St George Mining’s share price leapt over 50 per cent in intraday trading today following news the typically nickel explorer had snared a raft of high-grade lithium bearing rock chips at its Mt Alexander project near Leonora in WA. Analysis of its first batch of 10 samples returned grades as high as 2.72 per cent lithium oxide and the north-south boundary of the site’s outcropping pegmatites has now grown by up to 1.7km.
St George swept up the samples from a series of stacked pegmatite dykes in a north-south zone at the project coined the “Jailbreak” prospect.
The company has been working up Mt Alexander’s battery metal potential of late and says its latest round of sampling has extended the interpreted east-west strike length of the lithium-bearing pegmatites at Jailbreak from 400m up to 1.4km.
Some of the other notable rock chip results include 1.97 per cent, 1.15 per cent, 1.68 per cent and 2.72 per cent lithium oxide – all grades that would make a lithium miner blush if they were to hold throughout any deposit. Intriguingly, the rock chip samples also housed an array of valuable derivatives, including tantalum, rubidium and caesium.
The feature caesium result was 756 parts per million, while the better tantalum oxide and rubidium grades weighed in at 166 and 13,765 ppm, respectively.
The company has earmarked the elevated tantalum, rubidium and caesium hits as “highly encouraging” as it believes the inclusion of these elements means a larger lithium deposit may be lurking beneath the site’s subsurface. The additional minerals could also bode well for the project’s economic viability by providing other saleable commodities.
St George is now set to continue its field mapping activities at Jailbreak, where a raft of pegmatite outcrops speckled with visual lithium-bearing minerals have been detected around 1km west of its latest assays.
According to St George, a first pass review suggests the mineralised pegmatites are not confined to an ultramafic rock sequence at Jailbreak and could be part of a wider 15km corridor at the project.
The explorer has since collected over 100 additional pegmatite samples from the 15km long corridor and has submitted these for assay analysis.
St George has also completed a wide-scale soil survey at Mt Alexander. The company plans to use data from the soil and sampling campaigns to laser focus an RC drill program at the site.
The program is scheduled for a late October kick-off and will be used to drill test the outcropping pegmatites at depth.
Mt Alexander was once flagged as a predominantly nickel-focussed project but has been rapidly re-positioned as a highly prospective battery metals asset following a high-grade lithium discovery by Red Dirt at its nearby Mt Ida project last year.
In what could serve as something of a shot in the arm for St George, a recent drilling program at Red Dirt’s proximal project returned a 4m intercept going 1.1 per cent lithium oxide from 260m.
St George and Red Dirt aren’t the only explorers in search of battery metals in the region either.
Lithium all-star Liontown Resource’s Kathleen Valley deposit sits further north. Kathleen Valley boasts a 156 million tonne resource going 1.4 per cent lithium oxide and 130 ppm tantalum oxide.
If St George can carve out a resource that is even a pinch of that of its high-flying neighbour, it could be off to the races. It may be early days, but the lift in share price suggests the market shares a similar sentiment.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Matt Birney
