Lithium Chile (TSXV: LITH) announced that the easing of covid-19 restrictions in place in Chile since early in 2020 has allowed its team to get to the Laguna Blanca project and kick off an expanded 2021 exploration campaign.
In a press release, the Canadian miner said that given the project’s location near the border with Argentina, it underwent a year-long access restriction because the government not only closed the border but also nearby roads to reduce the risk of cross-border contamination.
Now that these restrictions have softened, the company’s team was able to reach Laguna Blanca and is currently conducting a program of salts and liquids sampling. The program is intended to extend initial sampling that covered less than 10% of the 4600-hectare property but returned high lithium and cesium grades from surface salt-sediments to a depth of 1.2 meters.
“The high grades of both lithium and cesium in the solid samples have made an advanced exploration program on the Laguna Blanca property a priority for Lithium Chile as the lithium and cesium grades were some of the highest grades seen by the company to date,” the media brief states. “Lithium assay grades ranged from 1125 to 1450 ppm and cesium assay grades ranged from 112 to 688 ppm.”
Laguna Blanca is located in east-central Chile, close to the Helados salt flat. Besides this property, Lithium Chile owns 16 additional lithium projects in the South American country which all together add up to 166,950 hectares.