The Gibellini deposit occurs within organic-rich siliceous mudstone, siltstone, and chert of the Gibellini facies of the Devonian Age Woodruff Formation.

In general, the beds strike north-northwest and dip from 15º to 50º to the west. The black shale unit which hosts the vanadium Mineral Resource is from 175 ft to over 300 ft thick and overlies gray mudstone of the Bisoni facies. The shale has been oxidized to various hues of yellow and orange up to a depth of 100 ft.

Alteration (oxidation) of the rocks is classified as one of three oxide codes: oxidized, transitional, and reduced. Vanadium grade changes across these boundaries. The transitional zone reports the highest average grades and RMP geologists interpreted this zone to have been upgraded by supergene processes.

The Louie Hill deposit lies approximately 500 m south of the Gibellini deposit, being separated from the latter by a prominent drainage. Mineralization at Louie Hill is hosted by organic- rich siliceous mudstone, siltstone, and chert of the Gibellini facies of the Devonian Woodruff Formation and probably represents a dissected piece of the same allochthonous fault wedge containing the Gibellini deposit.

Mineralized beds cropping out on Louie Hill are often contorted and shattered but in general strike in a north–south direction, and dip to the west 0 to 40º.

Rocks underlying the Louie Hill Deposit consist of mudstone, siltstone and fine-grained sandst ........

Based on the geometry and the depth of both Gibellini and Louie Hill deposits, surface mining methods are considered most economically amenable.

Open pit mining optimization inputs for the Project are based on an open pit bulk mining method. Contract mining is assumed for a contractor using a small equipment fleet.

Five pit phases were developed for the Project. Phases I, II and III are mined from the Gibellini deposit and Phases IV and Phase V are mined from the Louie Hill deposit. The Gibellini pit will be mined first in its entirety based on the confidence categories of the resource estimate, and the preliminary nature of the Louie Hill pit, as opposed to having the pits based on optimized grade.

The phases were selected from the different resulting pit optimization shells and based on operational parameters such as bench advance and pushback widths.

Mining at the Gibellini pit will start at elevation 7120 ft on the northernmost area of the deposit and mining in the Louie Hill pit will start at elevation 7220 ft. The deepest bench of Gibellini will be at elevation 6740 ft to remain above the local water table and facilitate pit drainage. At Louie Hill, the deepest bench to be mined will be at elevation 6920 ft.

Two waste rock storage facilities (WRSFs) were designed for a total capacity of 4.1 Mst. Only non acid generating (NAG) material will be placed on waste dumps. All potentially yacid generating (PAG) material w ........

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The design for the process plant is based on processing the mined material through a heap leach operation using heap-leach technology and standard proven equipment.

Commercial heap leaching and solvent extraction recovery of vanadium mineralization has not been done before; nonetheless, heap leaching and solvent extraction recovery are common technology in the mining industry. The most notable examples are the multiple copper heap leach projects that use an acid leach solution to mobilize the metal followed by recovery in a solvent extraction plant, which is then followed by electrowinning. The Project process applies the same acid heap leaching and solvent extraction technology to recover vanadium. However, instead of electro-winning, the Project process will use an acid strip followed by precipitation to produce a final product.

Agglomeration and Heap Leach
The agglomerator feed conveyor will transport the crushed product to the agglomeration. Sulfuric a ........