Niger nationalises Société des Mines de l'Aïr (SOMAÏR) uranium joint venture, transferring all Orano-held shares and assets to the State

Mechanism

The 19 June 2025 Council of Ministers communiqué adopts a draft ordonnance nationalising SOMAÏR. The instrument follows the expiry of SOMAÏR's prior mining convention on 31 December 2023 — i.e. the company has been operating without a renewed convention title for ~18 months — and follows the December 2024 stripping of Orano's operational control over its three Niger mines (SOMAÏR, COMINAK in care-and-maintenance since 2021, and Imouraren whose exploitation permit was revoked in June 2024). The legal mechanism transfers all shares and assets of SOMAÏR to the Nigerien State, with shareholders entitled to compensation calculated net of legal obligations including the mine's end-of-life environmental rehabilitation costs. The same Council of Ministers session also nationalised the electricity utility NIGELEC, presented under a "Compact Énergétique" framing of energy and resource sovereignty.

This action is the second leg of the 2024–2025 Niger-Orano break, following the June 2024 Imouraren licence revocation (responds_to). Where Imouraren extinguished a non-developing exploitation permit under articles 59/61 of the 1993 Mining Law, the SOMAÏR nationalisation is a direct expropriation of an operating mine and the shares of a foreign investor — a different and more aggressive statutory pathway, requiring a fresh primary instrument (the 19 June 2025 ordonnance) rather than execution under existing mining-code mechanics.

Downstream implications

• SOMAÏR is Niger's only currently producing uranium mine. Niger

has historically supplied roughly a quarter of the EU's natural uranium imports, with France/EDF the dominant downstream off-taker; the nationalisation transfers the SOMAÏR production-stock and the right to market that uranium globally to the Nigerien State (Niger has subsequently announced plans to sell SOMAÏR-produced uranium on the open market — see Reuters / Mining.com source).

• Orano launched a second ICSID arbitration in January 2025 over

loss of operational control; the nationalisation triggers additional compensation and provisional-measures filings (see Jus Mundi index of Orano v. Niger (II), September 2025).

• Tightens the global uranium-supply re-routing already underway:

Cameco (Canada) and Kazatomprom (Kazakhstan) gain pricing power on long-term contract renewals as Western utilities reassess Niger as a supply origin; Russia (Rosatom) and China (CGN/CNNC) are positioned as alternative off-takers for the re-marketed SOMAÏR stock.

• Marks a structurally different rule-of-law signal than the

June 2024 licence revocation: a foreign investor's equity in an operating, fully-permitted asset has been expropriated by ordonnance, not extinguished under mining-code default provisions. Higher precedent value for sovereign-risk pricing across the Sahel uranium and gold belts.

Open questions

• Final compensation determination methodology and timing

(the communiqué references compensation but does not specify valuation basis); ICSID outcome will be the binding test.

• Status of physical uranium stockpiled at Arlit / in transit

prior to the takeover, and whether buyer-side title-defect claims block resale into Western utilities (Orano has reserved criminal-action rights against third-party purchasers).

• Whether this ordonnance is followed by parallel measures

against COMINAK (currently in care-and-maintenance) or formalises the Imouraren revocation in expropriation terms.

• Off-taker identification for the re-marketed SOMAÏR uranium

(Rosatom / CNNC / CGN are the candidate counterparties under Niger's post-2023 diplomatic re-orientation).