Tungsten Tripled in 2026 and the U.S. Still Mines None of It

Issued on behalf of Western Star Resources Inc.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Sept. 11, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- American News Group News Commentary - There is a number in the U.S. Geological Survey’s February 2026 Mineral Commodity Summary that explains most of what has happened to the tungsten market this year. China mined 67,000 of the world’s 85,000 metric tons of tungsten in 2025. Vietnam, the next largest producer, mined 3,000. The United States mined none, and has shipped zero tungsten from a domestic mine every year since 2015. Beijing has spent the last eighteen months turning that concentration into policy, and Washington has spent the same period writing rules that assume a domestic supply chain the country does not currently have. Companies mentioned in today’s commentary include: Western Star Resources Inc. (CSE: WSR) (OTC: WSRIF) (FRA: 4K2), Guardian Metal Resources plc (NYSE American: GMTL), Energy Fuels Inc. (NYSE American: UUUU), NioCorp Developments Ltd. (Nasdaq: NB), and Lithium Americas Corp. (NYSE: LAC).

Key Takeaways

The price has tripled inside nine months. Fastmarkets assessed tungsten concentrate, basis 50 to 70% WO3, cif global, at $750 to $850 per metric tonne unit at the start of 2026. Since May 29 it has held at $2,500 to $2,800 per mtu, after what the agency described as an almost unbroken run of increases.

Export access is now a list of fifteen names. China said in December 2025 that only 15 firms would be authorized to export tungsten in 2026 and 2027, formalized through its dual-use items catalogue. Buyers outside China are competing for whatever those fifteen release.

A U.S. procurement deadline lands January 1, 2027. Under DFARS 252.225-7052, the country-of-origin test for covered defense items widens from the melt or production stage to the mine or ore stage, and recycled and scrap material will no longer reset country of origin. China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are the covered countries.

Federal capital has already arrived in the sector. At an August 7, 2026 White House roundtable the administration announced a critical minerals package reported at roughly $3 billion, with the White House separately itemizing more than $2 billion of project commitments.

Western Star has added capital markets experience to its board. Effective September 11, 2026, Garland Scott joins the board of directors, bringing 26 years across financial services, business development and strategic consulting, including senior roles at Bank of America and Goldman Sachs.

A Market That Broke Its Own Arbitrage What happened to tungsten in 2026 was not an ordinary commodity move. Export licensing requirements introduced in early 2025 and formalized in China’s January 2026 dual-use catalogue restricted seaborne availability of ammonium paratungstate in particular, and the mechanism that once tied domestic Chinese prices to international ones stopped functioning properly. Traders describe a rupture in the price relationship, with mid and downstream customers outside China unable to obtain material and paying whatever it takes.

The result is a two-tier market. Inside China, price formation continues under a domestic mining quota that has itself been reduced against falling ore grades at mature deposits. Outside China, buyers are bidding against each other for a restricted pool released by fifteen authorized exporters. Demand on the western side of that divide is not softening either: defense procurement of kinetic penetrators and armor-piercing ammunition sits alongside fast-growing tungsten wire demand for diamond wire solar wafer cutting.

There is a second-order effect worth naming. When a metal reprices this violently, the first companies to benefit are the ones already selling it, and the second are the ones holding processing capacity. The United States has some of the latter. American plants convert tungsten concentrate, ammonium paratungstate, oxide or scrap into metal powder, carbide powder and finished parts, and that downstream capability never went away. What disappeared was the front of the chain. Net import reliance has stayed above half of apparent consumption, which means the conversion plants are running on material that mostly starts somewhere else.

The Deadline Nobody Can Reschedule The policy side of this is more specific than the general critical minerals conversation suggests. Through the end of 2026, the DFARS restriction on tungsten from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea turns on where the material was melted or produced. From January 1, 2027 the clause widens to the mine or ore stage, and it names recycled and scrap material explicitly, so material that has passed through a recycling stream does not reset its country of origin. The commercially available off-the-shelf carve-out narrows on the same date.

For a defense supplier, that converts a paperwork question into a sourcing question. For an exploration company holding past-producing American tungsten ground, it sets a date by which domestic material becomes structurally more valuable than it was the day before. Permitting and building a mine takes years and the deadline does not move, which is why federal money has been arriving ahead of production rather than after it.

