American Vanadium pursuing Gibellini Project By ADELLA HARDING Mining Quarterly Editor
ELKO — American Vanadium Corp. hopes to file a plan of operations with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management later this year for its proposed vanadium mine in Eureka County. “We hope to be building this in 2015 and firing up in 2016, if everything goes well,” said Reno-based Michael Doyle, executive vice president of operations for the Canadian company that expects to develop the first vanadium mine in the United States. The company earlier provided baseline data to the Battle Mountain BLM District for review, and the plan of operations will kick off the environmental impact statement process toward permitting the surface mine. “It will be a bit before we see the first cut on the baseline data review. Then, we will send in the plan of operations, probably in the next few months,” Doyle said. American Vanadium would develop the mine at its Gibellini property 27 miles south of the town of Eureka in the Fish
Creek Mining District. Doyle said plans still call for employing between 90 and 100 people and the mine will be a fairly small operation, mining a little more than 3 million tons a year. “But it would produce a significant amount of vanadium,” he said. This vanadium mine will be a different from the big open pits where gold, copper and silver are mined in Nevada, however, because the ore is on and near the surface. “You can stand on the ore zone,” Doyle said. “There is no strip ratio. You can stand on a hill and look down at it. It has the color of Fruit Loops, and you can actually smell it. That’s kind of neat to see.” Vanadium is used to strengthen steel, and there is a market in the steel industry for vanadium, but the company is looking at the expected growth in demand for vanadium for redux batteries. These are “really big batteries that take a lot of vanadium,” Doyle said. “A small one is the size of a sea container.” In fact, American Vanadium is looking
98 MINING QUARTERLY, Elko, Nevada SPRING 2012
at the potential of using such a battery to power the planned mine, he said. “The exciting part of the American Vanadium story is the fact that not only will we be the only mine in the U.S. producing vanadium for the steel industry but will also be the only producer of vanadium electrolyte necessary for vanadium flow batteries, which allow for the mass storage of renewable and conventional energy,” said Ron MacDonald, executive chairman of the company. The feasibility study for the proposed mine looked at the steel market, however, and Doyle said the company may do offtake agreements with companies for vanadium. The demand in the steel market grew when China changed its building codes to require vanadium in rebar for building construction, “but the battery market is more lucrative,” he said. Doyle said the timing for the EIS process should be about right for the company as the market continues to build for the batteries. “We should be geared up at the time it starts to take off in the U.S.,” he said.
Chris Berry, founder of House Mountain Partners LLC, house-mountain.com; publisher of Morning Notes and www.discoveryinvesting.com and researcher of junior mining and resource stocks, said North America is 95 percent reliant on vanadium from overseas sources. “Vanadium is critical to infrastructure, and critical to the quality of life that we have become accustomed to in North America,” he said. “You don’t want to be 95 percent reliant on something from China, or anybody for that matter.” American Vanadium has already met with Eureka County Commissioners to let them know what the company plans, and Commission Chairman Leonard Fiorenzi said in January that the county is including the Gibellini Project in its expectations for growth. General Moly plans the Mt. Hope Project north of Eureka, and that project would employ roughly 400 people. There also are plans for mining at Gold Bar again, he said. Doyle said the company also has met with the Western Shoshone about the project.