Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Panther Drilling of Weyburn drilled Prairie Lithium’s first well, northwest of Torquay, in late September, 2021. It was the first targeted lithium well drilled in Saskatchewan. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
EMERALD PARK: What’s old is new again, as a name change reflects changing times for one of the leading players in Saskatchewan’s nascent lithium play.
Prairie Lithium is once again, after several years under the name Arizona Lithium. It’s the same company, but back to its old name.
Prairie Lithium was founded by Zach Maurer in February 2019. It drilled the first targeted lithium well in Canada a few miles northwest of Torquay in September of 2021. By 2023, it was purchased by Arizona Lithium, with the sale announced in December of 2022.
Here’s what Pipeline Online wrote at the time of the deal closing in March, 2023:
Arizona Lithium Limited (AZL), an Australian company whose key focus up until now has been the sustainable development of the Big Sandy Lithium Project in Arizona, announced on March 27 that it has completed the acquisition of Emerald Park-based Prairie Lithium Corporation.
Prairie Lithium has been the widely-acknowledged leader in the race to develop lithium within Saskatchewan. It drilled the first targeted lithium well in Saskatchewan just northwest of Torquay in the fall of 2021. Since then it has acquired a test well within a few hundred metres of the U.S. border and three more wells in the Torquay area for subsequent testing.
The deal closed on the same day Saskatchewan announced its Critical Mineral Strategy, of which lithium is an important part.
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Since then, the company has operated under Australian leadership and ownership. But this past summer, Arizona Lithium sold its namesake property, the Big Sandy Project, to one of its investors, getting out of the Arizona lithium play and turning its principal focus on the Saskatchewan Prairie Lithium Project. It turns out getting a mine built, even for a highly in-demand critical mineral like lithium, can take many years, if it happens at all. The company saw its quickest prospects to actual production in the Torquay-area project, which always maintained the name “Prairie Lithium Project.”
So with the Arizona portion no longer being part of “Arizona Lithium,” the company’s shareholders voted on Sept. 18 To change its name to “Prairie Lithium.” Maurer is still onboard with the project, as he joined the board of directors of Arizona Lithium as part of the sale of Prairie Lithium in 2023.
The lithium industry in Saskatchewan appears to have officially experienced its first full cycle. Global demand for lithium grew 5X from 2020 – 2025, and with it came extreme price volatility. Maurer remembers lithium prices under USD $8,000 per tonne in 2019, skyrocketing to over USD $80,000 per tonne in 2022, and settling back down to USD $8-$9,000 in spring of 2025.
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Lithium prices are slowly starting to creep up again the past 3 months, breaking above USD $10,000 per tonne as the lithium industry could be entering its next price cycle. As Maurer notes, demand for lithium has never faltered. Demand for the product continues to grow year over year, but navigating the extreme price cycles has been very difficult for North American lithium prospects.
“The feast or famine reality of the resource industry is not uncommon to Saskatchewan, as the oil & gas industry is famous for it’s boom and bust cycles. If history repeats itself as it often does, the lithium industry could be nearing the end of a bust, and to the hopes of the lithium companies in Saskatchewan, entering the start of it’s next boom.” Mauer said.
The company still retains its Lordsburg project, in the southwest corner of New Mexico, close to the Mexican border.
Editor’s note: Maurer will be speaking at the Southeast Tech Hub ICED conference in Estevan on Sept 24.
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