Lithium was once a forgotten element in the Northwest Territories. This summer, it’s sparking a hunt for profit.
For decades, nobody did much with the lithium-rich region east of Yellowknife. Suddenly, multiple companies are taking up the quest to find lithium and sending scouts to drill.
Drilling small holes across a property allows companies to get a sense of how large the deposit is beneath, and analyze samples for their lithium content.
For around half a dozen companies, that’s top of the to-do list. At least seven companies have NWT lithium projects in their early stages, most of them near Yellowknife. They hope to strike while the lithium iron is hot as demand skyrockets for the element’s use in the likes of electric vehicles.
One company, Li-FT, says it holds leases covering the majority of what is known as the Yellowknife Pegmatite Province, an area of 9,600 square kilometres that North of 60 Mining News says is “riddled” with the lithium sources known as pegmatites. Pegmatites are a type of very coarse igneous rock, and are a host material for lithium.
But Li-FT is far from alone. Bill Cronk is the chief geologist at RGV Lithium, another company with an interest in the same area. RGV Lithium has optioned its property, south of Hidden Lake, to Gama Explorations, meaning Gama has the option to purchase the property if certain conditions are met.
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