Spodumene gets weathered at surface and breaks down into clays, which liberates the lithium which is then dispersed into the soil/surrounds.
Surface identification of spodumene is significant. Most of the assays show
anomalous Li2O results, outside of the significant ones they've listed, but really anything above 0.5% Li2O is significant enough to warrant further investigation (a deposit you would want greater than 1% Li2O however). But it is highly unlikely that surface pegmatites in the Pilbara are representative of the grade beneath the weathering profile as explained above.
They won't get anything near 8% Li2O assay results unless they're only sending away spodumene chips for assay. The gangue minerals (quartz, feldspars, micas, other minerals) dilute the grade hence why you see spodumene deposits grading between 1-1.5% Li2O, and not somewhere closer to 8% - it's relative to the amount of spodumene in the pegmatite comparatively to all the other waste. Further assays should return much higher results if they're quoting significant quantities of visible spodumene in samples.
Is this commercially viable? No it's just rock chips, they need scale. You can't mine rock chips, but it is a positive sign if pegmatites exist below depth. The pegmatites that are here are flat-lying relative to the surface (or parallel to surface). So if there are a series of stacked pegmatites layering on top of each other, it contributes significantly to tonnage further down the road. Note that these are 100m wide, and up to 500m in strike. At 5m deep, these pegmatites are 657,000t, not gargantuan amounts but not insignificant amounts either. While vertical thickness is fairly low, again, if there are stacked pegmatites the total intercepts begin to add up.
Look at the scale of a
potential pegmatite system here (see scale!). Pegmatites are in red. This absolutely warrants further exploration, those stating otherwise haven't read enough about lithium exploration. My opinion would be throw the nickel to the sidelines and make use of the buoyant lithium exploration market, but they can likely target both with some clever drill orientations.
