OD6 extends Nevada critical minerals project by 350m
Our US critical minerals Investment OD6 Metals (ASX: OD6) just extended its newest fluorspar target by 350m with more high grade rock chips.
OD6 has been surface sampling its fluorspar project while waiting for drill permits to land
Last week OD6 announced a brand new high grade target called Blue Bell, around 12km south of its main target area.
Today OD6 expanded that target with workings along a ~350m trend returning grades up to 95.6% fluorspar.
Up until now most of OD6’s results have been from the targets to the north, today’s ones came from the south:
(source)
Here is a close up of thet new target to the south:
(source)
Next we want to see OD6's drill permits approved so it can start drilling its main targets in early 2027:
(source)
What is fluorspar and why it matters
Fluorspar is one of the more niche critical minerals that hasn’t quite received any mainstream attention YET.
However in 2024, fluorspar was listed as one of the nine materials with the highest shortfall risk for the US military in a major conflict scenario. (source)
(like we are in now)
Two explicit signals of fluorspar demand from US agencies have come from:
- The Department of War, through the Ares’ US$250M supply contract, (source) and;
- The US Defence Logistics Agency (DLA) - when it included fluorspar on its list of critical minerals that are a priority for sourcing in January this year. (source)
On the 20th of July, President Trump signed an Executive Order to force defence contractors to explore all avenues before buying critical minerals from China. (Here is the full EO)
And set a deadline for “exploring all avenues” of 1st January 2027.
We think that the 1st of January 2027 deadline (and the threat of lost contracts) will mean capital starts getting deployed for any projects that have any realistic pathway to producing a critical mineral in the US.
What's next for OD6?
🔄 Drill permit application
A few weeks ago OD6 officially submitted the paperwork that, once approved, will allow it to do the first modern drilling (and bulk sampling) at the project since the 1950s.
The “Plan of Operations” is for up to 139 drill pad locations across priority target areas:
(source)
Milestones:
- ✅ Plan of Operations submitted
- 🔄 Plan of operations approved
- 🔲 Drill program commenced
🔄 Target generation for US fluorspar project
We want to see OD6 sample in and around the old workings on its project, run some geophysics and generate high priority drill targets ahead of its maiden drilling program.
Milestones:
- ✅ Rock chips
- ✅ Channel sampling
- ✅ Historic drill results
- ✅ Digitisation of scanned paper maps and cross-sections into a 3D geological model
- ✅ Soil/channel sampling
- 🔲 Geophysics
- ✅ Drill targets generated
