Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Grounded Lithium’s first targeted lithium well was drilled near Coleville. Photo courtesy Grounded Lithium
Grounded is first to publicly release its map of development in Saskatchewan
CALGARY – Last summer, Calgary-based Grounded Lithium Corp. drilled the second targeted lithium well in Saskatchewan. That well was near Coleville, in the west central region of the province. On Feb. 8, the company announced its plans to develop their lithium field in the Coleville area, with 24 producing wells, five injector wells, and a central processing facility.
In the race to develop lithium in Saskatchewan, that makes Grounded Lithium the first company to make public such detailed production plans. And on March 1, the company expanded on that, announcing a strategic land acquisition from Hub City Lithium that will fill in a lot of the holes in its development area.
Pipeline Online spoke to Gregg Smith, president and CEO, and Greg Phaneuf, chief financial officer, by phone on Feb. 13 about their plans.
Gregg Smith, former Saskatchewan Oilman of the Year, and Greg Phaneuf, are now looking for lithium with their company, Grounded Lithium. Photo courtesy Grounded Lithium
Grounded is calling this their Kindersley Lithium Project (KLP), and the field development plan if for their first 10,000 metric tonne per year phase, with the intention of it being the first of many.
According to the company’s release of Feb. 8, “The development plan relies on and considers such factors as production testing, extensive dynamic fluid modeling, present land configuration, land tenure, topography, best practices in reservoir development and infrastructure availability. This entire analysis will contribute to the completion of our Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) on Phase One of the KLP expected to be completed during Q2 2023.”
That PEA is important, and something the other lithium players are also in the process of developing. Grounded has already released, and then released a second, revised version, of its National Instrument 43-101. A third will result from the closing of the Hub City acquisition.
The PEA is a crucial report outlining the resource in the ground. The NI 43-101 came out of the Bre-X scandal, and is meant to provide authenticity to geological reports for the sake of investors.
“From our outset, we singularly focused on building the company and its associated projects to generate cash flow and provide economic returns as quickly as possible,” said Smith. “The current development plan is based on best practices in reservoir management collected by our team over decades of experience managing subsurface fluid production. The plan takes into account capital efficiencies wherever possible to ensure solid project economics all while maintaining a reservoir that can deliver for years to come. We look forward to further elaborate on our efforts in this regard as we steadily advance to the completion of vital lab pilot work and associated technology selection, completion of a PEA and towards the end of 2023 potentially commencing construction of a field demonstration plant.”
- 0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online
- 0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click
- 0082 CsHM 2024 Pipeline0082 CsHM 2024 Pipeline
- 0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
- 0076 Latus only0076 Latus only
- 0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
- 0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office
- 0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
- 0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
- 0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan
- 0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
- 0032 IWS Summer hiring rock trailer music
- 0022 Grimes winter hiring
- 0021 OSY Rentals S8 Promo
- 0018 IWS Hiring Royal Summer
- 0013 Panther Drilling PO ad 03 top drive rigs
- 0011
- 0006 JK Junior
- 0002 gilliss casing services0002 gilliss casing services
- 9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
- 9001
Same target, different area
As with all the other lithium players in Saskatchewan, Grounded is targeting the Duperow formation, named after a hamlet of five people not far from Coleville. That same formation extends into Alberta, where it is known as the Leduc formation – made famous by the 1947 Leduc No. 1 oil gusher that kicked out serious oil development in Alberta. But in Saskatchewan, the Duperow has little, if any oil. And if you’re looking for lithium brines instead of oil, that’s a good thing. It makes it simpler, and cheaper.
With reference to the well they drilled last summer and their development plans, Smith said by phone, “We’re pleased to get it out, because it really proves up our whole investment thesis on why we chose this area in a number of regards. Good, thick reservoir with great deliverability, at a shallow depth. And because of the lack of some of the impurities … there’s no oil, there’s no H2S. It really means we can go with a smaller, more modular facility. And it was one of the reasons that attracted us to this area to begin with.”
