Summary:
The lithium deposit on the South West Arkansas property is a confined aquifer brine deposit in the form of a lithium-bearing brine within the porosity of the Smackover Formation. The Smackover Formation in southern Arkansas has proven to be a prolific source of resources, beginning with oil and gas, transitioning to bromine, and now providing lithium as attractive development target. Bromine brine production from the Smackover Formation is extensive in the Union and Columbia counties to the east of the South West Arkansas property.
The lithium resource and reserves are present in solution within the brine of the Smackover aquifer. This dense brine (approximately 1.24 g/cm3 density) typically contains 16 detected constituents, with approximately 94% by weight made up of a high-concentration mix of chlorine, sodium, and calcium. The remaining constituents include potassium, bromide, and lithium, along with 10 other trace elements. The Smackover formation is continuous across the Project area, with variations in porosity, thickness, and permeability accounted for by the geological model.
The Smackover Formation in southern Arkansas is commonly subdivided into three intervals, the Reynolds Member Oolite (predominantly oolitic limestone), referred as the:
• “Upper Smackover”;
• “Middle Smackover” (a burrowed pellet packstone); and
• “Lower Smackover” Brown Dense (dark, dense limestone).
The lithium brine resource is contained within the Upper and Middle Members of the Smackover Formation (which underlie the entire project area). The Lower Smackover does not contribute to the resource estimates in this report but is a future target for exploration.
The depth of the top of the Smackover Formation in the property area generally dips from north-northeast to southsouthwest and varies in depth from approximately 2,316 m (7,600 ft) subsea to approximately 2,773 m (9,100 ft) subsea.
The Smackover Formation is up to 365 m thick with an upper ooidal/oncolitic packstone and grainstone shoaling upward cycle facies that is nearly 100 m thick (Dickinson, 1968; Moore and Druckman, 1981). The Smackover Formation has been interpreted as a low-gradient slope (<1°) homoclinal ramp succession due to its series of strike-oriented, relatively narrow depositional lithofacies belts across Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
The Smackover Formation extends from the panhandle of Florida through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas, and into Mexico. The portion of the Smackover generally known to contain significant bromine and lithium salts is found between the Jurassic Gulf Coast basin-bounding faults to the north-northwest of the South West Arkansas property and the “State Line” fault system to the south-southeast of the South West Arkansas property near the Arkansas-Louisiana border.