"production of lithium from the oil field within a few weeksMGX Minerals signs agreement with major oil producers for lithium project
Von Joel Churry, www.oilprice.com , am 8. Dezember 2016 (frei bersetzt aus dem Englischen)By Joel Churry, www.oilprice.com , on December 8, 2016
The feasibility of the production of valuable lithium carbonate from the brine, which accompanies the oil brought to the earth's surface by the oil industry, has just got a big boost.
Petroleum soaps are abundant and have long been known to contain valuable minerals but are currently treated as a by-product which is merely pumped back downhole when the oil is separated at the wellhead.
The inventor of a concept that is known as "Petro Lithium" MGX Minerals [ OTC: MGXMF] [ CSE: XMG ] [ FCT: 1MG ], today announced an exploration agreement with a "major oil and gas companies" to. The agreement relates to the oil field called Sturgeon Lake operated by Canadian Natural Resources [NYSE: CNQ] [TSX: CNQ], which already has a significant infrastructure.
The deal includes Solen sampling at the wellhead and central collection points and provides MGX with several options for the location of its processing equipment.
Prior to the agreement, MGX has steadily accumulated what is now Canada's largest Lithiumsolen portfolio. MGX currently holds 15 adjoining mineral concessions of approximately 133,000 hectares on the Sturgeon Lake Lithium Project and has an overall portfolio of nearly 487,000 hectares of lithiumsolenia available.
While they have gained ground on land, MGX has also announced that they expect lithium production to begin in 2017 with the first production of lithium from the oil field within a few weeks. As soon as production is reached, the company would begin with the submission of the previously calculated resource of over 2 million tonnes of lithium carbonate, which would have a value of $ 20 billion at current lithium prices.
STURGEON LAKE LITHIUM PROJECT
As a result of the merger with CNRL, the largest operator in the region, MGX has managed to advance to the first legal petrolithium company.
Concluding a deal with a large company is a piece of art for itself, even if the Sturgeon Lake project is designed to generate revenue, bringing in contact with an industrialist will put the possibility of future joint development of projects in motion.
Essentially, the petrolithium concept is designed to gain as much value as possible from what comes from the wellhead. These sources are already producing enough water to guarantee a collection and injection site so that MGX can set up operations at a collection site and that is a big advantage. The access, the power supply and the pipelines are already built. What is in the game is the brine, which is known as mixed in the Sturgeon Lake oil field, where hydrocarbons from the Devonian Leduc Formation have been produced for more than 60 years. Only in the 1990s did studies show that the sols involved contained abnormal values of lithium (more than 75 mg / L and up to 140 mg / L lithium).
Since then, the studies have compiled some convincing data, with the most interesting being those of the 2011 Lithium Exploration Group. By analyzing sols from 60 separate drill holes within the Sturgeon Lake oilfield (all within the current limits of MGX), the aquifers contained therein were significantly enriched with lithium.
In particular, the Leduc formation salt contained:
- 83.7 mg / L (average 67 mg / L lithium)
- 6.470 mg / L potassium (average 4.641 mg / L potassium);
- 137 mg / L boron (average 114 mg / L boron); and
- 394 mg / L bromine (average 394 mg / L bromine)
This series of studies led to the calculation of a lithium carbonate resource estimate of about 2 million tonnes.
The key was that it was originally accepted as NI-43101-compliant, but was later lifted by non-conformance under reservation.
What regulators wanted to see was a viable commercial method of extraction that can open up these resources and make them a viable production.
MGX continued to acquire a country that concerned the resource considered by Lithium Exploration Group in its calculation (along with surrounding contiguous corridors).
HOW IS THE STATE OF THINGS NOW?
Now that MGX has involved a major oil producer in the concept proof, and there is a potential line to go ahead with the brine water treatment rather than dispose of it, only the pilot plant is completed and the operation begins.
The inventors of MGX already have the support of water treatment partners such as PurLucid, who already have several large customers in their portfolio, as well as the top research and development company in the neighboring province Saskatchewan.
The company will also expand its production capacity from the first pilot plant with 12,000 liters per day to a future plant to more than one million liters per day. It is now safer that the larger future facility will be located near the water collecting and cleaning grounds of the large partner.
At a concentration of 50 mg / L, one is able to process over one million liters per day and potentially produce more than 14,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate per year. At today's conservative pricing of $ 12,000 per tonne, the potential would be an investment at nearly $ 170 million in revenue a year. It is likely that MGX will have to share some of the profits of such a deal with the partners with whom they are teamed up, but in view of the legal rights to this process, it seems that once they demonstrate the processing process for a site, ("The sky's the limit").