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E3 Lithium (TSXV: ETL) says its latest resource upgrade makes Alberta’s Bashaw district, Canada’s largest brine project, a contender among the world’s biggest battery metal suppliers.
The sprawling Bashaw district between Calgary and Edmonton now hosts 6.6 million measured tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) and 9.4 million indicated tonnes of LCE for a total of 16 million tonnes.
“This resource upgrade is the largest of its kind in Canada and is significant on a global scale,” Chris Doornbos, CEO of E3 Lithium, said in a news release on Tuesday. “The amount of data and geological work required to upgrade resources of this magnitude is significant and further increases our understanding of the Leduc aquifer and as a result, our technical confidence in our commercialization plans.”
The upgraded Bashaw is one of the world’s largest direct lithium extraction brine projects, featuring investment by the country’s second-largest integrated oil company, Imperial Oil, and support from the federal government. The new resource dwarfs Canada’s estimated 3.2 million tonnes of measured and indicated lithium resources in hard rock deposits, according to Natural Resources Canada.
Calgary-based E3’s upgrade used data and core sample analysis from its 2022 drill program. It also developed a geological model of the Bashaw district showing details of reservoir properties.
A breakdown of the resources shows the project’s Clearwater area has measured and indicated resources of 11.1 billion cubic metres of brine with a median lithium concentration of 74.5 mg per litre for contained metal of 4.3 million tonnes LCE. The remaining Bashaw district has 29.2 billion cubic metres of brine with the same median concentration for 11.7 million tonnes LCE.
E3 said it expanded the Clearwater area and that it held 900,000 tonnes of inferred LCE in its Rocky area west of the Bashaw district. Bashaw also includes the Exshaw area.
The project aims to tap lithium-enriched brine from the Leduc aquifer, a dolomitized ancient reef complex that spans hundreds of square kilometres and is over 200 metres thick.
A 2020 preliminary economic assessment of developing the Clearwater area estimated annual output of 20,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide. The initial capital cost was pegged at $602 million. The assessment figured an after-tax net present value of $820 million with an 8% discount rate producing a 27% internal rate of return.
E3 received C$27 million in November from the federal government’s Strategic Innovation Fund. Imperial Oil, a Canadian unit of ExxonMobil, said last June it would invest C$6.4 million into exploring the extraction of lithium from below its historic Leduc oil field, one of the first crude oil discoveries in western Canada.
