Well of the Week – Lithium Rising
The world has changed.
I see it in the water.
I feel it in the Earth.
J. R. R. Tolkien
One sign we are entering a New Golden Age of Carbonates is the growing realization that this massive carbonate pore space resource can produce more than oil and gas. A case in point is the goal of extracting lithium from Devonian formation waters. This application has the potential to provide the feedstock to build the batteries which will in turn store the electricity to power the energy transition. And to provide alternative application for the skills developed in the oil and gas industry. Pretty simple in principle but a long road must be travelled to realize this goal.
Among the foremost of these ventures is E3 Lithium. It has been quite a sojourn to arrive at the point at which there are the results of three Petro Ninja – Enlighten Geoscience Wells of the Week to consider:
A slide from the most recent E3 Corporate Presentation summarizes the promising lithium concentrations.
Figure 1: Inaugural Drilling Program Sampling Results
This results in turn provide the basis for the estimation of an impressive inferred resource of 24.3 M tonnes of lithium carbonate resource.
Figure 2. Inferred Lithium Resource.
Another step in the journey to commercial lithium production. . And another benefit to Canadians from carbonate reservoirs built up over millions of years.
There will be a lot of engineering work to build the facilities to process the concomitant volumes of water. This facet 7will be yet another example of leveraging off of the technical heritage of the western Canadian industry.