Millennial Lithium Corp. announced the commencement of the Company’s Phase 1 drill program at the 9,000 hectare Cruz Lithium Project in the Pocitos salar, in Salta Province. Millennial is currently operating the exploration program on behalf of Southern Lithium Corp., who is earning up to an 80% interest in the project by making certain cash payments, share issuances, completing exploration expenditures and completing a bankable feasibility study on the project within three years.
The current program consists of 2 holes drilled to a minimum 250 metres (m), or deeper based on drilling conditions and brine content. Data collection will include lithology, down-hole geophysics, porosity characterization and depth-specific geochemical samples. Brine sampling will be completed using a hydraulic double packer system, which has been tested and proven to provide a true depth specific sample in addition to flow and porosity characteristics.
Millennial previously completed a Transient Electromagnetic Survey (TEM) covering 20.25 square kilometres on a 4,500 by 4,500 metre grid. Analysis indicates a continuous north-south-trending conductive unit over a distance greater than six kilometres, the full length of the Cruz property. Highly conductive readings have generally been found to indicate a high content of lithium brine in most other salar basins in the area.
In the central core of the property, indications of brine appear as shallow as 30 metres, extending to a depth of 250 metres, at which point survey readings are limited due to the highly conductive nature of the anomaly.
Millennial Lithium Corp. is the operator on the project and engaged HIDROTEC S.R.L., a Salta-based drilling company with extensive experience in drilling and testing salar-hosted lithium brines. The Company also engaged Mike Rosko of Montgomery and Associates, Inc. a US-based hydrogeological consultancy to provide program guidance and act as the Company’s qualified person for reporting results.
About the Cruz Property
The Cruz Property is located in South America’s Lithium Triangle (northern Chile, northwestern Argentina and southwest Bolivia). The property encompasses 9,027 hectares (22,306 acres) in the Pocitos Salar Basin in Salta Province.
The Cruz Property is in the northern end of the Pocitos Salar Basin and contiguous to the southern end of the Salar del Rincón Basin, where ADY Resources Limited is extracting lithium brine. Both properties lie along the structural belt that hosts important lithium resources of the region, at the junction of a large north-south fault system and the northwest-southeast mega-structure along which lies the Rincon volcano, the possible source of the lithium brine in both salar basins. The 60-kilometre long Pocitos Salar Basin has previously only been drill tested with a shallow 12-hole program in the 1970s by an Argentinean government agency «Direccion General de Fabricaciones Militares». To date, this is the only confirmed exploration drilling conducted in the Pocitos Basin. The hole that produced the best results is near the southeast edge of the Cruz Property boundary, and averaged 417 parts per million lithium. Although these results are considered historical and have not been verified by the Company’s QP, the Company considers these results relevant to the future exploration of the Cruz property.
Southern Lithium Corp. has executed a formal option agreement with Proyecto Pastos Grandes S.A. («PPG SA»), a wholly owned subsidiary of Millennial Lithium Corp. Through the option, Southern Lithium can earn a seventy percent interest (70%) by making certain cash payments, share issuances and completing exploration expenditures. Southern Lithium has the option to increase its ownership to 80% by completing sufficient work and completing a bankable feasibility study on the project within three years.
