Argentina Lithium ramps up exploration in 2023
The company, a subsidiary of the Grosso Group, acquired a 100% interest in 460.5 hectares of the mid-grade Rincon West lithium resource at the Rincon Salar in Salta Province in 2021, with a further 3,282 hectares of claims available. Drilling began last year, with an initial programme of nine diamond drills, which have produced ever more positive lithium brine values, including a 153m interval ranging from 329 to 393 mg/l lithium.
Argentina Lithium Vice President Exploration, Miles RideoutArgentina is at the forefront of what could be a decade-long scramble for lithium as the electrification of the world's industries continues at pace. The South American country accounts for more than 20% of the world's reserves and has the largest lithium project pipeline. And Argentina Lithium is well placed to take advantage of what has been described as this new ‘green rush', with mid-grade discoveries likely to attract growing levels of interest.
"Our idea is that the lithium market is developing," says Miles Rideout, vice president of exploration at Argentina Lithium. "So initially, only the highest grade projects were getting any traction, but now your mid grade projects are getting traction from major producers. And what's likely to happen as direct lithium extraction technologies are improved, they will be optimized for these lower grade brines you have in some of these very large lithium basins."
At Rincon West, a resource calculation on the first of the company's two properties is expected to be published in mid 2023, with drilling operations moving on to a second allotment, where results are expected to be consistent with those already seen. That second programme will include five exploration holes and a pump test.
Talking about results so far, Mr Rideout is bullish: "The drilling is going very well. We're getting roughly one drill hole completed per month and every time we've drilled, we've been getting in to concentrated lithium brines. Drill hole 5 backs that up, and drill hole 6 is the best hole we've drilled and it's located centrally in our aquifer."
Argentina Lithium's properties at Rincon West are adjacent to concessions operated by Rio Tinto and Argosy Minerals, and Mr Rideout believes the exploration results will match those of their neighbours.
"What the results indicate is that the brines that we are recovering from our property are similar to what was announced by Rincon Mining Rio Tinto for their resource and what was announced by Argosy minerals for their resource, and this is what we set out to prove," he says. "Going in, our property was undrilled but we thought we were going to pull out these types of brine values and that's what we're doing."
So far only about half of the aquifer has been explored, so in addition to the drilling there will be an intensive geophysical programme starting in Q2 of 2023 before the company returns to do more drilling at Rincon West.
Although Rincon West is the only project at which Argentina Lithium has an active drill programme, the company also has undertaken initial exploration work at the 25,000 hectare site it acquired in the Incahuasi Salar in Catamarca, and it has an option to take a 100% interest in 15,857 hectares of claims in 11 contiguous concessions on the west side of the Pocitos Salar.
The day-time drill crew at Rincon West project - Argentina Lithium & Energy Corp Perhaps most intriguingly, the company last year entered into another option agreement with a local vendor to take a 100% interest in three concessions totalling 5,411 hectares at the Antofalla Salar in Catamarca Province, which gives Argentina Lithium control of nearly 15,000 hectares in the salar, which is around 25km to the west of Argentina's largest lithium producing operation at Salar de Hombre Muerto.
The company's properties at Antofalla extend to within half a kilometre of a neighbouring concession controlled by Albemarle, which has said that the resource on its concession could be among the largest in Argentina.
"We've taken the northern 27 kilometres and will start geophysics and drilling in mid 2023," says Mr Rideout. "A large resource identified and our objective is to show the same brine and aquifer exists under our concession [as at Albemarle's]."
Mr Rideout says that the location adjacent to a major producer should mean the project represents "a lower risk for investors". Speaking more broadly about this
Geologists conduct initial evaluation of lithium brine samples (photo Josefina Di Pietro) strategy, he says: "We consciously said that we're going to be looking at larger properties on mid-grade basins as opposed to small properties on high-grade basins because the cost to get into those is very high and you end up with a sliver of the ground.
"By going with a mid-grade basin, we can get large packages of ground. And so the entire project that we have down beside Albemarle is three times larger than our Rincon package.
And to give the assurance and the profile for our projects, we said we can't do better than locate our properties on these basins with a major producer adjacent to us. And so that's what we've done in our two main projects: in the one case [Rincon West] we have Rio Tinto mining immediately adjacent to us; and in another case we have Albemarle Corporation, the world's second largest lithium producer."
Mr Rideout adds that he expects more exploration work to take place on these larger basins once the smaller, primary projects in Argentina Lithium's portfolio are at a more advanced stage of development, starting with Rincon West, although an initial resource calculation could be as little as 24 months away.
Taken together, this year could be the start of very big things for lithium, and Argentina Lithium seems well placed to take advantage of a hot market.