The Duperow formation in their area around Coleville is 240 metres thick, of which Grounded tested two zones, totalling 167 metres, and came up with lithium concentrations of 74 to 81 milligrams per litre (mg/L).
In southeast Saskatchewan, the Duperow is over 2,000 metres deep in the areas being explored for lithium. But at Coleville, the top of the formation is about 900 metres deep. And they’re looking at a vertical depth of around 1070 metres for their wells, which would put them a little below the mid-point of the Duperow. That shallower depth, compared to southeast Saskatchewan, means lower drilling costs, but also lower artificial lift costs, too. And when you’re moving massive amounts of brine, that makes a difference in ongoing operating costs.
Grounded Lithium at Coleville last summer. Grounded Lithium
Open hole
Smith explained how they used open hole completion in their testing methodology. He said, “We wanted to have something that would be representative of how we would produce. And we’re not out here to do a science experiment. We’re out here to prove commerciality. So basically, we tested two zones. There’s a main zone in the deeper part of the section, and that zone we put a bridge plug. Everything was open hole. So what that means is when you drill down to the top of the Duperow, cased, the well, and then we drilled it out. And at that point in time we put a bridge plug in, above the best porosity in the deeper part of the section. And we tested just the shallower portion of the Duperow, which is still quite thick, just to see flow rates and concentrations.
“And then we opened up the complete section and we tested it, with obviously better in flow as well as getting more samples. So we weren’t really seeing the difference, if you will, in concentrations that others have reported.”
He continued, “Lithium from brine operations are about more than just concentrations. It’s about long-term sustainable high flow rates. And so, in order for us to really see what that looks like, what we did was we built a three dimensional model with all the rock properties. And then we would take the inflow data from that testing which gives us information on pressures as a function of flow rates. And then when we put those two together, it allows us to very accurately predict how, within this model, how it will produce through time.
- 0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online
- 0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click
- 0082 CsHM 2024 Pipeline0082 CsHM 2024 Pipeline
- 0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
- 0076 Latus only0076 Latus only
- 0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
- 0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office
- 0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
- 0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
- 0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan
- 0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
- 0032 IWS Summer hiring rock trailer music
- 0022 Grimes winter hiring
- 0021 OSY Rentals S8 Promo
- 0018 IWS Hiring Royal Summer
- 0013 Panther Drilling PO ad 03 top drive rigs
- 0011
- 0006 JK Junior
- 0002 gilliss casing services0002 gilliss casing services
- 9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
- 9001
“This is something very typically done in oil and gas industry. Either fields that they’re trying to understand better or maybe for enhanced oil recovery, this is a very common process. So we’ve run the model like 10 years to say yeah, this is going to be sustainable over 10 years, and beyond.”
He pointed out these models don’t run on your home computer, but on very expensive computers and software. “We believe this is unique to us, doing the three-dimensional data, to see how this will produce through time. And obviously, once we start to add more wells in, with more test data, or even production data, then that gives us the model to be continually refined, so that we understand how we’re depleting the reservoir.
And they’re talking about a lot of water. “We’re probably (going to be) producing on the order of a little over 400,000 barrels of brine per day, which is what you want to do. It’s a massive undertaking. It kind of boggles the mind, when you think of the plumbing on the surface.”
As a Dolomite formation, the Duperow is very heterogenous. Smith said, “You have zones with now porosity or permeability, and then you have zones with very high porosity and permeability. And they’re all layered. The main zone we’ll be producing from can be correlated across the entire province. That’s how laterally extensive they are. They do vary in thickness and in porosity, but they can be correlated.
“One of the reasons we chose here was because this area we saw as being thicker, and offering better porosity.”
Grounded has not published their porosity and permeability data.
Detailed assessment
Grounded said field work completed over the last year confirmed their geologic view that their intended production zone is free of hydrocarbons and H2S, which materially reduces the cost of a full commercial plant since pre-treatment facilities will not be required to process these contaminants. With an initial project size of 10,000 metric tonnes per year of battery grade lithium salt, their initial processing facility will maintain a smaller footprint and is expected to be located near key infrastructure such as paved highways, key power sources and a number of operational services given their proximity to Kindersley, Saskatchewan.
