Infini Resources says it has added 40 new potentially lithium-bearing pegmatite targets to its books after running geophysical surveys at the company’s 100 per cent-owned Paterson Lake project in Canada.
The company identified the targets by applying innovative, high-density microgravity surveying across its Marko’s and Jesse’s lithium prospects and about 80 per cent of the program has now been completed.
The project’s target area is centred just 3.8km east/north-east of and directly along strike from the C$63 million (AU$71.1 million) Avalon Advanced Materials-Sibelco joint venture (JV) lithium deposit that contains a resource of about 10 million tonnes at a grade of 1.35 per cent lithium oxide.
The microgravity technique employed by Infini has turned up what the company says is a surprising number of targets within the 1600m-by-1000m survey area that contains Marko’s and Jesse’s, giving it a better leg-up for its exploration plans than might have been available from other more conventional methods.
The unexpectedly large number of geophysical targets resulting from this innovative application of gravity surveying is an excellent outcome for Infini, enabling the company to grow its exploration target inventory for future drill testing at Paterson Lake and develop substantial lithium mineralisation near the development-ready Separation Rapids lithium deposit. The identification of so many targets at both prospects is encouraging as it indicates potential for numerous LCT pegmatites on the property, increases our confidence in the asset and allows for more focused exploration. Infini Resources chief executive officer Charles Armstrong
While most gravity surveys use widely-spaced individual stations – sometimes many kilometres apart – to get a general idea of the contrasts within an area of interest, Infini’s microgravity approach employed high-density measurement along lines spaced at 30m across strike, with stations located at 5m intervals along lines.
Management says images derived from its processed microgravity datasets enable it to interpret potential pegmatite bodies at depth. It has found that both 2D and 3D imaging yield results that correlate well with known lithium mineralisation determined from sampling of pegmatite outcrops and with results from surface mobile metal ion (MMI) lithium geochemistry.
Additionally, the high-resolution imaging enabled by high-density gravity measurement suggests it may be possible to predict extensions to known mineralised bodies and could even predict lateral margins and ends of blind bodies before resorting to drilling systematic fences of holes to investigate them further. The further implication is the company could save itself the often considerable drilling metreage that is often burned up when probing long, thin, buried pegmatite bodies to determine where their ends or lateral margins might be.
At Jesse’s in the north of the gravity-surveyed block, Infini says outcrop grab samples reported grades of up to 2.31 per cent lithium oxide and 198 parts per million tantalum among 25 microgravity targets. The company says the prospect features pegmatites mapped up to 30m wide at surface and that the main body has never been drilled.
Management believes Jesse’s may enclose a swarm of pegmatites as gravity signatures indicate the possibility of multiple pegmatites dipping in both northerly and southerly directions.
At the southern Marko’s prospect, about 1km south-east of Jesse’s and where the company picked up 15 microgravity targets, previous drilling of several holes had jagged high lithium oxide grades, including one hole intercepting 4.2m going 2.11 per cent from 10.8m and 5.8m going 2.18 per cent from 19m. Another hole intercepted 8m at 3.12 per cent from 14m and 4.7m running 1.7 per cent from 39.8m – the best historical drill intercept it has reported to date.
The company says gravity data indicates that the Marko’s pegmatite system could persist through a strike distance of more than 5km and that multiple parallel interpreted bodies could imply the existence of a characteristic stacked, sheeted pegmatite system.
The Paterson Lake project sits within the highly-prospective Archean Separation Lake greenstone belt in Ontario’s Superior province. The region has long been known for its abundant mineralised pegmatites, some of which contain the important lithium ore mineral petalite, which is similar to the more abundant ore mineral spodumene, and up to 50 other recognised pegmatites that all warrant further investigation.
Infini appears to be on a winner with its new technique for identifying relatively small and discrete bodies, with a gravity signature contrasting them from their surrounding rock types.
And once the company gets a few drillholes into some of its new targets to “ground-truth” them and determine the method’s validity as a reliable guide to certain types, volumes or shapes of potentially mineralised pegmatite bodies, it might well be off to the races.
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