—Like other British possessions, Australia labored under the handicap of a comparatively low fixed price for tungsten ores during the war. This price, at first 55 shillings per long ton unit c.i.f. London, was later raised to 60 shillings. During the earlier part of the war the price paid in Australia averaged less than one-half the price paid in the United States, and only a little more than half that paid in regions other than the British provinces. In consequence the Australian tungsten production did not increase during the war as it might have done had prices been higher. The cream of the known deposits is gone except in Tasmania, where contact metamorphic deposits on King Island have quadrupled the Tasmanian output. The tungsten minerals mined in Australia are largely wolframite with smaller quantities of huebnerite and scheelite. The huebnerite seems to be rarely recognized as such in the British market, but is all sold as wolframite. Except for the contact metamorphic deposits on King Island, Tasmania, the deposits worked are mostly veins, with some pegmatites.
In New Zealand, the production is wholly scheelite; it increased considerably during the war until the last year—1918—when, apparently from a lack of efficient labor, it fell to the lowest point since 1909. The probabilities are that there will be a stoppage of output for the present.
South America.
—In Bolivia the increase of production has been great. The deposits seem to be wholly veins and derived placers. The veins are closely connected with the tin deposits, and in many veins tin and tungsten are associated, but many tungsten deposits contain little or no tin. The tungsten minerals mined are ferberite, wolframite, scheelite and some huebnerite. In some veins the minerals are mixed and in others wholly separate. The mines are in and on both sides of the eastern Cordillera of the Andes through a distance of nearly 400 miles from a point near Puerta Acosta, on the northwest, to Chorolque, on the southeast. Mining costs during the war rose greatly in sympathy with the rise in other parts of the world. Wages did not rise to great heights, but the cost of materials advanced decidedly. Transportation conditions are always bad in most of Bolivia, and heavily increase expenses. Because of circumstances the output is extremely sensitive to a decrease in demand or prices, and hence it fell quickly after the armistice, but should high prices come again, it will probably again increase quickly. Some modern plants were placed at mines before or just as the armistice was signed, and when world stocks of tungsten are used and when there is again a demand, some ore will be produced even at less than $10 a unit, though the average cost seems to be about $12 a unit, at the mine.[85]
[85] Hazeltine, Ross, United States consul, La Paz. Report dated May 14, 1919.
The output of Peru, as now produced, seems to depend upon high prices and with such prices could probably remain at the level of 1916 for several years. The Huaura deposits are reported to be large, though of low grade, and may under proper management yield much ore even at lower prices. They were under the control of German firms during the war and probably still are.
North America.
—Until 1911 the United States was the leading tungsten-producing country, but in that year it was passed by Burma, which kept the lead until 1916, when the United States again became the principal miner of tungsten ore. In 1918 China entered the excessively high-priced market with an output that exceeded by nearly 1,000 tons the world’s production of any year before 1915. North America increased its output from 1,549 tons in 1913 to 6,512 tons in 1917, but dropped back nearly 1,000 tons (to 5,406 tons) in 1918. In the United States the decrease of production was due almost wholly to the fall in price, and only partly to exhaustion of deposits. In the Boulder, Colo., tungsten field some of its best ore bodies are worked out and the cost of production has risen greatly owing to the impoverishment of others, and the same thing is true in some other places, but it seems possible that in the country as a whole the production can be made about equal to what it has been before, provided prices are equally high, through the discovery of the contact-metamorphic deposits of the Great Basin.
In Mexico the tungsten deposits are seemingly a continuation of those of southern Arizona. So far as known, all the Mexican deposits carry scheelite, in places partly replaced by cuprotungstite. The known worked deposits in the Sahuaripa district of Sonora are described as veins containing scheelite with copper minerals and a pegmatite dike in which are large masses of scheelite and molybdenite.