Maiden lithium drilling program completed

Our exploration Investment Ragusa Minerals (ASX:RAS) just announced that it has completed its maiden exploration drilling program at its lithium project in the NT.

RAS’s drilling was focussed on the same group of outcropping pegmatites that hosts Core Lithium’s (capped at $2.6BN) 18.8mt JORC resource which sits to the north of RAS’s ground.

The drilling program saw RAS drill 18 reverse circulation drillholes of which 12 drillholes intersected pegmatite.

We note that the market reacted relatively negatively to the news with RAS’s share price hitting ~10.5c per share at one point this morning.

We think this is because the market is used to seeing drillcores that confirm whether an explorer has hit spodumene (generally where there is spodumene bearing pegmatites there is lithium). But those drillcores are only available when using a diamond drill rig.

RAS opted to go for a more conventional RC drilling program so we did not get any drillcore pictures or confirmation of spodumene presence.

Instead, RAS confirmed that it sent the RC chips to the assay labs, meaning we must wait for the assay results to determine if RAS has in fact made a new lithium discovery.

RAS has not provided an expected timeframe for these results but we hope to see some results in the next 4-6 weeks.

We’ll know more once the results are in but RAS did say it is “very encouraged by the preliminary drilling observations at our priority targets, noting the scale of the pegmatite zones encountered within our project area”.

This drilling program is part of the due diligence that RAS is undertaking, where it has an exclusive right to acquire these lithium prospective tenements in the centre of a well-renowned lithium district in the NT.

Exploration work should lead RAS to an informed decision on whether to acquire the tenements during its 12 month due diligence period — the primary objective that we wanted to see RAS achieve in the current year.