Indeed, if you look at their map, the processing facility is right along Highway 21, east of Coleville.
Grounded Lithium’s existing land base, in yellow, and the recent addition of land from Hub City Lithium, in orange. The wells and pipelines are laid out in this development plan. Grounded Lithium
Spreading out for it is a web of planned pipelines, going northeast, southeast, southwest, west, and northwest. Each flowline will collect from four to seven producer wells, and in each direction is an injector disposal well along those same routes.
The wells themselves are, in most cases, placed at the northeast corner of the section of land. Most of the land is in the characteristic checkerboard pattern of Crown land sales, but in their core area around the central production facility, and to the west, Grounded has filled in the gaps with freehold land. All told, the development plan for the wells are nine miles (15 kilometres) east to west, and eight miles (14 kilometres) north to south.
“The pattern was set up to help minimize our pipeline distances, and the corners just worked well for us,” Smith said.
- 0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online
- 0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click
- 0082 CsHM 2024 Pipeline0082 CsHM 2024 Pipeline
- 0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
- 0076 Latus only0076 Latus only
- 0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
- 0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office
- 0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
- 0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
- 0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan
- 0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
- 0032 IWS Summer hiring rock trailer music
- 0022 Grimes winter hiring
- 0021 OSY Rentals S8 Promo
- 0018 IWS Hiring Royal Summer
- 0013 Panther Drilling PO ad 03 top drive rigs
- 0011
- 0006 JK Junior
- 0002 gilliss casing services0002 gilliss casing services
- 9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
- 9001
Each well would be a single horizontal leg. They’re not feeling a need for multiple legs. Smith said, “We know the one leg, open, barefoot, will provide what we need. If we felt like we wanted more, maybe to expand our facility, and say double it, we could come back and infill the sections we’re not drilling.”
He added, “This isn’t like the Viking, or other formations, that people talk about doing horizontals in. This rock is very porous. It’s not a tight reservoir that requires fracking.
The central processing facility is two miles east of the companies first test well, the one drilled last summer. That well is thus close to the centre of the whole field.
Filling in the checkerboard
On March 1, Grounded announced it had entered into a purchase and sale agreement with Hub City Lithium Corp., to acquire a further 33 sections (8,498 hectares) of land on the west side of Grounded’s land base. That brings Grounded’s land base to 333 sections (86,229 hectares), of which approximately 300 are in the Kindersley Lithium Project. The deal closed March 16.
Grounded will pay total consideration of $425,000, comprised of cash consideration of $175,000 and the issuance of $250,000 of GLC common shares, based on the 10-day volume weighted average trading price of the shares at closing, which equated to 779,557, or one per cent of their outstanding shares.
The price of the additional land equals $50 per hectare, which Grounded said is substantially lower than recent land sale processes in the nearby area. Successful Crown land sale bids in the nearby area exceeded $100 per hectare. Grounded believes the acquisition is accretive to the company with an implied metric on the acquisition price of approximately $1.00/tonne of LCE and is substantially below the company’s current market metric of approximately $5.00/tonne of LCE, based on the Company’s recent trading history.
It’s seen as “a strong strategic asset for future growth and development.”
The March 1 announcement substantially fills in Grounded Lithium’s southwest corner of its planned development, making it more contiguous and almost eliminating the checkerboard pattern in that area. It also fills in a lot of the blanks to the area southwest of the initial development.
Grounded does not foresee a need to pool lands between the various mineral rights owners. “Our development plans include drilling on both Crown and freehold land holdings to satisfy future work commitments and maintain the lands with all parties,” the company said in a release. “From a broader field development plan, future work commitments on both Crown and freehold lands will be satisfied by slightly relocating a few locations in our first phase field development plan, with no impact on costs or anticipated outcomes.”