A Board Hire Aimed at the Capital Side Western Star Resources Inc. (CSE: WSR) (OTC: WSRIF) (FRA: 4K2) announced that Garland Scott will join its board of directors effective September 11, 2026. Mr. Scott brings 26 years of experience across financial services, business development and strategic consulting. He previously held senior roles with Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, working with financial advisors and high net worth clients and delivering institutional investment solutions, and later served as Business Development and Consultant Director at SEM Wealth Management and as Chief Growth Officer of On3 Strategies. He holds the Certified Investment Management Analyst (CIMA) designation and earned degrees in Psychology and Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

The appointment is worth reading for what it is not. It is not a technical hire. Western Star already has geological and engineering capability attached to its properties, and the constraint on a junior explorer at this stage is rarely rock knowledge. It is access to capital, and the ability to hold a conversation with the institutions and advisors who allocate it. That is the specific gap this appointment addresses.

"We are thrilled to welcome Mr. Scott to the Board. His background at leading firms such as Goldman Sachs will be instrumental in helping Western Star Resources take that next step forward. In other news Western Star will have some updates regarding assays on the Rowland, White Star and Eagle Point properties very soon," said Blake Morgan, President, Chief Executive Officer and Director of Western Star Resources.

That last clause is the one shareholders will circle. The Company holds three past-producing U.S. tungsten properties, the Rowland and White Star projects in Elko County, Nevada, which together form a consolidated Jarbidge-Charleston footprint, and the wholly owned Eagle Point project in Hidalgo County, New Mexico, alongside additional exploration exposure through the Western Star property in British Columbia. Assay results across all three American properties are described by the Company as coming soon. No timing has been committed to, and nothing about a pending assay guarantees a result.

Both Nevada properties sit in historically productive tungsten country. Rowland and White Star adjoin one another in Elko County and have been consolidated by the Company into a single Jarbidge-Charleston footprint, which matters because a contiguous land position is easier to permit, easier to drill on a single program and easier to explain to a financier than a scatter of separate claims. Eagle Point in Hidalgo County, New Mexico is a wholly owned position in a different district entirely, giving the Company two independent shots rather than one concentrated bet.

None of those properties carries a defined mineral resource today. That is the honest frame for any junior at this stage, and it is the frame the assays flagged by management will either begin to change or will not. Historical production at a property tells a reader that the geology once supported mining under a different price and a different technology. It does not tell them what a modern program will find, and the two should not be confused.

What a Junior Actually Needs Right Now The uncomfortable truth about a commodity spike is that it does not automatically fund the companies positioned to answer it. Tungsten concentrate tripling in price is excellent news for anyone already producing, and neutral news for an explorer without a resource, a study or a treasury. What converts a price move into a funded development program is capital, and capital arrives through relationships rather than through headlines.

Western Star also disclosed that it has entered into an Investor Awareness Agreement dated September 11, 2026 with Market Equities Limited, the publisher of this commentary, covering branding, communications, advisory and general consulting services for a fee of $100,000 for a term of two months, subject to acceptance by the Canadian Securities Exchange. That relationship is disclosed in full at the end of this article and should be factored into how this commentary is read.

Where the Federal Money Has Been Going The four companies below are referenced solely as market and sector context. They are not peers, competitors or financial comparables of Western Star Resources, they are at materially different stages of development and scale, and their results are not indicative of Western Star’s prospects.

Guardian Metal Resources plc (NYSE American: GMTL) Guardian Metal Resources is the closest thing to a direct read on U.S. tungsten in the public market, advancing the co-flagship Pilot Mountain and Tempiute projects in Nevada. In July 2025 the U.S. Department of War invested US$6.2 million in its wholly owned subsidiary Golden Metal Resources (USA) LLC under Title III of the Defense Production Act to support the Pilot Mountain prefeasibility study. It completed a NYSE American listing on March 20, 2026, and announced on September 8, 2026 that it will join the FTSE AIM 50 Index effective September 21. The shares trade well below their 52-week high, which is worth stating plainly: index inclusion and federal support have not insulated tungsten developers from the volatility in this sector.

Energy Fuels Inc. (NYSE American: UUUU) Energy Fuels is the example of what a domestic critical minerals platform looks like once federal capital commits at scale. The Company received a $725 million conditional loan from the U.S. Office of Strategic Capital in June 2026 and was among the executives at the August 7, 2026 White House critical minerals roundtable. Its position rests on using uranium production to fund a rare earth processing build-out at White Mesa in Utah, which is a different route to the same destination Western Star is aiming at: American material processed on American soil.

NioCorp Developments Ltd. (Nasdaq: NB) NioCorp is building the Elk Creek project in Nebraska, with a scandium output intended to supply defense contractor Lockheed Martin, and was also represented at the August 2026 White House roundtable. It is a useful marker of the distance between a defined project and a financed one. NioCorp has a technical case, a named offtake relationship and federal attention, and is still working through the construction capital that separates a study from a mine.

