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Shares in Patriot Battery Metals (TSX: PMET; ASX: PMT) rose 4.5% to C$6.93 apiece Wednesday on news about lithium assays as high as 1.66% lithium oxide (Li2O) at its Corvette project in Quebec.
That 126.3-metre interval, from hole CV24-374 at the CV5 target, included 54.9 metres at 2.50% Li2O, and was among other highlights from Patriot’s winter drill program, the company said in a Wednesday news release. Others included 70.1 metres at 2.44% Li2O, including 46.9 metres at 3.53% Li2O or 16.1 metres at 5.02% Li2O in CV24-401A, drilled into the high-grade Nova zone.
This year’s now-complete winter drilling totals 62,518 metres across 166 holes, of which 132 holes remain to be reported, Patriot said in a release. All drilling completed up until April will be incorporated into an updated resource estimate for Corvette, expected in the third quarter. It will upgrade its resource from inferred to indicated, and include an initial resource for CV13, located east of CV5.
“The 2024 resource infill drilling at CV5 advanced very well over the recently completed winter program, with the first batch of assays producing some stellar results,” Darren L. Smith, Patriot’s vice president of exploration said. “We are now focused on refining the pegmatite geological model and domaining through integration of the core assay data as it comes in.”
CV5 at Corvette, located in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, holds 109.2 million inferred tonnes at 1.42% Li2O, and 160 parts per million tantalum, according to an initial resource from last June. That amounts to 1.6 million tonnes of contained Li2O, or 3.8 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent. It’s said to be the largest lithium pegmatite resource in the Americas and is in a province with almost 200 active lithium exploration projects, the most in Canada, at almost 200.
Quebec also hosts the producing North American Lithium mine, a 75:25 joint venture between Sayona Mining (ASX: SYA) and Piedmont Lithium (ASX: PLL).
Wednesday’s results come just two weeks after Patriot said it had received provincial government guidelines for completing Corvette’s environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA). It anticipates submitting the ESIA in late 2025.
Other notable CV5 assays from the winter program were 1.97% Li2O across 100.8 metres, including 69.8 metres at 2.52% Li2O in hole CV24-392; 90.2 metres at 1.29% Li2O and 48.5 metres at 1.25% Li2O in CV24-377; and 94.9 metres at 1.10% Li2O, including 26.1 metres at 2.16% Li2O in CV24-378.
The winter drilling program focused on resource infill and covered about 3.9 km of the 4.6 km pegmatite strike length, Patriot said. It also focused on defining an indicated resource body to support advanced development and upcoming economic studies for CV5.
CV13 is a cluster of more than 20 spodumene pegmatite outcrops that extend over a trend of about 2.3 km, and sit just under 3 km along the geological trend from CV5. The best assay from CV13 was 28.7 at 1.49% Li2O, according to a company presentation. The cluster remains open at both its ends and at depth.
With a C$109 million investment from leading lithium miner Albemarle (NYSE: ALB) last August, Patriot has the cash to continue infill drilling at CV5, scheduled to resume in early summer and run into the fall. Patriot has a market capitalization of C$1.3 billion. Its shares have traded in a 52-week range of C$5.77 and C$9.04.
