No means to process Sheep Creek ore

by Bob Williams, Stevensville

Somebody got to Senators Daines, and Sheehy, and Representatives Zinke, and Downing.

They came out against fast tracking Sheep Creek mine exploration.

Days later they did a complete turnaround, and sent a letter to Chief of the USFS Tom Schulz noting lack of engaged Ravalli community support for mining at Sheep Creek. The tone deaf Montana delegates to Congress have the gall to say: “We hope that the lack of [Ravalli] engagement will be rectified promptly and urge the Forest Service and the Permitting Council to ensure the project receives the needed transparency and ample local engagement.”

Promptly rectify Ravalli engagement for Sheep Creek? No way that is going to happen.

The very worst place to mine for gallium and rare earth elements would be at 8,000, along the very headwater of the West Fork of the Bitterroot River.

The US has no means to process out volumes of gallium or REE. There is absolutely no need or reason for near term extraction of Sheep Creek ore with gallium and REE.

Let’s first look at processing rare earth elements. 85% of the global REE processing happens in China.

I see no near term shortage of rare earth elements in the US. I see two more decades of mining REE in the well known Mountain Pass open pit mine in California. Where most of the extracted ore goes to China for final processing into what’s needed, very pure REE oxides and REE metals to be sent to the US.

Like we heard at the 12/1 Commissioners meeting, in China REE is obtained from solvent extraction of REE acted previously on by acids in big leach fields. I don’t see much desire to similarly process REE in the US.

How about gallium (GA)? A soft metal that melts at 85°F. 

From what I’ve gathered, U.S. Critical Materials Corp. is especially focused on supposed very high amounts of very percentage gallium in hand samples taken from the carbonatite ore from the narrow dikes at Sheep Creek.

Did U.S. Critical Materials tell you there is no commercial processing of gallium ore in the US? There’s plenty of gallium as a by-product of processing bauxite ore.

I read that the US imports about eight times more gallium/arsenic, very thin diamond sawed wafers, than gallium metal. Wafers to become substrates for chips.

The US yearly imports about 200,000 kilos or more of GaSa wafers. Wafers to be substrates for high performance chips. The US gets most of those wafers from Finland and Taiwan.

Processing arsenic and gallium in liquid, then gaseous, then pure crystal, forms looks to be very complex and expensive. Guess which country processes way more GaSa wafers than any other country? Finland.

Atop chip substrate, molecular beams apply micro thin lines of gallium. 

Look up how GA allows high frequency electrons to travel very fast with nil distortion.

Got it. If there’s no current way to process Sheep Creek ore, there’s no need to extract it!

Time to find out, who got Daines, Sheehy, Zinke, and Downing to do a 180° turnaround! It’s not cash poor U.S. Critical Materials nor U.S. Critical Metals, or their joint venture to mine at Sheep Creek. 

There’s absolutely no way to promptly rectify Bitterroot Valley’s lack of support for exploratory mining at Sheep Creek.

Who can even think like that?

Authoritarians?