Cruz Battery drills Nevada lithium discovery
Cruz Battery Metals Corp. [CRUZ-CSE, BKTPF-OTC Pink, A3CWU7-Frankfurt] said Monday it is drilling a significant new lithium discovery at its Solar Lithium project in Nevada.
The Solar project directly borders American Lithium Corp.’s [LI-TSXV, LIACF-OTCQB, 5LA1-Frankfurt] Tonopah Lithium Project (TLC) claims, which are estimated to contain 5.37 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) in the measure and indicated category and another 1.76 million tonnes in the inferred category.
Cruz said it has received assays for the first phase of drilling on the 6,215-acre Solar project. “Multiple intercepts of the targeted potential lithium-bearing claystone formation were encountered in all the holes drilled in this initial phase of drilling,” the company said.
Values in hole 1.0 were as high as 1,300 parts per million (PPM) lithium and the hole encountered lithium-bearing clays from 10 feet to 200-feet, with a 60-foot intercept averaging 968.33 ppm Li. Hole 2.0 had a high value of 1,120 ppm Li, including a 60-foot interval averaging 768 ppm Li. Hole 3 was stopped while drilling was in progress due to a blizzard that made drilling impossible.
“These results were better than what we are hoping to see on this maiden drill program,” said Cruz President Jim Nelson.
Nelson said the property is one of the largest in the region and the company has drilled less than 10% of the land package.
“We are planning an aggressive follow-up drill program to test a larger portion of the property now that we know there is significant lithium present.”
“Our goal is to locate and provide a new, domestically sourced, battery-grade lithium deposit and we are pleased to have these initial drilling results right in the heart of the top lithium address in the U.S.A.,” Nelson said.
TLC is located in the Esmeralda lithiuim district in Nevada and 3.5 hours south of the Tesla Motors Ltd.’s [TSLA-NASDAQ] Gigafactory. TLC is located in the same basinal environment as Albemarle Corp.’s [ALB-NYSE] Silver Peak lithium mine as well as several advancing deposits, including Cypress Development Corp.’s [CYP-TSXV] Clayton Valley project.
“We strongly believe that battery metals will continue to garner significant market attention as the demand for lithium-ion batteries continues to increase along with the explosive growth of the electric vehicle industry,” Nelson has said.
He said the company plans to drill near the boarder with American Lithium’s TLC project.
Cruz currently has 13 properties located throughout North America, consisting of five in Ontario, four in British Columbia, two in Idaho and two in Nevada.
The company is one of the largest landholders in the historic silver-cobalt producing region of Cobalt, Ontario, with five separate projects in the camp. Those projects are in the vicinity of First Cobalt Corp’s (FCC-TSXV, FTSSF-OTCQB, FCC-ASX) Ontario cobalt refinery.
On January 14, Cruz shares closed at 24 cents and currently trade in a 52-week range of 34 cents and $0.065.