Categories: Energy
Topics: General Energy / Lithium Stocks

Argentina Lithium & Energy (TSX-V: LIT)(OTC: LILIF) VPE Miles Rideout on Drilling District Scale Projects, Rio Tinto, and 2025 Catalysts

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the VP of Exploration for Argentina Lithium and Energy, Mr. Miles Rideout. Miles, it's great to have you on. How are you, sir?

Miles Rideout: I’m very well, thank you very much for the invitation.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, let's get right into it. There's been several pieces of news here recently that bode really, really well for Argentina Lithium and future catalysts. We know that Argentina has been attracting a lot of capital, specifically in the mining space with exploration really, really ramping up and the country becoming one of the most mining friendly countries in South America. So, no coincidence that you just announced the receipt of your drill permit for the Paso de Sico property at the Rincon West Lithium Project.

So I wanted to touch on the drill permit and what it means and then why it's so important. But I have to get your take first on that 327 meter lithium brine interval at the 13th exploration well on the Rincon West Project that you announced back on October the first.

Miles Rideout: Thanks for those questions. So to provide a bit of background and color for your listeners, if you recall the central part of the Rincon Salar is held by Rio Tinto Mining, one of the world's largest mining companies, and they purchased that resource in the central part of the Salt Lake for $825 million about two years ago.

Our properties for Rincon West are three blocks. We have one block on the west side. It's about 5,000 hectares that we hold immediately adjacent to Rio Tinto's ground. And that is the area where we have focused our historic drilling. So now we have 14 holes drilled there, about 5,000 meters of drilling completed. We're doing pump tests right now, and I'll talk about that in a bit more detail in a second.

Then we moved to the north and immediately north of the Rio Tinto property is our second area, and that is called Paso de Sico. And so last week we received a drill permit to begin exploration work on Paso de Sico, and we'll have a drill mobilized to that property before the end of November. We're going to start with six exploration holes there. It's an exploration program. We'll see how it goes. We have high hopes, we've got several deep brine targets already identified ready to go.

And then there's a third property on Rincon West, and it is in fact on the east side of the Rio Tinto ground. And we put out a news announcement I think about two months ago. That property is called Don Fermin, and we were able to advance the geophysics on Don Fermin. And so we made an announcement showing that about half of that property, about 800 hectares is underlain by what appears to be a conductive lithium brine aquifer.

We do not yet have our drill permit for Don Fermin. Hopefully we'll have that permit in place by about the midpoint of 2025. So ideally, we should be able to complete our six-hole program at Paso de Sico in the first half of 2025, and then move that rig across to Don Fermin and get going on Don Fermin in the second half of 2025.

That work – these two future exploration programs will be adding on to the resource potential for the Rincon West project. We will develop the entire project as a whole, even though it’s in three property areas right around the Rio Tinto ground.

So the previous intercept that we announced for our 13th drill hole. So that is located on the West Block, on the west side of Rio Tinto. And what we showed there is that we have, again, similar brines to what Rio Tinto has. When we began drilling on Rincon West about two years ago, our objective was to demonstrate that we have the same brine potential, the same grades of brines and similar formations perhaps as to what Rio Tinto had in the central part of the Salar. So we began by doing geophysics, defining where the brine aquifers were, and then we drill them out.

So that 13th hole follows a long series of other holes. Each of those holes intersect a brine interval. Typically, we're intersecting usually about a 200-meter interval, that 13th hole at more than 300 meter interval. That was a long hole and a very long brine intercept. What we typically experience when we're drilling on that Western block is we will initially go through some dry sediment, then we go into some fresh water saturated sediment. We're very in favor of seeing fresh water. We'll require that fresh water when we take the project into production. So to have fresh water sitting above the brines that demonstrates to us where we can find the fresh water for our plant processes.

And then in most of the drilling that we've done at about a hundred meters depth, we would enter concentrated lithium brines with values that peak as high as about 400 milligrams per meter lithium. And those brines would typically persist to about 300 or 350 meters depth.

What we've done the most recent drilling we've done, and that would include the 13th drill hole that you mentioned, and the most recent hole, which is the 14th, which we haven't yet announced. We're moving out over the salt flat itself out towards the Rio Tinto property. So what happens in that case, we're actually on the Salt Lake. We don't see so much fresh water above the brines at that point. We go straight into the brines from surface. The holes extend to about 350 meters depth, and that's why we have an interval which is substantially longer than 300 meters.

What's interesting though is that all of our drilling demonstrate that we have similar grade potential to what Rio Tinto has on their property. That's exactly what we set out to prove when we started this drill program. So the 14 holes we've completed, that has been an enormous exploration success for us.

We're still working on this data set to produce a resource estimate. We've got a rotary well completed now on that same property. It's adjacent to our 11th drill hole, and we're doing a pump test there now. We'll be doing two more rotary wells with pump tests early in the new year, and this is all work that's going to go into making the best resource calculation that we can for the West Block. And then as we complete drilling on Paso de Sico in the north and then Don Fermin in the East, we'll be adding on those resource estimates.

Gerardo Del Real: I got to believe that it must be exciting to be working on these massive projects with scale, be getting the results that you're getting, and having a next door neighbor and a strategic partner that clearly believe in the region and look to contribute many, many, many millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure development. Can you speak to that a bit and the potential for the region?

Miles Rideout: Well, absolutely. It's great having Rio Tinto beside us and sort of leading the charge or demonstrating how to get a production facility constructed in this part of Salta. Rio Tinto made an announcement that they were going to proceed with a full-scale project at Rincon. I'm just speaking from memory, but if I recall correctly, they're talking about something like a 50,000 tonne per year production facility located at Rincon. And if I'm not mistaken, they're talking about something like a $2 billion investment to build that production facility. So these are massive numbers, and also Rio Tinto is very bullish on Argentina in general, and they made another announcement where they were acquiring one of the consortiums working down on the southern border of Salta at the Salar del Muerto, and there's a $6 billion investment to acquire those projects down there.

So Rio Tinto is arriving in massive scale and really demonstrating that Argentina is open for business and that these projects, can be turned into massive production fields.

Gerardo Del Real: A lot going on in the region, a lot going company specific wise, a lot going for you. Obviously you have a tiny market cap relative to the investment that the region is attracting and the potential. I'm looking forward to seeing the company continue to hit milestones and looking forward to having you back on, Miles. Thank you so much for coming on.

Miles Rideout: Thank you very much.

Gerardo Del Real: All right, we'll chat again soon.

Miles Rideout: Thanks.

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