RE:RE:43-101 KELOWNA, British Columbia, April 02, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Enertopia Corporation (ENRT) on the OTC (the "Company" or "Enertopia") is pleased to provide the following maiden resource estimate at the Company’s lithium claystone property at Clayton Valley, NV.
At a 400 ppm lithium cut-off, the deposit has 81.7 million tonnes at 1,121 ppm lithium as indicated resources, and 18.1 million tonnes lithium at 1,131 ppm lithium as inferred resources, this equates to 487,887 tonnes indicated and 109,410 tonnes inferred of lithium carbonate equivalent – (“LCE”).
A breakdown of grade and tonnage by resource category and LCE by cut-off values is given in Table 1 below.
| Indicated Mineral Resource |
| | 400 ppm Li Cutoff | 700 ppm Li Cutoff | 1000 ppm Li Cutoff | 1200 ppm Li Cutoff |
| Tonnage | 81,732,150 | 75,951,000 | 59,534,100 | 34,478,100 |
| Average Grade | 1121 | 1160 | 1247 | 1346 |
| Contained Li (kg) | 91,656,383 | 88,129,744 | 74,225,389 | 46,424,369 |
| LCE (Tonnes) | 487,887 | 469,115 | 395,102 | 247,117 |
| | |
| Inferred Mineral Resource |
| | 400 ppm Li Cutoff | 700 ppm Li Cutoff | 1000 ppm Li Cutoff | 1200 ppm Li Cutoff |
| Tonnage | 18,165,600 | 17,252,100 | 15,999,300 | 8,913,150 |
| Average Grade | 1131 | 1156 | 1170 | 1196 |
| Contained Li (kg) | 20,554,207 | 19,948,516 | 18,719,880 | 10,664,088 |
| LCE (Tonnes) | 109,410 | 106,186 | 99,646 | 56,765 |
Table 1
SOME KEY POINTS FROM 43-101 Report:
- Preliminary testing for the extraction of the lithium from the mined material has indicated that the material will be relatively inexpensive to process.
- From the preliminary testing, the sediments will not require crushing or grinding prior to processing but may require some preprocessing to upgrade the material by removing the coarser fraction, which has been found to be of lower grade.
- The type of processing envisioned will have a much smaller footprint than lithium brine operations, which now employ large evaporation ponds, making the proposed operation more environmentally friendly.
Table 2 below shows the average grade of each major lithologic unit within the model. the reduced sediments tend to be higher grade than the oxidized units and are in bold below.
| Lithologic unit | Weighted average grade Li ppm |
| Surface Gravel | 790 |
| Upper Olive Claystone | 834 |
| Main Blue Claystone | 1136 |
| Dark Blue Black Claystone | 1464 |
| Lower Olive Mudstone | 1082 |
Table 2
Robert McAllister, President and CEO, commented, “We are very pleased with our maiden 43-101 resource. We used a higher-grade cutoff and the resource shows very good continuity in resource tonnage as the ppm cutoff is raised to come up with a strong resource number based on the current Lithium market metrics and these are laid out in detail in the company’s maiden 43-101 report.”
The full 43-101 Report will be filed within 45 days from this release and the report can also be found on the company’s website at www.enertopia.com with further details. Below is Figure 1 showing the company’s property and drill hole locations for the 4 diamond drill holes used in the resource study.
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/79d88139-c133-46c2-8b13-7818f08c5dd2
Figure 1 from google earth showing the property and four drills used in the maiden 43-101 resource
The technical information contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Douglas Wood, P.Geol, a Certified Professional Geologist who is a Qualified Person with respect to Enertopia’s Clayton Valley Lithium Project as defined under National Instrument 43-101.