Some cross posts while I was typing. Not digested - will take a look and see how the fit is with the waffle below.
In principle an ore body (strict sense able to be mined at a profit) doesn't depend on grade to make it possible.
Put another way: If the economics work out (making a profit after all the hard work of creating a hole in the ground with all ALL the costs taken care of) then ionic clays/ironstones/carbonatite deposits are potentially great.
LYC - good reserves and grades way above (8%- 80,000ppm) HAS and DRE made good money from their mine recently.. Mountain Pass ditto?? HAS - 30Mt at 1%. (10000) hope to make a profit once they start. DRE have telegraphed expectations of >10Mt and >=1% TREO with the incentives and back of the envelope estimates from brokers and others.
The biggest REE producer in Oz is Olympic Dam. WA1 is exploring in a province that has the potential for this style at West Arunta.
Ironstones - a rapidly evolving space in the Gascoyne now the Lyons River fault boundary has been disproved. Extends across a province 100+Kms to the south to KFM ground and west into poorly explored areas where the theories and hopes need to be tested and proven (VMC among others). Local grades to 40% but expect these to be isolated and any bulk, larger, deposits to be in the 1+% TREO range - There may be some real surprises - statistically possible.
Ionic Clays. Gascoyne: Largest so far looks like KTA with hints from KFM and LNR, The KTA ground is some 100Kms SE of Mangaroon. [The Exploration target for the Tower prospect has been estimated at 87 to 519 million tonnes grading 580- 1120ppm TREO; ]. OD6's drill results near Esperance WA suggest an even bigger and slightly higher grade exploration target for them (Vs KTA). South Australia, Tasmania are also sites where ionic clays are recognized. Uganda and China. The latter, from a comment by DT, have used Ionic clays "economically" for decades - the environmental and health costs may end up making them non economic once all costs are calculated.....
================= Ionic Clays come at the end of the list above.
Boring quarry style operations that will need square kilometers of countryside to be dug up to extract <1000-3000 ppm of REE. It can happen.
Mineral sand operations (related to REEs in places), and bauxite mining show this is possible IF the economics work out.
Lithium - hard rock vs brines vs clays (latter are very similar to REE. ionic clays - don't know of any mines for Li clays yet)
Copper - Porphyries have a history of only a little over 100 years since the style of bulk mining began in the early 1900s. Grades have declined in this period from 1+% to around 0.5% Cu for a rough world average at the moment. Some multi commodity (Cu +- Au/Mo/Ag etc) deposits operate at sub 2000ppm Cu where by products make up for the low grades. [Nd/Pr/Tb etc do the same for many REE deposits]
Nickel - Sulphides, laterites are another distant analogy to REE.
Many precedents over multiple commodities.
All are/have been cyclical with world economics and IMO will continue to be so into the future. =========================
How these minerals are extracted and used has changed {and need to} over the last 100 years. ESG...Economics - does it go beyond the life of mine? What is ore? What is profit if the world is a wasteland be it around a mine or district or all.
Big Qs with no easy answers.
In the meantime DRE have lots of samples heading to the lab.....manga ree and tarraji MRE calculations. Geophysics at Money etc
=================== As part of the site preparation for the possible infill drilling of C3 there may have been some minor activity south of the Yin Core area. Just two sites set up between 21-26 October. Bit odd if only those but that's what shows up on Sentinel. Schematic
~~100m north of 110. Also some access activity and revamping(Perhaps) of some old sites on 7350100N.
[Checking Yin to see if any new sites for deep Diamond and noticed I had missed these before].
Why these??? To help geology model for MRE? Assays unlikely to be available in time as not drilled yet.
Will be interesting to see where the RC rig goes after C1.
Available prepared sites: Infill C3 - approx. 20 prepared. 2 at Yin 4 at Y2 (access from west some 20+ Kms by road from C1 area unless some alternative) A few sites at Y8 - from memory.
Site preparation requires planning, POW, machinery available. Well underway IMO though probably mainly for 2023?
Rig availability not an issue (suspect 2 booked for the next year already and more on the way). Shut down for Christmas New Year. Not much fun in the Gascoyne in summertime for any outdoor work but possible....helps if there is some aircon available at night.
(20min delay)