Lander, Wyoming-based Visionary Metals Corp., whose chief executive has family ties to the famed uranium heartland community of Jeffrey City in the middle of the Cowboy State’s Red Desert, is staking claim on America’s next big strategic mineral.
Visionary Metals CEO Wes Adams told Cowboy State Daily that his startup company, headquartered in Lander and that trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange, is in an exploratory stage to dig up nickel and its byproduct cobalt in the Granite Mountains north of uranium boom and bust town of Jeffrey City.
“We just made the first nickel discovery in the Lower 48 [of the United States], the first since the Eagle mine in Michigan was discovered by Rio Tinto about 25 years ago,” said Adams, whose grandfather Bob Adams worked with Dr. C.W. Jeffrey to form the Lost Creek Oil and Uranium Co. back in 1954.
“There’s three years of production left in that Eagle mine, then we have no domestic nickel left,” said Adams of the potential value of his new discovery.
The Next Big Thing
The Lost Creek uranium business was the first to come to the Red Desert city in the 1950s. Jeffrey City is named after Adams’ partner, Jeffrey.
The younger Adams said that his company is leasing about 1,300 acres of state land in the Granite Mountains north of Jeffrey City, with mining claims on about 4,000 acres of U.S. Bureau of Land Management land that could eventually become privatized.
The two mining targets identified by Visionary Metals are called the King Solomon and Tin Cup prospects.
“We haven’t defined the extent of the resource as of yet,” said Adams of his relatively young startup business.
“We’ve got a about a half dozen targets that we’ve identified, but the top two are the King Solomon and Tin Cup prospects,” Adams said. “Those are going to see more exploratory work this year.”
Adams also mentioned another big benefit for mining the state lands besides the strategic one.
“Minerals that we discover on the state parcels would be subject to royalties that would benefit the Wyoming school districts,” Adams said.
This could be good news for Wyoming as the two prospects of King Solomon and Tin Cup could contain anywhere from 10 million to 50 million tons of ore, Adams said.
“The value of nickel now is pushing $10 per pound, and that’s largely due to demand for stainless steel, electric vehicles and green technology,” he said.
At $10 a pound for nickel, that could mean there’s a total of $1 billion of ore in the two prospects claimed by Visionary Metals.
Important For US
Nickel is used for everything ranging from stainless steel and alloys for turbine blades to batteries used in hybrid and electric vehicles and even for mobile phones.
The military and U.S. Department of Energy have stated that they want to financially back companies like Visionary Metals once they get far enough along in their ore discoveries. There are other companies in the rare earth magnets and uranium markets in Wyoming looking for similar help.
The federal government’s backing is all part of a broader effort underway in America to bring back a strategic mining base for the minerals needed in military projects and for building out a clean energy sector of EVs, wind turbines and solar panels.
The concern is that America has lost its competitive edge to China.
The Wyoming Energy Administration has even helped Visionary Metals.
Visionary Metals said it has a budget of about $3.1 million for its study and analysis of the nickel and cobalt deposits, with about $1 million coming from the WEA’s Energy Matching Funds program.
The company is planning aerial surveys to find ideal spots to drill for core samples of the mineral deposits in July, Adams said.
The executive said that his company is still several years of away from completing its exploration work, filing for permits and raising money from Wall Street to begin underground mining for the nickel and cobalt.
Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.
