Golden Share Resources and Forum Energy Metals have forged a partnership to acquire 32 mineral claims of the Afton Vanadium Deposit located in western Wyoming, US.
Image: Map showing the location of the Afton Vanadium Deposit. Photo: courtesy of Golden Share Resources Corporation.
Financial terms of the deal were not revealed by Golden Share and Forum, which had equally funded the acquisition with a plan to form a 50:50 joint venture.
Forum, which is a Canada-based mineral resource company, will be the operator of the acquired vanadium deposit, spread across 661 acres.
Forum president and CEO Rick Mazur said: “We are excited to enter into a partnership with a vanadium battery technology company to evaluate the Afton Vanadium deposit.
“Vanadium prices have risen sharply amid tight supply, and with new developments in vanadium redox flow batteries for grid-scale wind and solar energy storage, the market for vanadium is expected to remain very strong.”
Forum’s partner Golden Share, which is a Canada-based junior natural resource company, will retain a right of first refusal on the future off-take of vanadium from the deposit. Golden Share is engaged in developing opportunities associated with vanadium-based energy storage solutions.
Golden Share president and CEO Nick Zeng said: “We are pleased to have partnered with Forum to help us secure battery grade vanadium to meet the future demands for our vanadium battery business developments.”
The partners plan to undertake sampling of the deposit in the course of this month for completing its metallurgical studies.
According to the partners, the vanadium contained in the Phosphoria Formation of western Wyoming is strikingly consistent in black shale, oolite and mudstone beds in the Afton region.
Further 123 trenches, four shafts and six adits were worked and sampled from the deposit following an exploration and development program taken up from 1942 to 1944 by the US Geological Survey (USGS) in co-operation with the US Bureau of Mines.
As per the data from the program, USGS estimated 30 million tons of vanadium resources at the Afton Vanadium Deposit averaging 1.1% V2O5.