Summary:
Property lies within the Rocky Mountain Physiographic Province in southeastern Idaho, United States of America. The geologic units within the study area are generally marine sedimentary deposits that range from Pennsylvania to recent in age.
The local and project geology of the deposits of the Itafos Conda projects are generally similar in that they are structurally dominated by a series of northwest / southeast trending anticlines and synclines with thrust and normal faults disrupting the strata.
The Meade Peak Member of the Phosphoria Formation contains the phosphate ore within the Conda Projects and is overlain by the Rex Chert member and underlain by the Park City Formation. The Quaternary Alluvium is not very extensive and where present, is only about 5 ft to 20 ft thick.
The Meade Peak Member is broken into five mining zones throughout the Conda Projects where the Upper Phosphate and Lower Phosphate Zones are the primary phosphate mineralized zones. The significant mineralized zones encountered on the property are shown below:
- Upper Overburden Zone (Hanging Wall mud).
- Upper Phosphate Zone - Low/medium to high grade phosphate zone. Interbedded phosphorite, mudstone, siltstone, limestone, and shale.
- Center Interburden Zone – Shale and mudstone.
- Lower Phosphate Zone – Low to high grade phosphate zone. Interbedded phosphorite, mudstone, siltstone, limestone, and shale.
- Lower Underburden Zone (Footwall mud) – Reddish brown siltstone with black fossiliferous siltstone and some phosphorite.
The phosphate mineralization is sedimentary in nature, occurring in a conformable sequence of alternating phosphatic and weakly- to non-phosphatic shale, mudstone, carbonate, and chert beds within the Meade Peak Member of the Permian Phosphoria Formation. The Phosphoria Formation occurs within the Western Phosphate Field that occupies in excess of 135,000 square miles, spanning Eastern Idaho, Southern Montana, Western Wyoming, and northern half of Utah (Sheldon 1989).
The phosphate mineralization encountered in the Meade Peak Member is stratigraphic in nature and the deposit type is considered a typical example of a marine sedimentary phosphate deposit. The phosphate mineralization occurred during the primary depositional processes and there are no known secondary phases of phosphate mineralization or enrichment identified in the deposits.
The beds of the Meade Peak Member were deposited within a marine sedimentary basin within the Phosphoria Sea that marked the western margin of the North American craton approximately 250 Ma. During the period that the Meade Peak Member was being deposited, access to the open ocean was intermittently restricted by barrier islands during cyclical periods of eustatic sea level change resulting from periods of glaciation and deglaciation (Sheldon, 1984). This cyclical process resulted in the alternating beds of phosphatic shale and mudstone with layers of non-phosphatic shale, carbonate, and chert beds.
The phosphate mineralization within the Meade Peak Member consists of apatite pellets, oolites, and sand grains, some of which are further cemented together into clusters of pellets and grains in an apatite cement; the apatite within the Meade Peak is entirely in the form of carbonate fluorapatite (Altschuler et. al. 1958). Individual beds of the Meade Peak Member are laterally continuous over significant distances, with some beds commonly found distributed over tens of thousands of square miles within the Western Phosphate Field (Sheldon 1989); however, the thickness and geometry of the beds has been locally impacted on a deposit scale by both primary depositional variability as well as post-depositional structural modification due to both regional and deposit scale faulting and folding.
Production
P2O5 basis considers Phosphate Fertilizer: MAP at 52%, MAP+ at 39%, SPA at 100%, MGA at 100%, APP at 34% and HFSA at 0%.
| Commodity | Units | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 |
|
Phosphorus
|
t
| ....  | .... | .... | 362,013 |
All production numbers are expressed as oxide.