“It is expected that consolidating land positions within the KLP will provide a number of operational and infrastructure efficiencies; however, developing from a ‘checkerboard’ position is feasible and commonplace in resource development.”
- 0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online
- 0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click
- 0082 CsHM 2024 Pipeline0082 CsHM 2024 Pipeline
- 0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
- 0076 Latus only0076 Latus only
- 0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
- 0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office
- 0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
- 0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
- 0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan
- 0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
- 0032 IWS Summer hiring rock trailer music
- 0022 Grimes winter hiring
- 0021 OSY Rentals S8 Promo
- 0018 IWS Hiring Royal Summer
- 0013 Panther Drilling PO ad 03 top drive rigs
- 0011
- 0006 JK Junior
- 0002 gilliss casing services0002 gilliss casing services
- 9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
- 9001
Trains, but no locomotive
GLC’s full development plan calls for multiple 10,000 metric tonnes per year ‘trains’ or phases which minimizes a number of operational and financial risks, which ultimately is expected to drive incremental value for all stakeholders, according to the company.
In their Feb. 8 press release, Grounded said, “From an operational perspective, positive results from our field work evidencing grade and more importantly for this type of operation, deliverability, results in a field development plan calling for only 22 producing wells, with five disposal wells. Aside from our initial test well, we will drill two additional producing wells to provide operational flexibility and redundancy in order to maintain consistent annual production rates.
“Our field work further refined our 3-dimensional dynamic model, enabling a more precise inter-well spacing and depletion plan through time. Additional capital savings are expected from the shallow depth to our intended horizon, which materially reduces capital expenditures associated with drilling and ancillary services.
“The infrastructure to connect our wells to the facility requires only approximately 70 kilometers (43 miles) of buried pipeline for both production and disposal. Taken as a whole, our program requires similar total wells to produce sufficient volumes for a 10,000 metric tonne per year project, but at approximately half the depth and with reduced facility requirements for brine prefiltering, we believe the KLP has the potential to be one of the lowest cost structure projects in the lithium from brine industry in Western Canada.”
Smith said their goal is to soon publish their PEA, and for it to be robust.
Grounded Lithium now has approximately 300 sections of land in its Kindersley Lithium Project (KLP). Grounded Lithium
Lots of land in west central Sask
The map of their planned wells and pipelines is just a small portion of Grounded Lithium’s holdings. The broader map initially published on Feb. 8 (without the Hub City Lithium acquisition) shows 266 sections, the bulk of which is in an area six townships east to west, and five townships north to south. The southern border runs right along Highway 7 and borders Kindersley. The southeast corner of the roughly contiguous area is about 40 kilometres east of Kindersley. Highway 31 through Dodsland forms much of the northern border. The western border is a little west of Smiley. When you add it all up, their checkerboard covers a very large portion of the Viking fairway of west central Saskatchewan.
And that’s just the main portion. They also have other land within western Saskatchewan which brings the total land assembly up to 333 sections, including the Hub City purchase.
Grounded noted in its Feb. 8 release, “From a land tenure perspective, the location and selection of our drill program will earn or validate mineral permits which are leased from either the Crown (government) or freehold landowners. We note that this development plan has an average inter-well distance between 1 mile to 1.5 miles whereby we can develop our individual sections in a checker-board manner. This model provides for infill development, that we can use for future growth or production maintenance if necessary.
“Several factors may impact our timing of the development plan, however the company anticipates production commencement in the 2026 timeframe. Lithium from brine projects have the potential to reach commercial production far quicker than current global sources of lithium, which can often exceed a decade from concept to commissioning.”