Lithium Americas Corp. (NYSE: LAC) Lithium Americas is building the largest lithium mine in the United States at Thacker Pass in Nevada, and became the clearest illustration of how far the federal posture has shifted when the U.S. government moved to take an equity stake in connection with its Department of Energy loan. It is a different mineral in a different end market, and it is named here because it established the template: Washington taking a direct position in a pre-revenue domestic miner because the supply chain matters more than the balance sheet.

What to Watch Three things, in order. Whether the assays flagged for Rowland, White Star and Eagle Point arrive and what they contain. Whether the new board appointment converts into financing on terms that do not gut the share structure. And whether the January 1, 2027 procurement change pulls buyers toward domestic sources early, or whether defense primes simply stockpile compliant material through 2026 and worry about the mine stage later.

None of that is assured. Western Star is an early-stage exploration company with no current mineral resource defined on any of its properties, and a tripling tungsten price does not change the fact that most exploration projects never become mines. What the last year has changed is the backdrop. A metal with no substitute, a supplier the United States has decided it cannot rely on, and a date on the calendar is a more specific set of conditions than juniors in this sector usually get to work against.

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CONTINUED... Read this and more news for Western Star Resources Inc. (CSE: WSR) (OTC: WSRIF) (FRA: 4K2) at: https://americannewsgroup.com/pages/western-star/

Article Sources: [1] Western Star Resources Inc., "Western Star Resources Inc. Announces Garland Scott to The Board of Directors," September 11, 2026 (board appointment, biography, CEO commentary, Investor Awareness Agreement disclosure). [2] U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries, February 2026 (global and U.S. tungsten production). [3] Fastmarkets price assessment, tungsten concentrate basis 50 to 70% WO3, spot price, cif global. [4] Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement clause 252.225-7052. [5] Public disclosures and filings of the referenced companies (Guardian Metal Resources, Energy Fuels, NioCorp Developments, Lithium Americas).

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Cautionary Note Regarding Exploration Results: Western Star Resources Inc. is an early-stage mineral exploration company. The Company has not defined any mineral resource or mineral reserve at the Rowland, White Star, Eagle Point or Western Star properties, and readers are cautioned that mineral exploration is highly speculative and that most exploration projects do not result in a mine. References to past production at any of the Company’s properties are historical in nature, have not necessarily been verified by the Company or by a Qualified Person, are not indicative of future results, and should not be relied upon. References to forthcoming assay results describe the Company’s stated expectation only; no timing has been committed to, assay results are not available as of the date of this article, and there is no assurance that any results will be positive or will lead to the definition of a mineral resource. Geophysical and geochemical anomalies, interpreted target zones and structural corridors are conceptual exploration targets only, and an anomaly is not evidence of mineralization. Selective surface, rock, float and channel samples are selective in nature and are not necessarily representative of average mineralization on a property, and reported drill widths are core lengths which are not necessarily true widths. The scientific and technical information published by the Company has been reviewed and approved by Jasper Mowatt, MIMMM and MAusIMM, a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Mowatt is a consultant to Western Star Resources Inc. and is therefore not independent of the Company. Please refer to the Company’s filings on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca for the assumptions and risk factors associated with its disclosure. Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the Company’s releases.

Cautionary Note Regarding Market and Policy Data: Tungsten price levels cited in this article are third-party price assessments as reported by Fastmarkets and describe a specified concentrate grade and delivery basis; they are not the realized price of any company and are not a forecast. Production and import-reliance figures are drawn from the U.S. Geological Survey Mineral Commodity Summaries. References to Chinese export licensing and authorized exporter arrangements, to Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement clause 252.225-7052 and its January 1, 2027 changes, and to U.S. federal critical minerals funding announcements describe matters of public policy that may be amended, delayed, extended or repealed, and no assurance is given that any company will benefit from them. Commodity prices are volatile and past performance does not guarantee future results.

References to Guardian Metal Resources plc, Energy Fuels Inc., NioCorp Developments Ltd. and Lithium Americas Corp. are provided solely as market and sector context. None of them is a peer, competitor, or financial comparable of Western Star Resources Inc. They are at materially different stages of development, in different commodities and jurisdictions, and in several cases at materially different scale; their projects, studies, financings, government awards, index inclusions, earnings and share performance are not indicative of Western Star Resources’ prospects. Western Star Resources Inc. is a pre-revenue exploration company. No partnership, affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement is implied, and none of the companies named has any involvement in Western Star Resources Inc., this article, or its distribution.

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September 11, 2026 - 6:10 AM PDT

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