Name of the Project
Gibellini vanadium project.

Location
The project is located in Eureka County, in Nevada, in the US.

Project Owner/s
Prophecy Development Corp.

Project Description
The project comprises the Gibellini and Louie Hill vanadium deposits.

A preliminary economic assessment on the project envisages an openpit, heap-leach operation producing about 9.65-million pounds of vanadium pentoxide a year, at an average grade of 0.26% vanadium pentoxide.

Average mine production during the 13.5-year mine life is 3.4-million tons of leach material at a strip ratio of 0.17 waste-to-leach material.

Processing will involve feeding leach material from the mine by loader to a hopper that supplies the crushing plant.

The leach material will be fed to the agglomerator, where sulphuric acid, flocculent and water will be added to achieve adequate agglomeration.

The agglomerated leach material will be transported to a stacker on the leach pad, which will stack the material to a height of about 5 m.

Once the material is stacked, the solution will be added to the leach heap.

The solution will be collected in a pond and this pregnant leach solution will be sent to the process building for metal recovery, where it will go through solvent extraction and stripping processes to produce vanadium pentoxide.

Potential Job Creation
Not stated.

Net Present Value/Internal Rate of Return
The project has a net present value, at a 7% discount rate, of $338.3-million and an internal rate of return, with a payback of 1.72 years.

Capital Expenditure
Initial capital costs, including an 25% contingency, are estimated at $116.76-million.

Planned Start/End Date
The first consignment of vanadium pentoxide is expected to be delivered on site to 2022.

Latest Developments
Prophecy Development is working towards securing a positive environmental-impact statement (EIS) record of decision for its Gibellini vanadium project by the first quarter of 2021. This should pave the way for construction to follow in the same year and first vanadium production by late 2022.

SWCA Environmental Consultants has been appointed as its third-party contractor to work under the direction of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The contractor will work on the EIS for the Gibellini vanadium project and assist the BLM with the maintenance of the administrative record.

The Gibellini EIS will be one of the first mining EISes done under Secretarial Order 3355, which has mandated that the final study could be more than 150 pages long and has to be completed within one year of the publication date of the notice of intent (NOI) for the EIS in the federal register.

The firm has stated that the NOI will be published in the first quarter of next year, marking the formal start of the EIS.

Key Contracts and Suppliers
Scotia International of Nevada Inc (basic engineering design drawings); Nonferrous Metals Mining Group Co (metallurgy, process design and engineering) and SWCA Environmental Consultants (third-party contractor).

On Budget and on Time?
Too early to state.

Contact Details for Project Information
Prophecy development Corp, tel +1604569 3661 or email info@prophecydev.com.