Vanadium juniors miners in north west Queensland are looking at a proposal to build a 250km water pipeline from Lake Julius west of Mount Isa, to feed expected demand.

They are also fielding offers from international renewable energy companies to develop generation nearby the operations.

QEM is among five Vanadium junior miners operating in the Julia Creek-Richmond region about half way along the Flinders Highway between Townsville and Mount Isa.

The group was examining all options including funding said Managing Director Gavin Loyden.

The current option on the table was an off-Flinders River storage which wasn’t proving viable Mr Loyden said.

“We’re looking at a water solution from Lake Julius, rather than from the Flinders River, which is a flood and storage model, which I don’t see as being overly viable over a long duration project,” Mr Loyden said.  

“So, we’re looking for a more permanent solution. We’re all contributing to a study which will look at those economic viabilities of a pipeline from Cloncurry.

“And then, hopefully, we’ll be able to hand that back to Sunwater and say, ‘Here’s an opportunity.’”  

The Lake Julius pipeline option had the benefit of following an established easement along the Flinders Highway and came in at an estimated $230 to $250 million, Mr Loyden said.

Related: Idemitsu weighs into Julia Creek vanadium scene

Power options

While options including CopperString2.0 offered significant capacity they would also need locally generated power to meet anticipated demand from both mining and nascent agricultural projects Mr Loyden said.

They had done research to back up claims that the region has a triple-A renewable energy (generation) rating, he said.

“So, we made the decision to do that because we were cognisant of our timelines. We need to be able to turn the power on at some point in time as we’re developing and running this project. 

“Does is work? Is an economically viable, is it in the right place, and does it work with or without CopperString? The answer is yes.

“And we’ve got that acceptability from those developers, and they’re all having a look at it right now. It’s not a project that we would own or it’s not a project that we’ll develop, it’s just something that had to be done. We just decided to kick the ball off.”

Photo: Lake Julius west of Mount Isa