Future Battery Minerals (ASX: FBM) says it has extended the strike length of lithium mineralisation at its Nevada project in the United States by about 130 per cent to more than 3km, as it prepares to release a maiden mineral resource this month.
The company’s latest reverse-circulation (RC) drill hits from its Lone Mountain prospect confirm thick lithium enrichment going as high as 128m at 770 parts per million from 37m including 23m at 1106ppm from 131m. Other results include 130m at 706ppm from 35m including a 37m interval grading 1001ppm from 117m, 98m at 478ppm from 35m with 14m at 1010ppm from 105m and 88m at 553ppm from 44m featuring 9m at 1000ppm from 102m.
The company says the assays confirm the extension of the orebody by an additional 1.7km along strike and suggests it includes a continuous, thick package of claystone grading at more than 1000ppm lithium. Notably, management says the results also reveal that lithium mineralisation starts from as little as 35m below surface.
Our Phase 3 drill program at the NLP has been a huge success. The RC assay results released today demonstrate an approximate 130% extension of the known strike of the Lone Mountain mineralisation, which now sits at over 3.0 km (north-south). When coupled with the results from the diamond drilling component of Phase 3, which significantly extended the depth of the high-grade mineralisation (and which remains open at depth), it is evident as to why we are so pleased with the outcomes from this phase of drilling.
Future Battery Minerals managing director and chief executive officer Nick Rathjen.
The company owns 80 per cent of the Nevada lithium project, which is comprised of five key prospects – Lone Mountain, Western Flats, San Antone, Traction and Heller. Management says its consulting partner in Nevada now has all assays from the latest batch of drillholes and it expects to have its maiden mineral resource estimate for the project completed this month.
All of the prospects within the project area are hosted in the clays of the Siebert Formation, which also hosts lithium mineralisation in adjacent tenements at American Lithium’s TLC deposit and American Battery Technology Corporation’s Tonopah Flats lithium project.
The TLC deposit hosts a measured resource of 4.2 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE), an indicated resource of 4.63 million tonnes of LCE and an inferred resource of 1.86 million tonnes of LCE.
Tonopah Flats is massive and boasts one of the biggest-known inferred lithium claystone resource deposits in the US, with 15.8 million tonnes of LCE contained in the inferred category.
The Nevada project area is home to North America’s only producing lithium mine, Albemarle Corporation’s Silver Peak operation that has been pumping out lithium since the 1960s. It sits about 45km away from Future Battery’s ground.
Future Battery’s Nevada project is also just 200km south-east of the lithium-hungry Tesla gigafactory where demand for the battery metal is modelled to grow in line with electric vehicle (EV) popularity.
ASX punters jumped on the company’s buy side this morning, giving its share price a hike to hit 6.8c, up 23 per cent from yesterday’s close of 5.5c.
The market now awaits Future Battery’s maiden resource estimate for the massive Nevada project, which has a solid track record of providing news flow of assays confirming the thick lithium-enriched clays that we now know stretch for more than 3km.
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