The ASX explorers preparing to drill baby, drill in the land of opportunity
ASX players including Firetail Resources, Resolution Minerals, Locksley Resources and Codrus Minerals are taking advantage of a bullish development landscape
Executive orders to boost minerals production could be "transformative" for explorers
US President Donald Trump's promise of more mining friendly policies has seen Australian explorers flock across the Pacific and boosted the prospects for those already there.
While the 'drill baby, drill' slogan dates back to 2008 and was first coined to promote US oil and gas production, Trump re-used it late last year and has since signed a flurry of executive orders which aim to promote domestic minerals production.
Despite ranking second globally for copper reserves, third for potash and fourth for gold, as well as being a top five producer of platinum, gold, copper and palladium, S&P Global Intelligence pointed out the US mining industry faces several hurdles, including declining discovery rates and long project development times.
It also noted that the recently signed executive orders could be transformative.
Exploration activity in the US was already bucking the trend, rising over the past four years to reach a near-record US$1.65 billion last year.
In the first six months of 2025, S&P Global Intelligence Metals & Mining research director Kevin Murphy told Stockhead 1440 holes were completed at 91 distinct projects in the US, half of which were gold projects.
However, that was down from the 1907 drill holes reported in the first half of 2024 across 105 properties.
Last month, Toronto-listed drilling contractor Major Drilling reported that weak market conditions for juniors and the uncertainty surrounding tariffs had delayed some exploration programs in North America but it was confident work was ramping up.
The ASX market has been much more favourable for juniors than North American markets, which, when combined with more supportive mining policies, may explain the flood of Australian juniors flocking to the US.
Conga line
Last month, Firetail Resources (ASX:FTL) announced the acquisition of two high-grade gold projects in the US, the Excelsior Springs gold-silver project in Nevada and the Bella project in South Dakota.
The company had been looking for opportunities in the US for the past nine months.
'We think we are the start of a big conga line that I think will be heading into that part of the world due to the opportunities that are there,' Firetail managing director Glenn Poole told The Hole Truth podcast this week.
'The ASX is a good platform, but Australian opportunities are getting rarer and rarer, so we have to go a bit further afield, and places like the USA are very amenable to mining.'
Poole said both projects had been previously held by 'distressed' juniors which weren't being rewarded for exploration success.
At the more advanced Excelsior project, recent drilling has returned results like 33.5m at 5.35 grams per tonne gold from 41.2m, including 10.7m at 15.99g/t gold, 51.8m at 4g/t gold from 39.6m, including 6.1m at 16.3g/t gold, and 32m at 2.45g/t gold from 44.2m, including 6.1m at 10g/t gold.
'We'll bring to a market that will appreciate what we're doing,' Poole said.
Firetail is aiming to kick off the project's first-ever diamond drilling program next month and report an initial JORC resource and exploration target by the end of the year.
Times a-changin'
Last month, Resolution Minerals (ASX:RML) agreed to acquire the Horse Heaven antimony-gold-silver-tungsten project in Idaho, directly adjacent to Perpetua Resources Corp's US$2 billion Stibnite gold-antimony development.
On a webinar on Monday, Resolution's CEO of US operations Craig Lindsay pointed to the passing of Trump's Big Beautiful Bill legislation.
'One of the interesting things is there's US$2.5 billion in that Big Beautiful Bill that has been dedicated to the development of critical metals, so that is something that Resolution Minerals is going to be capitalising on,' he said.
Lindsay has a long history of working in Idaho but said that two decades ago, most mining people didn't know much about it.
Stibnite really put Idaho on the map but not always for the right reasons, given that the project took 15 years to permit and only got its final approval in January.
That is set to change, with Idaho Governor Brad Little introducing the Strategic Permitting, Efficiency and Economic Development (SPEED) Act in January.
'Really what he's trying to do is help the federal permitting authorities, the state permitting authorities and local permitting authorities speak to each other and work together to permit large projects faster, and that, I think, is going to have a significant impact on projects like Horse Heaven as we move through various permitting cycles,' he said.
Given the project's proximity to Stibnite and identical geological background, Lindsay said it wasn't just nearology, but 'exactology'.
Despite not yet closing the acquisition, Resolution this week announced final approval from the US Forest Service for a drilling program of up to 57 holes, the first phase of which will begin next month.
'It's going to allow us to get out there and be the first people to be working on that property in over 30 years, so it's really right place at the right time,' Lindsay said.
Fresh focus
Codrus Minerals (ASX:CDR) and Locksley Resources (ASX:LKY) are two companies that have had US projects sitting in their portfolios for some years but have dusted them off given current market conditions.
Both companies turned their attention to Australian projects, largely due to the lengthy wait for drilling permits.
After a long process, Codrus got a drilling permit for the Bull Run gold project in Oregon in May and kicked off its first drilling campaign last month.
Despite high-grade rock chip results, just three drill holes had been sunk previously.
The initial program is focused on five priority gold targets over 2km of strike. The first diamond hole has been completed and samples sent to the lab, with the second now underway.
Meanwhile, Locksley holds the Mojave rare earth and antimony project in California, which is 1.4km from MP Materials' Mountain Pass mine, the only producing rare earth mine in the US.
The US' renewed focus on critical minerals bumped the project to the top of Locksley's priorities.
'What we were thinking, where it was initially going to take two years to get a drilling permit, has now been turned around in a matter of weeks,' Locksley head of critical minerals Allister Caird told Stockhead last month.
Locksley was granted a permit on June 5 and is now preparing for its initial drilling campaign, focused on the El Campo rare earth target.
Yesterday, it received drilling approval from the Bureau of Land Management for exploration of the historic Desert antimony mine, also within the Mojave project.
'We've had this project that's got some pretty compelling grades, but not everything has fallen into place until right now, and it's all happened very quickly, so it's a pretty exciting time for the company,' Caird said.
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