- 0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online
- 0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click
- 0082 CsHM 2024 Pipeline0082 CsHM 2024 Pipeline
- 0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
- 0076 Latus only0076 Latus only
- 0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
- 0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office
- 0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
- 0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
- 0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan
- 0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
- 0032 IWS Summer hiring rock trailer music
- 0022 Grimes winter hiring
- 0021 OSY Rentals S8 Promo
- 0018 IWS Hiring Royal Summer
- 0013 Panther Drilling PO ad 03 top drive rigs
- 0011
- 0006 JK Junior
- 0002 gilliss casing services0002 gilliss casing services
- 9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
- 9001
Flow through ineligibility
Phaneuf pointed out something that, if addressed, would help out lithium explorers a lot. That’s the intelligibility of lithium for “flow through shares,” a key financial tool that has been used for many decades in resource development.
“The federal government does not qualify lithium from brine as flow-through eligible, currently. There’s a number of lobbying efforts to change that. And to the point about your broader Saskatchewan question on exploring for a much wider resource base, it would sure be helpful to, not only Grounded, but other companies, if the federal government did allow flow-through eligibility for exploration for lithium from brine.”
Picking a Direct Lithium Extraction process
On Feb. 8, Grounded said, “As has been communicated in the past, we plan to deploy direct lithium extraction (DLE) technology to deliver a very economic project. We have been making steady progress in our analysis and efforts with Hatch Ltd. to select the preferred technology to process our chemistry of brine from the KLP. The company holds in secure storage more than sufficient quantities of brine to conduct longer-term lab pilot tests.”
On March 13, Grounded announced it had signed a “Lithium Processing Test Work Program Agreement with Koch Technology Solutions (KTS), a Koch Engineered Solutions (KES) company. Under the Koch agreement, GLC’s brine will be processed using KTS’s proprietary Li-ProTM technology at a KES location in Pickering, Ontario, Canada in order to determine the efficacy of Li-ProTM for direct lithium extraction. KTS and more broadly, Koch Industries, is a globally recognized entity that helps create value for customers across a growing portfolio of technologies. KTS is developing and leveraging synergistic technologies such as membrane filtration, ion exchange, evaporation, drying, and more to provide an optimized DLE solution. KTS has decades of experience in the development and transfer of advantaged technologies and will apply these capabilities working with GLC during this testing phase.”
Grounded said, “The results from the Koch Agreement are expected to be completed in the next 6-8 weeks. Upon a review of these results, we will make a final selection of the optimum extraction technology which will form part of the preliminary economic assessment, expected to be filed by the end of Q2 2023.”
A second DLE candidate is expected to be announced soon.
Exploration
Smith said, “If you look at world maps that document the lithium resources by country, Canada doesn’t show up very much on that map. And that’s a function of whether it’s hard rock or lithium from brine. There hasn’t been enough exploration. And clearly, we believe that there’s lots of it to be exploited. But there’s definitely a lack of exploration that’s gone on. And we’re trying to be a leading part of that.”
- 0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online
- 0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click0053 Kingston Midstream Westspur Alameda Click
- 0082 CsHM 2024 Pipeline0082 CsHM 2024 Pipeline
- 0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
- 0076 Latus only0076 Latus only
- 0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask0061 SIMSA 2024 For Sask Buy Sask
- 0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office
- 0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly0051 JML Hiring Pumpjack assembly
- 0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar0049 Scotsburn Dental soft guitar
- 0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan
- 0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build0041 DEEP Since 2018 now we are going to build
- 0032 IWS Summer hiring rock trailer music
- 0022 Grimes winter hiring
- 0021 OSY Rentals S8 Promo
- 0018 IWS Hiring Royal Summer
- 0013 Panther Drilling PO ad 03 top drive rigs
- 0011
- 0006 JK Junior
- 0002 gilliss casing services0002 gilliss casing services
- 9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX9002 Pipeline Online 30 sec EBEX
- 9001
Pipeline Online provides the depth of coverage of Saskatchewan’s energy industry that no one else comes even close to. There’s still a lot more to come in this series on lithium in Saskatchewan. You can see all the previous stories below. Be sure to check PipelineOnline.ca each morning at 7 for the top story of the day, Monday to Friday.
Check out these three previous stories on Grounded Lithium, and the rest of the series:
Lithium in Saskatchewan series to date: