<\/p>\n
North West Queensland holds the majority of the state’s critical minerals. (Supplied: Queensland government)<\/p>\n
According to the deal, two strategically significant projects in other states \u2014 the Alcoa-Sojitz project in Western Australia and Arafura’s Nolans project in the Northern Territory \u2014 have been prioritised.<\/p>\n
So while the promise of billions has been made, not a single dollar from the deal has so far been dedicated to mineral-rich North West Queensland.<\/p>\n
Experts say production delays may also stall profits flowing to the region.<\/p>\n
So what will such an enormous deal on the world stage really mean for one of Australia’s biggest mineral deposits?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Australia and the US have formed a partnership to combat China on critical minerals. (AAP: Lukas Coch)<\/p>\n
Speeding up development<\/p>\n
North West Queensland is home to about 75 per cent of the state’s base metal and mineral capabilities.<\/p>\n
There are already about 14 critical mineral projects spanning the 380,000-square-kilometre region, an area slightly larger than Japan.<\/p>\n
But despite the richness of resources, many mines are not yet in operation.<\/p>\n
For example, the region holds almost 30 per cent of the world’s vanadium deposits, and has five active projects, but none have commercially exported a single tonne.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Queensland and Western Australia have deposits of vanadium. (Supplied: AVL)<\/p>\n
Vanadium is a natural soft metal and critical mineral, used to develop steel alloys, large-scale energy battery storage, and is in high global demand.<\/p>\n
Andrew Napier heads Multicom Resources, owner of the Saint Elmo vanadium mine, which is the closest to operation.<\/p>\n
But the project outside Julia Creek is still three years away from commercially exporting the mineral, despite work starting a decade ago.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Saint Elmo is the latest vanadium project\u00a0to pass federal government approvals. (Supplied: Multicom Resources)<\/p>\n
Mr Napier said it could take 13 to 17 years to develop a project from inception to operations.<\/p>\n
“That is debilitating for junior miners and startup companies like ours,” he said.<\/p>\n
He said projects across North West Queensland might not immediately benefit from the deal in Washington, but he hoped it would speed things up.<\/p>\n
“If they are able to access the finance, they’ll be able to perform their research and their exploration faster,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We’re competing against low-cost countries and our logistics routes \u2014 we’re a long way from customers, so transportation is a challenge as well.”<\/p>\n
There are five vanadium mining projects in North West Queensland, between Julia Creek and Richmond. (ABC North Queensland: Nathalie Ferbach)<\/p>\n
Another vanadium project nearby aims to include a manufacturing plant capable of developing vanadium electrolyte, a liquid used in high-storage batteries.<\/p>\n
Critical Minerals Group owns the Lindfield project, and chief executive Scott Winter said the US deal was recognition of Australia’s potential.<\/p>\n
He said the deal would attract money for the region’s resources, particularly mining developments.<\/p>\n
“Initial investment to help the assets get off the ground is critical \u2026 if we could secure offtake from a US customer or the US government, it is paramount,” he said.<\/p>\n
“If you don’t get some of these projects off the ground quickly, then other supply chains are established in other countries, and they start to fill the market.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Saint Elmo vanadium project is still three years away from commercially exporting its product.\u00a0 (Supplied: Multicom Resources)<\/p>\n
Mining boom takes time<\/p>\n
Director of the Sustainable Minerals Institute at the University of Queensland Rick Valenta said one of the biggest challenges would be building the supply chains to move the resources.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Rick Valenta says Australia’s abundance of critical minerals should be utilised. (Supplied: Rick Valenta)<\/p>\n
He said even long-established industries such as copper mining faced the same obstacles.<\/p>\n
“If you found a new copper deposit tomorrow, the world average time to get into production is over 22 years,” Professor Valenta said.<\/p>\n
He said if the recent deal with the US translated to more investment in the sector, it had the potential to cut down development time.<\/p>\n
CSIRO critical minerals lead Chris Vernon said the resources hidden in Queensland’s outback meant the industry was now in direct competition with China, which had become a dominant player.<\/p>\n
Mr Vernon said the US deal meant many more companies would seek to find critical minerals in Australia.<\/p>\n
And he said hopeful miners would have a solid idea of where they might strike it lucky.<\/p>\n
“It’ll definitely prompt further exploration, but on the understanding of where we might have those deposits that have been really well done by Geoscience Australia,” Mr Vernon said.<\/p>\n
“We’re in a really good position.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a time when the world is desperate to mine and process critical minerals, an expanse of land…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,8268,2490,6827,44,144825,144822,144823,144824],"class_list":["post-242863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-critical-minerals","tag-donald-trump","tag-mining","tag-news","tag-north-west-minerals-province","tag-outback-queensland-mining","tag-us-critical-minerals-deal","tag-vanadium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}