Hawkstone Mining has delivered more impressive drilling intersections from an infill diamond coring program at its flagship Big Sandy lithium clay project in Arizona, US.
Assay results from the program undertaken within the Northern Mineralised Zone continue to confirm two separate, thick horizons of high-grade lithium mineralisation, that the company has denoted the Upper Zone and Lower Zone.
Better results include a combined Upper and Lower Zone with a thickness of 54 metres grading 2,041 parts per million, or “ppm”, lithium from 10m down-hole.
Further intercepts produced 17m @ 2,152 ppm lithium from 12m down-hole in the Upper Zone and 36m @ 1,892 ppm lithium from 31m down-hole in the Lower Zone, in the same vertical drill hole.
According to the company, the 37-hole phase two program is progressing well with 14 holes completed to date.
Geological core logging and sampling is ongoing, as Hawkstone collates all the data required to support a maiden JORC-compliant mineral resource estimate for the key Northern Mineralised Zone.
The current drill program is testing the continuity, lateral extent, grade and thickness of this Zone to assist in the definition of the new resource, with this week’s assay results strongly supporting the company’s geological interpretation.
In late March, Hawkstone unveiled an Exploration Target for Big Sandy, saying the project could contain between 242.1 million tonnes and 417.6 million tonnes of mineralised clays grading from 1,000 ppm to 2,000 ppm of lithium, to a depth of 90m from the surface.
Whilst the majority of this target lies within the Northern Mineralised Zone, a thicker, but slightly lower grade, Southern Mineralised Zone was also delineated, about 7.5km to the south southeast.
Based on the assay results returned from the drilling program on the Northern Mineralised Zone in the last month, the company is well on its way to proving up a sizeable mineral resource for Big Sandy in the near future.
The drilling campaign is expected to continue for several more months in Arizona.
Hawkstone’s Big Sandy project and its Lordsburg brine project in New Mexico state are situated within the US’ emerging “Battery Corridor”, which includes Tesla Motors’ Gigafactory 1, a lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle subassembly facility near Reno in Nevada, located to the northwest.
By Matt Birney
