The Malbec Project is Powerhaus Uranium’s flagship early-stage uranium exploration project – a contiguous project area of approximately 2,000 km², extending approximately 100 km across central Chubut Province, Argentina, approximately 60 km west of Comodoro Rivadavia. Powerhaus holds a 100% interest in the Malbec Project, which comprises four granted exploration permits and 16 exploration permit applications.
The project is located within the San Jorge Basin and represents a district-scale exploration opportunity. The scale and contiguity of the tenure are central to the opportunity. The landholding encompasses multiple Quaternary terrace systems with identified calcrete-hosted uranium mineralisation and may lie within a regional redox transition in the Palaeocene Salamanca Formation. This single, coherent package provides the scale to test the conceptual regional-scale roll-front uranium model alongside multiple near-surface calcrete targets. The region has seen little recent systematic exploration, despite encouraging historical exploration results, including regional radiometric anomalies first identified by the Argentine National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA) in the 1970s.
Potential for a regional-scale sandstone-hosted roll-front uranium system in the Salamanca Formation - a style of uranium mineralisation widely mined using ISR in Kazakhstan, which accounts for approximately 40% of the world’s uranium production.
~2,000 km² of 100%-owned, contiguous tenure (~200,000 hectares) across 20 exploration tenements. Powerhaus also holds a 49% interest in the adjacent Malbec West Project, comprising four cateo applications covering ~400 km².
In-situ recovery (ISR) is compatible with the current mining framework in Chubut Province, subject to the required environmental and regulatory approvals.
Calcrete uranium targets at Aguada de Piedra are supported by surface grab samples returning up to 771 ppm U₃O₈ from locations distributed over approximately 8 km. Visible carnotite has been confirmed in near-surface calcrete.
The principal exploration target is the Palaeocene Salamanca Formation, a sequence of interbedded clays, silts and permeable sandstones approximately 100 m thick, deposited during a marine transgression in a continental-to-marine environment, predominantly estuarine, over the underlying Chubut Group. The Salamanca Formation has demonstrated favourable reservoir properties, having hosted the basin’s first hydrocarbon discovery and now serving as the reservoir for the Diadema underground natural gas storage facility near Comodoro Rivadavia, although its permeability has yet to be systematically characterised on a regional scale. Geological modelling indicates that the base of the Salamanca Formation occurs at depths ranging from approximately 80 to 250 m across around 75% of the Project area, increasing to approximately 250 to 450 m across the remainder of the Project.
The Salamanca Formation is overlain by younger continental sediments and, at surface, by Quaternary fluvial terraces. At this early stage, Powerhaus’ geological interpretation suggests potential for two distinct styles of uranium mineralisation: a deeper sandstone-hosted roll-front target within the Salamanca Formation and multiple near-surface calcrete-hosted targets within the Quaternary terraces.
Roll-front deposits form where oxidised, uranium-bearing groundwater migrates through permeable sandstone and precipitates uranium at a redox front—the boundary between oxidised and reduced conditions, commonly associated with organic-rich sediments. This target style is of particular significance because such deposits are often amenable to in-situ recovery (ISR): a low-cost, low-impact method that recovers uranium through wells without conventional ore excavation, crushing, grinding or milling. ISR is compatible with the current mining framework in Chubut Province, subject to the required environmental and regulatory approvals.
Initial field observations are compatible with this exploration model. The Salamanca Formation is oxidised to the west of the Project and predominantly reduced to the east (based on the upper exposed horizons), indicating that the Malbec Project may lie within a regional redox transition zone. Secondary uranium mineralisation of up to 314 ppm U₃O₈ has been identified within the upper horizons of the Salamanca Formation and may reflect remobilisation from a deeper source. Piché Resources reported an exposed roll front within the Salamanca Formation at its Sierra Cuadrada Project, approximately 25 km north of the Malbec Project, which is consistent with this regional exploration model.
Critically, roll-front uranium systems of this type are typically associated with regional redox fronts formed where oxidising groundwater migrates for tens to hundreds of kilometres through permeable horizons from the edge of a sedimentary basin—approximately 250–450 km in Kazakhstan’s Chu-Sarysu Basin. In Chubut, Malbec lies approximately 250 km east of the Andes, a position compatible with a regional-scale model of eastward oxidising groundwater flow through the Salamanca Formation (Figure 4). Accordingly, at Malbec, the Company is targeting a regional-scale roll-front system across its ~2,000 km² landholding, rather than a single, localised occurrence. This regional potential is conceptual at this stage and remains to be tested by drilling.
Kazakhstan is the world’s largest uranium producer, with its uranium production derived from sandstone-hosted roll-front deposits mined by in-situ recovery (ISR).
Powerhaus considers that the Palaeocene Salamanca Formation may share the key ingredients of these Kazakh systems—thick, reduced, potentially permeable sandy horizons and regional uplift (subduction-related uplift of the Andes in Argentina versus India–Eurasia collision-related uplift of the Tien Shan in Kazakhstan) driving oxidising groundwater through the basin. Testing for uranium mineralisation and assessing its geometry and grade, together with the permeability and potential ISR suitability of the host sediments, are principal objectives of the planned drilling program.
The second target at Malbec is near-surface calcrete-hosted uranium mineralisation within Quaternary sand and gravel terraces. Reconnaissance grab sampling at Aguada de Piedra, which incorporates the Cañadón Maestro airborne radiometric anomaly (approximately 10 km in strike length), returned assays up to 771 ppm U₃O₈ from locations distributed over a distance of approximately 7 km. The Aguada de Piedra target area covers approximately 43 km² and defines a large area for follow-up exploration. At the 17 km² Del Molle terrace, grab sampling within the Cerro Tacho anomaly returned assays up to 523 ppm U₃O₈.
Follow-up shallow hand-dug excavations identified mineralisation immediately beneath thin soil cover at several locations, with visible carnotite logged and channel-sampling intervals including 1.55 m @ 90 ppm U₃O₈ and 0.45 m @ 216 ppm U₃O₈. Importantly, a sample collected from a shallow hand-dug pit returned 128 ppm U₃O₈ at 0.8 m depth in an area with no surface radiometric response – indicating potential for blind mineralisation beneath cover. The calcrete-hosted mineralisation is considered analogous to that at the nearby Laguna Salada project, which has a reported historical NI 43-101 estimate totalling 10.1 Mlb U₃O₈ and is located approximately 125 km to the north-east. This shallow, low-cost exploration target is a priority for deeper mechanical trenching and sonic drilling.
Powerhaus intends to advance its roll front-hosted and calcrete-hosted uranium targets in parallel.
Powerhaus’ flagship Malbec project, and by additional uranium opportunities at Polo.
