Thanks to the excellent results encountered in drill hole ARDDH-05, Lithium Chile (LITH.V) has been able to incorporate substantial improvements in an updated resource calculation as the company was able to add almost 700,000 tonnes of LCE to the global resource with an increase of almost 170,000 tonnes in the indicated resource and just over half a million tonnes in the inferred resource.
This brings the total global resource to 3.3 million tonnes of LCE of which just under half of that (1.53 million tonnes) is part of the indicated resource category with the remaining 1.8 million tonnes of LCE included in the inferred resource category.
Unfortunately the company still has to file the full NI43 report on the resource update and we are particularly interested in seeing the average grade of the resource update (which, unfortunately, was not shared in the press release). We know the average grade of the previous resource was 284 mg/l for the indicated resources and 310 mg/l for the inferred resource and we know the company sampled grades ‘up to’ 584 mg/l lithium in hole 5, so it will be very interesting to see if the strong results in hole 5 will also boost the average grade of the deposit as a whole (and this would likely have a positive impact on the result of the PEA which should be completed this summer).
Meanwhile, the company has completed the aquifer testing in production hole ARGENTO-03 and Lithium Chile mentioned in its update it will complete yet another resource update including the results from the new hole. So with a current global resource of just over 3.3 million tonnes (1.53 Mt LCE in the indicated category and 1.8 Mt in the inferred category), positive results from the production well testing could perhaps further increase the confidence in the existing resource and maybe add more tonnes to the global resource. But we will obviously have to wait for the official resource update before speculating on the size of a resource update. However, the company seems to be guiding for the potential to add another 700,000 tonnes of LCE on the condition of good results in ARGENTO-3 and ARDDH-06.
Disclosure: The author has a long position in Lithium Chile. Please read our disclaimer.
