Arizona creeps closer to commercial production at Prairie

Arizona Lithium has discovered another new lithium-enriched formation at its Prairie project, as it installs its first disposal well on Pad #1.

AZL can almost taste the salty brines it plans to produce from Prairie. Pic: Getty Images.

• New lithium-enriched formation discovered in Dawson Bay

• Well #2 at Pad #1 has been drilled

• Finalisation of facility design underway for H1 2025 construction and H2 202 production

Special Report: Arizona Lithium has discovered another new lithium-enriched formation at its Prairie project in Saskatchewan, Canada, and has installed its first disposal well on the brine project’s Pad #1.

Prairie is a 6.3Mt lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) brine project, comprised of 4.5Mt LCE in the Indicated category and 1.8Mt LCE in the Inferred category that’s on track to be producing next year.

Well #2 on Pad #1 has been drilled into the Dawson Bay Formation at Arizona Lithium’s (ASX:AZL) Prairie and converted into a disposal well where brine samples have indicated concentrations of 60mg/L Li, while a third well to complete the well infrastructure required to deploy commercial scale direct lithium extraction (DLE) has also been drilled.

Meanwhile, four separate zones were identified in Mississippian stratigraphy and tested for disposal capacity and Duperow brine from the production well drilled on Pad #1 was disposed of into the individual zones within the disposal well.

All four zones were individually capable of maintaining disposal rates between 500-700m 3 per day each.

Each zone was tested individually with 6-12m of open perforations and observed disposal testing has exceeded expectations and previously modelled rates – evidenced by the low wellhead pressure during the high-volume testing.

Arizona Lithium’s Prairie project. Pic supplied: (AZL)

Moving into production

These latest moves will allow AZL to start developing facility infrastructure with an eye to begin lithium production from Pad #1 in H2 2025.

AZL MD Paul Lloyd said that having the first production and disposal wells installed and tested at Pad #1 is a significant milestone for Prairie.

“As described in our PFS that we released in December 2023, we require production wells, disposal wells and surface equipment,” Lloyd said.

“So far we have tested a production well successfully, we have tested a disposal well successfully and we have run a pilot plant to optimise processing at surface.

“Having all these milestones complete allows us to finalize the design of our facility as we look to construct our facility infrastructure in H1 2025 and produce lithium on Pad #1 in H2 2025.”

This article was developed in collaboration with Arizona Lithium, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.