What could have been a run of the mill announcement has turned into a poorly-timed, poorly-written announcement which has retail running for the hills. No clear distinction in the first page about what assays are pending and what assays are released in relation to this announcement.
Learn your mineral descriptions - these are bog standard pegmatites. Tourmaline is a good sign but is not a key lithium mineral. They've reported in ppm. I've changed the current numbers to be reflected as their stoichiometric oxide counterpart which does shed a little bit more light on these results. While these results would be poor in relation to rock chip samples with visible lithium mineralisation, as far as the company has announced, there is
no visual lithium mineralisation here. These non-lithium-mineralised pegmatites are still grading up to 602ppm Li2O or 0.06% Li2O for something with no
visible lithium mineralisation. This is what you call "anomalous" lithium. While an outlier, a result of 175ppm Ta2O5 is fairly significant - Kathleen Valley averages 130ppm Ta2O5.
This is why they've exercised the right for 20% of the project. Pegmatites without visual lithium minerals are grading with
anomalous lithium values. The spodumene dominant samples are still in the lab, results late Nov to early Dec.
| Sample No | Description | Li2O ppm | Ta2O5 ppm | Nb2O5 ppm | Cs2O ppm | Rb2O ppm |
|---|
| 1 | Jur001 | Tourmaline - muscovite pegmatite | 602.8 | 2.9 | <5 | 6.1 | 228.6 |
|---|
| 2 | Jur002 | Tourmaline - muscovite pegmatite | 366.0 | 1.0 | <5 | 5.7 | 126.9 |
|---|
| 3 | Jur003 | Quarts - feldspar muscovite pegmatite | 559.8 | 175.8 | 98.7 | 116.6 | 1995.8 |
|---|
| 4 | Cus001 | Kaolinised - brecciated quartz pegmatite | 430.6 | 19.0 | 20.0 | 19.3 | 255.9 |
|---|
| 5 | Cus002 | Quartz feldspar granite | 323.0 | 11.0 | 135.9 | 4.9 | 114.8 |
|---|
| 6 | PDA001 | Quartz - feldspar=tourmaline pegmatite | 64.6 | 118.7 | 145.9 | 15.5 | 781.9 |
|---|
| 7 | PDA002 | Quartz - feldspar muscovite pegmatite | 86.1 | 26.3 | 27.2 | 260.8 | 2373.1 |
|---|
| 8 | PDA003 | Quartz - feldspar muscovite biotite pegmatite | 21.5 | 7.6 | 32.9 | 5.8 | 168.4 |
|---|
| 9 | PDA004 | Quartz - Feldspar muscovite garnet pegmatite | 21.5 | 20.5 | 100.1 | 3.5 | 194.7 |
|---|
| 10 | PDA005 | Quartz - Kfeldspar=tourmaline granite | 150.7 | 89.3 | 51.5 | 1685.7 | 168.4 |
|---|
(20min delay)