The US federal government has seemingly rolled out the red carpet for American West Metals' West Desert project near Salt Lake City after providing the Utah Geological Survey with a grant to study the site's critical and strategic metals. The project boasts large resources of commodities critical to the new energy push including zinc and copper and indium.
The US$300,000 grant will run for a period of three years and be used by the Utah Geological Survey to investigate how the deposit was formed, the characteristics of the ground's indium mineralisation and a wider review of the area's geological makeup.
The group says the work is aimed at providing the necessary know-how to sniff out similar deposits in the future.
Importantly the results of the study will be shared with American West allowing the explorer unfettered access to a dataset that could fuel development and exploration targeting of the site’s ore.
American West's West Desert deposit takes the mantle as the country's only established domestic indium resource - a remarkable statistic given no indium was produced in the United States last year.
The company is hopeful the asset may provide a long-term supply of the metal to a market that has of late been starved of indium and the latest development shows its ambition is also shared by the United States government.
American West’ wholly-owned West Desert deposit contains a historical resource base of more than 59 million tonnes, with a 16.5 million-tonne high-grade core at 6.3 per cent zinc, 0.3 per cent copper and 33 g/t indium.
Despite the project's copper and zinc being seen as key components of the global clean energy movement, the lesser-known indium is considered a critical and strategic mineral due to its ongoing use in the aerospace, defence, energy, and telecommunications industries.
Most commonly indium is used to manufacture indium tin oxide, a key feedstock of touch screens, flatscreen TVs and importantly solar panels.
American West Metals Managing Director, Dave O’Neill said:“Geopolitical alignment of supply chains in the resources sector has emerged as an important global issue for governments. This study is recognition of the unique characteristics of West Desert and its importance to the supply of critical and strategic metals in the US. West Desert is uniquely placed in the US as an exciting development opportunity with outstanding exploration upside.”
Following the announcement of the grant Dr Stephanie Mills a Senior Geologist with the UGS and the principal investigator of the study said: “This study is a great example of government and industry collaboration and knowledge sharing to further a common goal: understanding what domestic mineral resources we have and what we can learn from them towards finding future deposits."
Work at West Desert appears to be ramping up across a number of fronts with recent metallurgical test work of the sites ore returning a set of recoveries going 94.4 per cent zinc and 78 per cent copper.
West Desert is positioned about 160km southwest of Salt Lake City and speaks for roughly 330 acres of private land, over 300 mining claims and a single-state metalliferous mineral lease that together comprise for an approximate 32 square kilometre land position.
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By Matt Birney
