Fortescue seeks to explore WA’s south in hunt for critical minerals

Billionaire Andrew Forrest’s mining company Fortescue has applied for exploration leases covering more than 7000 square kilometres of land in Western Australia’s south in the hunt for critical mineral deposits.

The tenements largely cover farming areas from Gnowangerup in the Great Southern to Ravensthorpe in the Goldfields-Esperance region.

Andrew Forrest’s mining company Fortescue wants to go looking for critical minerals in the Great Southern region of Western Australia.

Andrew Forrest’s mining company Fortescue wants to go looking for critical minerals in the Great Southern region of Western Australia.Trevor Collens/Landtracker

Fortescue is the fourth-largest iron ore producer in the world but has held ambitions in other minerals like lithium for Australian exploration for several years but without much luck in finding new deposits.

The company’s lithium search has previously centred around the Pilbara,but four exploration leases were applied for in March near Bridgetown and the Greenbushes mine – which is the world’s largest hard rock lithium operation.

A further 20 tenements were applied for this month near Ravensthorpe which has existing lithium,nickel and tantalum mines.

The Australian government considers 26 commodities to be critical minerals including lithium and tantalum.

A lot of critical minerals are needed to manufacture the batteries used in electric vehicles and for long-term storage.

The amount of expenditure on exploration for battery minerals in WA increased by 62 per cent in 2021 to $627 million,while sales increased 48 per cent to $9.3 billion in the same year.

Australia’s chief economist has forecast annual world lithium demand will go up 71 per cent to 947,000 tonnes between 2021 and 2024.

Fortescue has also been pursuing gold and copper exploration in the Pilbara and Goldfields regions.

The company also applied for exploration leases last year across about 3.6 per cent of WA’s land mass,an area larger than Tasmania and nearly equal to the size of Portugal,in areas tipped to become home to future renewable energy and hydrogen projects.

Fortescue also has exploration activities in South Australia,Europe,South America and Kazakhstan.

Another Forrest-controlled company,Wyloo Metals,outbid BHP for a high-grade nickel-copper-platinum-palladium deposit in Canada’s Ring of Fire region for $C600 million as part of the global scramble for quality critical mineral projects.

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Peter de Kruijff was a reporter at WAtoday focused on environment,politics and business.

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