The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
Metal Tech News - November 22, 2024
Critical minerals-rich carbonatite extracted during niobium exploration at Sheep Creek during the 1960s.
Trained with data from known areas of high-grade rare earths and gallium at Sheep Creek, VerAI Discoveries' AI-powered platform analyzed geophysics and other data to identify critical minerals potential across the southwestern Montana project.
This sample containing 17.8% rare earths and 350 ppm gallium underscores the high-grade potential of the Sheep Creek project in Montana.
The AI-powered mineral exploration technology developed by VerAI Discoveries Inc. has identified the potential for large bodies of high-grade rare earths, gallium, and a suite of other critical minerals ready to be discovered with drilling at US Critical Materials Corp.'s Sheep Creek project in southwestern Montana.
Sampling on the surface at Sheep Creek, as well as historical underground workings from niobium exploration on the property more than six decades ago, have already proven that the property hosts extraordinarily high grades of rare earths and gallium, both of which are essential to the United States' high-tech industries.
A recent study the by U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that the United States' gross domestic product would plummet by $3 billion if China decided to cut off exports of gallium, a metal critical to the computer chips that go in everything from household appliances to the most powerful supercomputers.
Sheep Creek's potential as a domestic source of gallium and rare earths is exemplified by samples collected from the Montana property by US Critical Materials and analyzed by Idaho National Lab.
The nine samples analyzed at the national laboratory averaged 8.48% total rare earth elements (TREE) and 451.8 parts per million gallium.
This sample containing 17.8% rare earths and 350 ppm gallium underscores the high-grade potential of the Sheep Creek project in Montana.
Highlights from these samples include:
• 13.45% TREE and approximately 250 ppm gallium in sample SH-1.
• 13.82% TREE and approximately 300 ppm gallium in sample SH-6d.
• 17.78% TREE and approximately 350 ppm gallium in sample SH-7.
Considering that the global average reserve grade for rare earths and gallium is around 4% and 50 ppm, respectively, the samples collected from Sheep Creek are considered to be extremely high-grade. Significant quantities of niobium, scandium, strontium, vanadium, yttrium, and other critical minerals also contained in these samples add to their value.
"We have confirmed that Sheep Creek is the highest-grade rare earth deposit in the United States, with a multibillion-dollar resource value," US Critical Material President James Hedrick, who served as a rare earth commodity specialist at the USGS and former U.S. Bureau of Mines for three decades, said when the results came back from Idaho National Lab earlier this year. "Over the course of my 30-year career evaluating properties for the U.S. government, I have never encountered a deposit with the high rare earth and gallium grades being generated at Sheep Creek."
Now, VerAI's proprietary mineral discovery platform has confirmed that the high-grade critical mineral discoveries at Sheep Creek could be much larger than what has been identified on the surface.
Trained with data from known areas of high-grade rare earths and gallium at Sheep Creek, VerAI Discoveries' AI-powered platform analyzed geophysics and other data to identify critical minerals potential across the southwestern Montana project.
Earlier this year, US Critical Materials entered into a strategic partnership with VerAI to leverage its proprietary AI and machine learning minerals discovery platform to process geophysical and geological data collected at the surface of Sheep Creek to evaluate the larger and deeper critical minerals potential across the southwestern Montana project.
"We are thrilled to advance this partnership with US Critical Materials and deliver high-probability targets for exploration," said VerAI Discoveries CEO Yair Frastai.
VerAI says its systematic method, which uses AI and machine learning to process large quantities of geology-related information, increases the probability of a successful discovery by two orders of magnitude, while at the same time significantly reducing the time, costs, and environmental footprint associated with traditional exploration.
"Our AI Discovery Platform has identified nine distinct types of base and precious metals in the Americas, significantly strengthening our strategic partnerships and bolstering our attractive asset portfolio," Frastai added.
The process for analyzing the wider critical minerals potential at Sheep Creek began by training VerAI's technology with geophysical and surface exploration data from an 800-acre area of the property where 62 critical minerals-enriched carbonatites (carbonate-rich igneous rocks often enriched with critical minerals) had been identified and the very high-grade rare earths and gallium samples were collected.
Educated with the data associated with known high-grade critical minerals occurrences at Sheep Creek, the AI-powered platform then analyzed the 5,900 acres of Sheep Creek claims that had not been previously explored – identifying several additional drill-ready sites with similar characteristics as the training locations.
US Critical Minerals says the results from the VerAI analysis provide additional evidence of the potential for a deeper continuous source of carbonatite material enriched with high-grade critical minerals across the 6,700-acre Sheep Creek property
"Using our geophysical data and high-grade rare earth element targets on a portion of the property, VerAI has successfully identified multiple drill-ready targets on adjacent land with similar characteristics," said US Critical Material President James Hedrick. "From our initial evaluation of these targets, we have high confidence in their potential to host significant high grade REE mineralization and further confirms our project as a future key strategic supplier of REEs including high levels of neodymium and praseodymium, and critical minerals including scandium, gallium, strontium, niobium, and yttrium."
US Critical Materials plans to carry out drilling to begin outlining deposits of high-grade critical minerals at Sheep Creek in 2025.
With more than 16 years of covering mining, Shane is renowned for his insights and and in-depth analysis of mining, mineral exploration and technology metals.
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