North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

North Arrow Minerals Inc. May 18 announced that it has raised roughly C$2.7 million to fund exploration of its lithium projects in northern Canada, which will primarily be focused on the company's newly acquired DeStaffany lithium project in Northwest Territories.

The company raised the cash through a C$2.4 million private placement financing and the sale of 0.5% royalty interests in its Loki diamond project in Northwest Territories' Lac de Gras region for C$374,000.

With the closing of these financial transactions, North Arrow has the cash to begin investigating its lithium projects in NWT and Nunavut.

Acquired by North Arrow in January, DeStaffany is an early exploration project roughly 18 kilometers (11 miles) northeast of Vital Metals Ltd.'s Nechalacho rare earths mine. Found upon the shores of the Great Slave Lake and approximately 115 kilometers (71 miles) of Northwest Territories' capital Yellowknife, this 1,843-hectare (4,554 acres) property was already known to host two lithium-tantalum-niobium pegmatites, Moose 1 and Moose 2.

Initially evaluated in the 1940s for just the tantalum and niobium, the Moose pegmatites have never been subject to a focused evaluation of their lithium potential despite the exposure of very large spodumene crystals up to one meter in length.

Moose 1, which is exposed on surface for about 370 meters, is roughly five meters wide on average and is up to roughly 11 meters at its maximum exposed thickness. A 7.5-meter channel sample of this pegmatite averaged 1.5% lithium oxide.

Moose 2, which surfaces for about 450 meters along strike and is up to 30 meters wide, was bulk sampled for tantalum and niobium around the time of its initial discovery. This sampling returned up to 2.73% lithium oxide from samples over 250 meters of strike. This pegmatite, however, was never drilled for lithium due to the very few uses of this now-critical battery metal at that time.

The DeStaffany project has access to air and barge from the capital as well as the rail head at Hay River on the south side of the Great Slave Lake near Osisko Metals Inc.'s Pine Point zinc-lead project.

North Arrow plans to conduct mapping, channel sampling, and bulk sampling of spodumene zones for mineral characterization and recovery studies and eventually delineate drilling to define strike and depth extent of these zones.

Due to the sporadic visual spodumene, the company also aims to conduct property-wide prospecting and mapping to discover potential new spodumene pegmatites.

In addition to DeStaffany, North Arrow plans to carry out an initial evaluation of Bathurst Inlet, a lithium project in Nunavut optioned from Panarc Resources Ltd., as well as Baffin Island to uncover further possible lithium-bearing pegmatites.

The Bathurst Inlet lithium targets consist of pegmatites identified using remote sensing techniques and a review of past bedrock mapping in the area. These pegmatites are considered prospective hard rock lithium targets due to their spatial and potential temporal relationship to the Torp Lake spodumene pegmatite on the west side of Bathurst Inlet.

North Arrow Minerals.

Click image to see larger map.

While government mappers have noted pegmatites in the Bathurst Inlet area, they have not been evaluated for potential spodumene and related lithium mineralization. Thus, next steps include continued remote sensing work ahead of a 2023 field evaluation of prioritized outcrop areas to prospect for spodumene mineralization associated with the Bathurst pegmatite field.

With the project pipeline starting with DeStaffany, then shifting toward Bathurst, then Baffin Island, and with its diamond properties creating a significant buffer for the company to conduct the necessary exploration to realize these potential hard rock lithium properties, North Arrow is seemingly well-positioned to come out with more than fancy diamonds and possibly some significant lithium deposits to curb the ongoing demand pressures for this critical battery metal.

North Arrow aims to begin an assessment of its new lithium properties this summer.