The Clearwater Project is located within Bashaw District, which is held by 1975293 Alberta Ltd., a wholly owned E3 subsidiary.
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Summary:
The lithium brine in the Bashaw District is considered to be an example of a lithium-rich brine deposit.
The Bashaw District is in the southwestern part of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin. In this area, the Upper Devonian (Frasnian) sediments of the Woodbend Group were deposited in a shallow inland sea bounded by the emergent Peace River Arch to the northwest and the West Alberta Ridge to the southwest, creating a barrier between the sea and the open ancestral Pacific to the west.
The Woodbend Group is dominated by basin siltstone, shale and carbonate of the Majeau Lake and Cooking Lake Formations. The Duvernay and Ireton Formations surround and cap the reef complexes of the Leduc Formation. The flooded carbonate platform of the Cooking Lake Formation provided structural highs and a favorable environment for the extensive reef buildups of the Leduc Formation.
Deep-seated faulting related to the Precambrian basement and the Snowbird Tectonic Zone appear to have at least partial control on the distribution of reefs and some of the oil fields in the area.
Lithofacies within the Leduc Formation were identified, interpreted, and delineated based on sedimentary structures and textures observed in core, and can be related to trends of porosity and permeability. The three key facies are:
• Facies-1: Leduc reef flat to reef margin facies;
• Facies-2: Leduc Mixed reef interior open lagoon to reef flat facies;
• Facies-3: Leduc reef interior restricted to open lagoon facies.
Based on the available data, the facies were assumed to be vertically continuous throughout the reef thickness.
Mineralization
Most saline reservoirs in Western Canada have little to no lithium entrained within the brines. For the purposes of this Report, “enriched” would refer to any brine reservoir that has more that 30 mg/L of lithium. The potential for lithium-enriched brine in the Devonian petroleum system of Alberta was initially identified by Hitchon et al. (1995). Potential reservoirs were located in reef complexes of the Woodbend and Winterburn Groups. Subsequent work by Eccles and Jean (2010), Huff et al. (2011; 2012) and Huff (2016) measured the presence of elevated lithium (e.g., >75 mg/L Li) in reservoirs associated with the Devonian reef complexes.
The main lithium accumulations in E3’s properties occur within brines contained within dolomitized reefs complexes of Devonian-aged Leduc Formation, with a secondary accumulation occurring at a higher elevation in the biostromal development in the Nisku Formation of the Devonian Winterburn Group. Consequently, lithium-brine mineralization in the Project area consists of lithium-enriched brines that are hosted in porous and permeable reservoirs associated with the Devonian carbonate reef complexes.
The specific emplacement method for the lithium in these reservoirs is currently unknown, and is an active area of research. For the Leduc and Nisku system in southern Alberta, Huff proposed a source involving lithium concentrated Devonian evaporates to the west and upward movement of lithium-enriched brine into the Leduc and Nisku carbonates during later mountain building (Huff, 2016). E3’s current conceptualization of the Brine Resource is that the lithium grade is relatively homogeneously distributed within the connected reservoir of the Bashaw District due to the relatively high permeability and connected nature of the reservoir.
Data collected during E3’s 2022 evaluation well program supports this theory, as all samples collected have a very narrow range of P10–P90 concentrations. The lithium data were collected across the 65+ townships of the Bashaw District, and E3’s evaluation well program acquired lithium concentrations across the vertical extent of the Leduc Formation.
Additionally, major cation and anion geochemistry concentrations do not vary significantly across the Bashaw District, which further supports the interpretation that the brine is continuous.
Deposit Dimensions
The Bashaw District covers a portion of the Wimborne-Bashaw trend, comprising Townships 28 to 45 and Ranges 21 to 28 West of the 4th Meridian, to Range 5 West of the 5th, covering about 250 x 50 km.
The Clearwater Project area covers the portion of the Bashaw District in the south and spans Township 31 Range 26 west of the 4th meridian in the southeast corner and extends to Township 34, Range 1 West of the 5th Meridian in the northwest corner, covering an approximately 30 x 25 km area.
The lithium mineralization is approximately 200 m thick across both the Bashaw District and the Clearwater Project.