Rocky Mountain Resources Corp., an industrial metals and minerals exploration and development corporation based in Vancouver, B.C., has acquired an extensive land position in the Montpelier mining district of Southeast Idaho’s Bear Lake County, where historic phosphate and vanadium resources of major size have been identified.
Paris Hills is about two miles west of the small towns of Paris and Bloomington, and about 45 miles south of the active Soda Springs phosphate mining district in Caribou County. In the 1970s, Earth Sciences Inc. controlled a land package that totaled 4,100 acres extending from Bloomington Creek on the south through Paris and Sleight Canyons on the north.
“We are very excited to add the Paris Hills property to our portfolio. Paris is a world class opportunity for Rocky Mountain with the potential to produce two commodities in high demand ?Çô phosphate rock and vanadium. We are aggressively moving toward development of the Paris Hills project,” said Tom DeMull, president and CEO of Rocky Mountain Resources.
Rocky Mountain has begun a thorough review of the existing data obtained from ESI. It has scheduled a rig to begin drilling up to 12 confirmatory holes totaling up to 7,000 feet on Sept. 15, and will update the geological model and database with the objective of developing a Canadian Institute of Mining compliant resource and issuing a 43-101 technical report before the end of 2008.
ESI extensively explored the southern part of the property near Bloomington Canyon, evaluating both the phosphate and vanadium sources and conducting drilling, tunneling, engineering, metallurgical testing, and environmental studies. In 1976 and 1977, ESI projected a total resource of 304 million tons of phosphate rock averaging 26.8 percent P2O5 and 44 million tons of vanadium mineralization on 3,300 acres of the property in the Meade Peak phosphoria formation. The vanadium mineralization included 6.7 million tons of proven and probable resource.
In the historic ESI exploration work from the 1970s, reference is made to 47 drill holes – results for 34 have been located thus far. Also, ESI conducted test mining in 1974, driving 900 feet of tunnel within the vanadium rich beds, and in 1975, driving 2,700 feet of tunnel in the upper phosphate bed.
Because sufficient work has not been done under CIM best practices to classify these historical resources, Rocky Mountain officials said they are not treating the historical estimates as current mineral resources or mineral reserves. They said the historical estimates should not be relied upon.
The property package that Rocky Mountain has assembled includes about 2,100 contiguous acres lying between Bloomington Canyon on the south and Paris Canyon on the north. It does not extend as far north as the package held by ESI in the 1970s, but does encompass essentially all of the southern area actually explored by ESI, including all of the substantial ESI Locations.
The property holding is a complex mix of private, state, and federal mineral leases and exploration permits, and pending applications involving private land and federal phosphate reserves. At the bottom of the Meade Peak is a lower phosphate bed ranging in thickness from 6.5 feet to 23 feet. About 170 feet of waste shale separate the lower phosphate bed from the vanadium rich bed.
The vanadium rich bed is about 11 feet thick. The upper phosphate bed, which is about 15 feet thick, is immediately above the vanadium-rich bed. The phosphate beds and the vanadium bed outcrop on the east, south, and west. The proximity of the two phosphate beds and the vanadium bed mean that all three would likely be accessed by common underground development.
Mining activity on the property dates back to the 1910s and 1920s, when phosphate was mined by underground methods from both Paris Canyon and Bloomington Canyon. Activity resumed during World War II, when Wyodak Coal, working in conjunction with the USGS, USBM, and Metal Reserve Co., focused work on the vanadium rich beds.
Vanadium is used in hardening steel. Rocky Mountain is also exploring the development of a vanadium site in central Nevada.