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Wednesday, November 11, 2026

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@StableBread

Fajasy on X

In August, I noted that the design in the PEA (the first-pass study) for American West Metals’ $AWMLF Storm copper project meant no tailings dam and no process chemicals. In the PFS (the more detailed study that replaced it), initial capex came in at US$81.0M, 70.9% above the PEA’s US$47.4M, and pre-development capex rose to US$27.3M from US$14.7M. So Storm needs US$108.3M before first copper, up 74.4% from US$62.1M, plus US$10.2M of expansion capex later (US$118.5M over the mine life). Processing drove most of the increase, at US$38.0M of initial capex against US$9.4M in the PEA. Test work showed that crushing broke the ore along grain boundaries and pushed more copper into the fines that bypass the ore sorters (machines that pick copper-bearing rock out of the waste). So the plant now adds a small flotation circuit (which uses chemical reagents to float copper minerals off finely ground ore) and a US$4.2M tailings facility, both of which the PEA’s design of ore sorters and gravity separators avoided. The PFS adds flotation reagents and filtered tailings, which get stacked dry. Storm’s footprint is still small next to a conventional flotation mill’s, but regulators now have reagents and tailings to review. With the flotation circuit, the plant recovers 68% of the copper in the ore, or 103,000t over the mine life, up from ~61% (~83,000t from 10.3Mt @ 1.32% copper) in the PEA plan. But the product grades 15% copper, down from the PEA’s 17.1%, so Storm has to bag and ship 41.3% more of it (688,000t vs. 487,000t) during the 5-6 weeks each summer when ships can reach the site. Over the copper the plant recovers, operating costs come to ~US$3.17/lb vs. ~US$2.66/lb in the PEA (total operating costs over recovered pounds, before silver credits), or 19.4% more per pound. So the PFS mine recovers 23.8% more copper than the PEA’s, but each pound costs 19.4% more to produce, and the processing plant costs four times as much to build, since the fines now need their own flotation circuit and tailings facility.
@StableBread

Fajasy on X

I went through American West Metals’ $AWMLF new pre-feasibility study (PFS) for its Storm copper project in Arctic Canada to see how much of the mine plan now rests on a reserve. The PFS converts part of Storm’s resource into a maiden probable ore reserve (the part of a resource shown to be economic to mine, at the lower of the two confidence levels) of 12.58Mt @ 1.2% copper and 3.7g/t silver, or 151,000t of contained copper and 1.5Moz of silver. All 11 years of the mine plan come from the reserve, with inferred tonnes (the lowest-confidence resource category) treated as waste, which settles my August concern that 22% of the mine plan in the PEA (Storm’s first-pass study) was inferred. The plan averages ~10,000t/year of copper, up to 14,000t/year, and starts in the higher-grade Chinook and Corona deposits, where first-year ore grades ~2% copper. The PFS calculates economic cut-off grades (the lowest grade worth processing) of 0.25-0.27% copper, but the reserve uses 0.32-0.34% because test work on lower-grade ore is limited. Three of Storm’s seven deposits (Cirrus, Gap, and Lightning Ridge) are also still inferred only, so the reserve comes from the other four. So the definitive feasibility study (DFS), the next study, could add ore without a new discovery through (1) test work that supports lower cut-offs and (2) drilling that upgrades the inferred-only deposits.

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