By Nick Worth According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, on Aug. 2, American West Potash, a wholly owned subsidiary of Prospect Global Resources, received an updated final NI 43-101 compliant mineral resource estimate report concerning the potash resource on the company’s acreage near Holbrook. The NI 43-101 is described as “…a technical report issued by a third party natural resource expert.” The updated resource report showed good news for American West, since the calculation upgraded nearly 40 percent of the resource estimates from “inferred” to the stronger “measured and indicated” category. The remaining 60 percent in the “inferred” category was, according to the report, “shown to be highly consistent with previous resource calculation work.” The initial 43-101 report was completed in October 2011. Since, that time Prospect Global carried out its spring 2012 drilling program ahead of schedule in less than four months. The new resource calculation indicates that the mine may be productive for more than 50 years, based on current detailed engineering and process studies for two million metric tons of finished product per year. The new numbers were arrived at through a combination of assay results from the 10 wells drilled in 2012, 11 of the wells drilled in 2011 and other data from such tests as Gamma Ray Estimation Curves (GREC) of the 57 historical wells, plus an extensive wireline study on each well. Because of the shallow depth of the potash, American West plans to access and mine the mineral through a decline road rather than shaft and hoist mining.