Author: Jamie Smyth

A mining company says it has discovered America’s largest deposit of tungsten, a crucial defence industry metal in severe shortage, but US space agency Nasa is blocking development on a large swath of its claims.

The tungsten discovery is detailed in a resource report seen by the FT following a recent drilling programme by critical minerals miner 3 Proton Lithium at its Railroad Valley Minerals Project, situated in a remote portion of the Great Basin Desert in eastern Nevada.

But Nasa says a third of the company’s claim covers a unique region used to track signals beamed to Earth by satellites in space, and that mining the site would threaten the operations.

“This is a metal the United States stopped mining a decade ago and now imports, while China controls and manipulates the global market,” said Kevin Moore, 3PL’s chair and chief financial officer. China’s embassy in Washington said Beijing was “committed to maintaining the stability of global supply chains”. It added that “applications for the export of tungsten that comply with relevant regulations will be granted licences”.