Crucial commodities
Price/supply concerns draw end-users to Commerce Resources' rare earths-tantalum-niobium projects
F-35 fighter jets alongside the USS America: Chinese rare earths in action. (Photo: Lockheed Martin)
"One of the things that really galls me is that the F-35 is flying around with over 900 pounds of Chinese REEs in it."
That typifies some of the remarks Commerce Resources TSXV:CCE president Chris Grove hears from end-users of rare earths and rare metals. Steeply rising prices for magnet feed REEs and critical minerals like tantalum—not to mention concern about stable, geopolitically friendly sources—have brought even greater interest in the company's two advanced projects, the Ashram rare earths deposit in northern Quebec and the Blue River tantalum-niobium deposit in southeastern British Columbia. Now Commerce has a list of potential customers and processors waiting for samples from both properties.
Of course with China supplying over 90% of the world's REEs, governments and industries in many countries have cause for concern. Tantalum moves to market through sometimes disturbingly vague supply lines, with about 37% of last year's production coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo and 32% from Rwanda, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. One company in Brazil, CBMM, produces about 85% of the world's niobium, another critical mineral.
As Ashram moves towards pre-feasibility, Commercehas a team busy getting a backlog of core to the assay lab. But tantalum and niobium, the original metals of interest for Commerce, have returned to the fore as well, with early-stage exploration on the Quebec property and metallurgical studies on the B.C. deposit.
The upcoming assays will come from 14 holes totalling 2,014 metres sunk last year, mostly definition drilling. Initial geological review and XRF data suggest significant intervals in several holes, including a large stepout to the southeast, Grove's team reports.
"We're always excited to see this project's drilling results," he says. "We know we're in carbonatite basically all of the time and over the last five years, in all the 9,200 metres we've done since the last resource calculation, we've basically always hit more material than was modelled in the original resource—i.e. we've always found less waste rock at surface, we've always hit material in the condemnation holes and we've always had intersections of higher-grade material. So all those things look exciting for this program."
Carbonatite comprises a key Ashram distinction. The deposit sits within carbonatite host rock and the minerals monazite, bastnasite and xenotime, which are well understood in commercial REE processing. That advantage distinguishes Ashram from REE hopefuls that foundered over mineralogical challenges. Along with resource size, mineralogy has Grove confident of Ashram's potential as a low-cost producer competing with China.
As for size, a 2012 resource used a 1.25% cutoff to show:
- measured: 1.59 million tonnes averaging 1.77% total rare earth oxides
- indicated: 27.67 million tonnes averaging 1.9% TREO
- inferred: 219.8 million tonnes averaging 1.88% TREO
A near-surface—sometimes at-surface—deposit, Ashram also features strong distribution of neodymium, europium, terbium, dysprosium and yttrium, all critical elements and some especially costly. Neodymium and dysprosium prices have shot up 80% this year.
Commerce Resources' field crew poses at the Eldor property, home to the Ashram deposit and Miranna prospect.
Comparing Ashram's inferred gross tonnage of nearly 220 million tonnes with the measured and indicated total of less than 30 million tonnes, Grove sees considerable potential to bolster the M&I as well as increase the resource's overall size and average grade.
This season's field program includes prospecting in the Miranna area about a kilometre from the deposit. Miranna was the site of 2015 boulder sampling that brought "spectacular" niobium grades up to 5.9% Nb2O5, nearly twice the average grade of the world's largest producer, CBMM's Araxá mine, Grove says. Some tantalum standouts showed 1,220 ppm and 1,040 ppm Ta2O5. Significant results for phosphate and rare earth oxides were also apparent.
Should Miranna prove drill-worthy, the synergies with Ashram would be obvious.
That's the early-stage aspect of Commerce's tantalum-niobium work. In B.C. the company's Blue River deposit reached PEA in 2011, with a resource update in 2013. Based on a tantalum price of $381 per kilo, the estimate showed:
- indicated: 48.41 million tonnes averaging 197 ppm Ta2O5 and 1,610 ppm Nb2O5 for 9.56 million kilograms Ta2O5 and 77.81 kilograms Nb2O5
- inferred: 5.4 million tonnes averaging 191 ppm Ta2O5 and 1,760 ppm Nb2O5 for 1 million kilograms Ta2O5 and 9.6 million kilograms Nb2O5
Actually that should be 1,300 kilograms less. That's the size of a sample on its way to Estonia for evaluation by Alexander Krupin, an expert in processing high-grade tantalum and niobium concentrates. "As with Ashram, we've already found that standard processing works well for Blue River," Grove points out. "However, if Krupin's proprietary method proves even more efficient, why wouldn't we look at it?"
Back to rare earths, Commerce signed an MOU with Ucore Rare Metals TSXV:UCUto assess Ashram material for a proprietary method of selective processing. Others planning to test proprietary techniques on Ashram include Texas Mineral Resources and K-Technologies, Rare Earth Salts, Innovation Metals Corp, the University of Tennessee and NanoScience Solutions at Tufts University in Massachusetts.
Should proprietary methods work, all the better, Grove states. But he emphasizes that standard metallurgical tests have already succeeded, making a cheaper process unnecessary for both Blue River and Ashram.
Potential customers show interest too. Concentrate sample requests have come from Solvay, Mitsubishi, Treibacher, BASF, DKK, Albemarle, Blue Line and others covered by non-disclosure agreements. Requests have also come for samples of fluorspar, a potential Ashram byproduct and another mineral subject to rising prices and Chinese supply dominance.
A solid expression of interest came from the province too, as Ressources Québec invested $1 million in a February private placement. The provincial government corporation describes itself as focusing "on projects that have good return prospects and foster Quebec's economic development."
Also fostering the mining-friendly jurisdiction's economic development is Plan Nord, which has pledged $1.3 billion to infrastructure over five years. The provincial road to Renard helped make Stornoway Diamond's (TSX:SWY) mine a reality. Other projects that would benefit from a road extension towards Ashram would be Lac Otelnuk, located 80 kilometres south. The Sprott Resource Holdings TSX:SRHI/WISCO JV holds Canada's largest iron ore deposit. Some projects north of Ashram include the Kan gold-base metals project of Barrick Gold TSX:ABX and Osisko Mining TSX:OSK, as well as properties held by Midland Exploration TSXV:MD.
But, Grove says, it's rising prices and security of supply that have processors and end-users metaphorically beating a path to his company's door. And maybe nothing demonstrates the criticality of critical minerals better than a nearby superpower that relies on a geopolitical rival for commodities essential to national defence.
Source: http://resourceclips.com/2017/09/08/crucial-commodities/
Name: Greg Klein
Web: www.resourceclips.com