The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Lithium-enriched pegmatite is wider than it looks on surface North of 60 Mining News – October 6, 2023
Outcropping pegmatite on Li-FT's Yellowknife Lithium project.
Cross-section of hole YLP0049, which cut three lithium intercepts at the BIG East pegmatite.
Li-FT Power Ltd. Oct. 4 released a new batch of assays from its 2023 drill program at the Yellowknife Lithium project in Northwest Territories, including another hole with better-than-expected results from the BIG East pegmatite.
Yellowknife Lithium consists of 11 properties that cover some of the most prospective targets within the Yellowknife Pegmatite Province, a 9,600-square-kilometer (3,700 square miles) area east of the NWT capital city. Li-FT has divided these properties into two groups – five in a road-accessible area immediately east of Yellowknife and a cluster of six about 50 kilometers (30 miles) further east.
The latest batch of results is from five holes drilled at three pegmatites on the road-accessible properties – BIG East, FI Southwest, and Shorty.
Highlights from this latest batch of drill results include:
• 12 meters averaging 1.11% lithium oxide from a depth of 45 meters in hole YLP0048 (Shorty).
• 12.3 meters averaging 1.28% lithium oxide from a depth of 0.7 meters in hole YLP0049 (Big East).
• 14 meters averaging 1.5% lithium oxide from a depth of 38 meters in hole YLP0049 (Big East).
• 15 meters averaging 1.03% lithium oxide from a depth of 74 meters in hole YLP0051 (Fi-Southwest).
• Nine meters averaging 1.03% lithium oxide from a depth of 113 meters in hole YLP0051 (Fi-Southwest).
"We continue to be impressed with the amount of spodumene pegmatite being intersected at depth at BIG East," said Li-FT Power CEO Francis MacDonald. "The pegmatite dyke system is much larger than we anticipated based on the surface expression. YLP0049 intersected more than 35 meters of pegmatite with an aggregate grade of 1.20% Li2O."
Hole YLP0044, drilled near the southern end of the Fi Southwest pegmatite outcrop, indicates the lithium values are diminishing in this area.
"At Fi Southwest, we have constrained the southwestern portion of spodumene within the pegmatite dyke, but also we have opened up a new zone towards the northeast with YLP0051 that intersected two zones for a total width of 24 meters," said MacDonald. "We believe mineralization is plunging towards the northeast, which opens up an exciting new area to be drilled in the future which has little to no spodumene pegmatite on surface."
So far this year, Li-FT has completed 24,500 meters of drilling in 139 holes at Yellowknife; assays are pending from 89 holes drilled during the 2023 program.
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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