Source: PR Newswire
Read the full report here: American Battery Technology Company
American Battery Technology Company has announced its results of its third-party Qualified Person audited Inferred Resource Report that details the analysis of its lithium deposit at its Tonopah Flats Lithium Project in Big Smoky Valley, Nev., which has resulted in the identification of one of the largest known lithium deposits in the United States.
The ABTC Tonopah Flats Lithium Project encompasses 517 unpatented lode claims covering approximately 10,340 acres, and ABTC controls 100% of the mining lode claims comprising the Tonopah Flats property and the rights to all locatable subsurface minerals without any royalties.
Back in 2021, ABTC began surface sampling of these claims and subsequently performed multiple subsurface drilling programs totaling 12,000 feet of exploration covering approximately 65% of its property.
In order to perform an unbiased analysis of this data, the mineral resource estimates presented in the ABTC Tonopah Flats Inferred Resource Report were performed by third-party qualified person (QP) RESPEC, LLC, and were classified by geological and quantitative confidence in accordance with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Regulation S-K 1300. Through this analysis an open-pit resource estimate was developed that would support a processing rate of at least 200,000 tons of claystone per day.
“Having identified one of the largest premier lithium deposits in the U.S. is extremely exciting,” stated ABTC CEO Ryan Melsert. “However, the identification of an inferred resource in and of itself is not enough to address our critical challenges of increasing our domestic production of critical battery metals, reducing the costs of manufacturing of these battery metals, and decreasing the environmental impacts of their production.”
Melsert continued, “The development of a resource needs to be paired with the development of targeted technologies for the extraction of these metals, and we are proud to have spent the past several years developing technologies specifically targeted at these Nevada-based claystone lithium resources and to have been recognized by the U.S. Department of Energy for the performance of these technologies through our selection for a competitive R&D scale grant in 2021 and for a competitive grant to construct a commercial scale claystone lithium hydroxide refinery in 2022.”