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 sandstone probably of Mississippian age (Webb and/or Chainman Formations).

Oxidation of the mineralized rocks has produced light-colored material with local red and yellow bands of concentrated vanadium minerals.

Vanadium mineralization at Gibellini and Louie Hill is hosted in black shale sedimentary rocks. Mineralization is tabular, conformable with bedding, and remarkably continuous in grade and thickness between drill holes.

Alteration of the rocks is limited to oxidation and is classified as one of the three oxide codes: 1 = oxidized, 2 = transitional, and 3 = reduced. Vanadium grades change across these boundaries. The transitional zone reports the highest average grades, the oxide zone reports the next highest average grades, and the reduced zone reports the lowest average grades.

In the oxidized zone, complex vanadium oxides occur in fractures in the sedimentary rocks including metahewettite (CaV6O16·H2O), bokite (KAl3Fe6V26O76·30H2O), schoderite (Al2PO4VO4·8H2O), and metaschoderite (Al2PO4VO4·6- 8H2O). In the reduced sediments, vanadium occurs in organic material (kerogen) made up of fine grained, flaky, and stringy organism fragments less than 15 µm in size (Bohlke et al., 1981).

Other workers found vanadium mineralization to occur within manganese modules (psilomene family) in the shale (Assad and Laguiton, 1973). X-ray diffraction (XRD) mineral identification by SGS Lakefield Research in Ontario, Canada reported the occurrence of the vanadium mineral fernandinite (CaV8O20·H2O) (SGS, 2007). Other minerals reported to occur at Gibellini are marcasite, sphalerite, pyrite, and molybdenite (Desborough et al., 1984).

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 will be included with the mineralized material and stacked on the heap leach pad.

Waste material from the Gibellini pit will be stored in a planned East WRSF that will have a maximum capacity of 2.5 Mst. An additional 2 Mst of inert waste material from the slot-cut area of the Gibellini pit will be used as construction material for the Louie Hill haul road.

Waste from the Louie Hill pit is currently all classified as NAG and will be stored on a planned West WRSF and have a capacity of 1.6 Mst. This material can also be used as construction material or backfill within the Gibellini pit if needed.

Contract mining is assumed for mining both Gibellini and Louie Hill based on the following assumptions:
- Drilling and blasting is required with an assumed powder factor of 0.25 lb explosive per short ton of rock;
- Conventional truck and loader operation with an assume fleet of 100 st trucks and 14 yd3 loaders;
- Haul road, pit, and WRSFs maintained using a convention fleet of support equipment inclusive of graders, track dozers, and water trucks;
- Owner-supplied truck shop and office facilities;
- Contract mining assumes 20 hours per day, four days a week operation using two mining crews;
- Leach material will be direct fed into the primary crusher for crushing and agglomeration. A small day-stockpile will be utilized to balance feed flow into the crusher when necessary.
The Owner will be responsible for the following:
- Blast hole sampling and grade control;
- Surveying;
- Short-range and long-range planning.

Crushing
Run-of-mine (ROM) feed will be fed through a stationary grizzly screen into the dump pocket. The mineralized material will be dumped by truck or may be fed via a front-end loader. The mineralized material will be withdrawn from the ROM dump pocket and fed to the wobbler feeder by an apron feeder.

Fines will drop through the openings of the wobbler feeder and the oversize material (plus 2 inches) will be directed to the primary jaw crusher, where it will be reduced from a feed size of approximately 17 inches to a product size of 80% passing 2.6 inches. The fines will be combined with the jaw crusher discharge on the primary crushing discharge conveyor. The combined material will be transferred via an overland conveyor to the coarse ore stockpile stacker. The stacker will discharge the material onto the coarse ore stockpile. The primary crushing conveyor may divert from primary crusher discharge conveyor to an emergency loadout pile in the case of an extended conveyor shutdown on the overland conveyor.

Secondary Crushing and Screening
The reclaim conveyor will discharge onto a double deck clay vibrating screen. The screen oversize material will be directed to the screen oversize conveyor, which will then discharge to the surge bin ahead of the secondary crusher. The screen undersize will discharge onto the agglomerator feed conveyor. The secondary crusher feeder will feed material to the secondary cone crusher, where screen oversize material will be reduced from a size of approximately 5 inches to a product size of around ½ inch. The secondary crusher will discharge onto the secondary crusher discharge conveyor will feed the material to the double deck vibrating classification screen. Screen oversize material (plus ½ inch) will combine with screen oversize from the clay screen onto the screen oversize conveyor. The screen undersize, around ½ inch, discharges onto the agglomerator feed conveyor.

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 ........