VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – Vancouver-based lithium exploration junior Wealth Minerals has formalised an option agreement with Atacama Lithium giving it the exclusive right and option to acquire a 100% royalty-free interest in 144 exploration concessions referred to as the Proyecto Atacama lithium project, located in the Atacama Salar in Region II of Antofagasta, in northern Chile.
To secure the option, Wealth has paid $3-million in cash and issued two-million common shares to the vendor and agreed to pay and issue additional shares as set out in a schedule for total cash payments of $14-million and 15-million shares by March 1, 2019.
Wealth’s Chilean staff have completed site visits and are finalising plans for Phase I exploration at the project. Exploration will begin with surface water sampling and transient electromagnetic geophysical surveys before commencing an initial drill programme of up to 2 000 m. Initial work will be carried under a Pertinencia, a permit in Chile under which low-impact exploration activities can be carried out.
The asset is set to become Wealth’s crown jewel, since Atacama Salar comprises the world’s highest-grade and largest producing lithium brine deposit.
The salar currently produces about one-third of global lithium output from two production facilities operated by Sociedad Quimica y Minera (SQM) and Albemarle Corporation.
According to Wealth, Atacama possesses a very high grade of both lithium (1 840 mg/ℓ) and potassium (22 630 mg/ℓ), has a high rate of evaporation (an average of 3 200 mm/y) and extremely low yearly rainfall (an average of 15 mm/y), making it the easiest and cheapest place to produce lithium globally.
The Wealth concessions cover an area of about 46 200 ha located in the northern portion of the Salar de Atacama and are contiguous with concessions owned by BHP Billiton, SQM, and Corfo (the Chilean Economic Development Agency). Both SQM and Albemarle have large-scale production facilities in the salar, located on the ground held by Corfo, which collectively produce over 62 000 t/y of lithium carbonate equivalent and account for 100% of Chile’s current lithium output.