Eureka!
Sweet find, fellas.
The company that made the discovery is thrilled, of course.
More details on the discovery from Interesting Engineering:
In its updated resource report, 3 Proton Lithium (3PL) said that the project hosts an inferred resource of 1.78 million tons of tungsten. The company revealed that the deposit is part of a mineral system that also contains world-class resources of lithium, potash, and boron.
As per 3PL, the deposit is reportedly five times larger than the biggest tungsten resource currently listed in the US and comes at a time when the country relies heavily on imports for the strategic metal. Its in-situ value is estimated at about USD 152 billion based on current market prices.
The US has been importing tungsten from China and other sources, making this discovery a potential boon.
This is a thing that just keeps happening. Every time people say China is going to eat our lunch, we find a crud-ton of resources under America.
Lithium from West Virginia, and tungsten from Nevada!
There is literally a meme about this phenomenon:
More about the find:
'We now have a measured, world-class deposit of multiple critical minerals in one basin, and the one discovery that surprised even us is tungsten,' Kevin Moore, 3PL CFO and Chairman, highlighted. 'This is a metal the US stopped mining a decade ago and now imports while China controls and manipulates the global market.'
All told, the company estimates that all of the resources could be worth upwards of $3.5 TRILLION.
But … there's a catch.
NASA blocked off part of the land from mining in 2023 due to satellite calibration work being done nearby.
About 17 square miles of the site were withdrawn from mining and exploration in 2023 at the space agency's request in order to protect a satellite calibration area in the Nevada desert.
Meanwhile, 3PL is seeking to reverse the NASA land withdrawal and argues that the restriction was imposed before the full extent of the tungsten resource was understood. 'To find more of it here than anywhere, alongside large, measured lithium, potash, and boron at world-class grade, is not a mining story,' Moore concluded in a press release. 'It is a national security story.'
More like a "please lift the restrictions because we'd like to make trillions of dollars" story.
C'mon, NASA. Let's do this company a solid.
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