claiming it would “destroy” the sector.

President Biden issued an order Monday blocking a Chinese-backed cryptocurrency mining firm from owning land near a Wyoming nuclear missile base, calling its proximity to the base a “national security risk.” The order forces the divestment of property operated as a crypto mining facility near the Francis E. Warren Air Force Base. MineOne Partners Ltd., a firm partly backed by Chinese nationals, and its affiliates are also required to remove certain equipment on the site. More, from the AP:

• This comes as the US is slated on Tuesday to issue major new tariffs on electric vehicles, semiconductors, solar equipment, and medical supplies imported from China, according to a US official and another person familiar with the plan.

To meet growing demand for uranium worldwide, Australian-based Peninsula Energy Ltd. said that it has begun construction on a central processing plant in northeastern Wyoming.

The company’s Ross processing plant will take uranium processed at other Peninsula-owned mines in northeastern Wyoming and produce yellowcake, which is then shipped to Illinois to turn into enriched fuel for nuclear reactors.

The fuel supply chain looks upbeat for Peninsula.

On Monday, Peninsula expanded its estimate for uranium underground in its flagship Lance project near Gillette by 7.8% to 58 million pounds.

The company also expanded its estimates for uranium deposits by 19.6% to 26.2 million pounds in its nearby Ross and Kendrick mines, also located in the northeastern Wyoming area.

“This resource growth comes at an opportune time with the United States government continuing to take meaningful action to reinvigorate its domestic uranium production and nuclear fuel cycle capacity, [while] the company continues preparing for the resumption of commercial production at our U.S.-based Lance projects,” said Wayne Heili, Peninsula’s managing director and CEO, in a prepared statement.

Uranium Going Nuclear

Several uranium companies in Wyoming are posturing for increased production of the commodity because of higher demand in the United States for nuclear fuel, especially since federal lawmakers have responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by banning imports from Russia.

This month’s ban by Washington has spurred domestic development of nuclear fuel for reactors and led to many uranium mining companies to restart production in Wyoming and elsewhere.

Uranium spot prices hit $107 per pound in early February but have since backed off to about $91 a pound as of Monday, according to Atlanta-based UxC LLC, which tracks uranium spot prices on a nuclear fuel exchange.

Peninsula does business in Wyoming through its Strata Energy Inc. unit, which operates the Lance project near Gillette and other mines.

The Ross central processing facility is a key part of Peninsula’s supply chain in Wyoming.

“This is a key piece of the jigsaw for us, providing the ability to produce a finished product for our customers without having to rely on any third-party processing facilities,” Heili said.

“We remain confident of hitting our production targets for 2025,” he said.

Samuel Engineering Inc., with offices in Wyoming and Denver, was hired by Peninsula to get the project ready for restart of production before the end of 2024.

Double Capacity At Ross

The Ross plant was originally built in 2015 as an alkaline in-situ recovery facility capable of producing up to 1 million pounds annually of uranium. Samuel was hired to build additional plant facilities to expand production capacity to 2 million pounds.

Instead of digging up uranium in a mine or surface pit, Wyoming’s mining companies perform in-situ recovery of the mineral. This kind of operation involves pumping oxygenated water with an occasional addition of bicarbonate of soda into the ground to get at the uranium.

In-situ mining has low environmental impact.

In this process, the uranium is dissolved and pumped to the surface, where the mineral is stripped from the water. The water stripped of uranium is then returned underground.

In March, Peninsula agreed to sell between $88 million and $117 million worth of Wyoming uranium to a European nuclear fuel buyer from the Lance project.

To pay for restart of production at the Lance facility, Peninsula raised nearly $60 million in late 2023. Combined, the company plans to take uranium mined at the Kendrick, Barber and Dagger project in Crook County, Wyoming, and convert it to yellowcake at the Ross processing facility.

The agreement with the European buyer requires the company to sell 1.2 million pounds of uranium over a six-year period starting in 2028 to Synatom, which manages the supply of enriched uranium to Belgium’s nuclear power plants.

With the inclusion of this new sales agreement, the company’s total contractual sales obligation over the upcoming decade is 6 million pounds.

Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.