The next new mines to supply the world's growing need for lithium will look similar to existing operations. To be competitive, they will share four key attributes: a quality resource, predictable and manageable production costs, a location in a stable, mining-friendly jurisdiction, and amenability to existing, proven technology.

Lithium One is pursuing the best "end member" projects that draw on existing technologies for lithium extraction from an Atacama-type brine and a high-grade spodumene deposit. Both projects are on track for development in the key time window for the blossoming automotive lithium battery industry.

The Sal de Vida Project in mining-friendly northwest Argentina is progressing towards a high-quality brine resource. It adjoins FMC's low-impurity resource at Salar del Hombre Muerto. The lithium and potassium grades of the brine are high and preliminary tests of the chemistry have also been favorable.

The James Bay Project in Quebec is a high-grade spodumene-bearing pegmatite deposit that occurs at the surface adjacent to water, power, and a paved highway. The project is bolstered by its high grade and location in one of the leading mining jurisdictions in the world. The deposit has been extensively drilled and metallurgical testing is underway.

March Technical Presentation

How do you know you are in a world class Ni camp?

Steve Beresford Global Project Generation Manager - Nickel MMG

The last decade has seen a shift from empirical to whole mineral systems approaches to exploration targeting. This change has been necessitated by a shift to under cover exploration and the need to improve decision making in areas of greater empirical uncertainity. A balanced predictive and detective approach to targeting is thus a prerequisite for exploration.

The shift in approach has seen considerable improvements in global to cratonic scale targeting for Ni-Cu-PGE deposits. This step change in predictive ideas has largely been led by GEMOC and WMC Resources. However a gap in targeting still exists between the cratonic scale and the prospect scale, a scale currently filled by potential field structural interpretation and precompetitive geochemical techniques eg till, stream sediments, lake and heavy mineral techniques and the developing field of hydrogeochemistry.

World class deposits are known to represent the manifestation of large mineral systems with significant greater crustal scale footprints than the deposit itself. The focus of this presentation is on defining the regional to camp scale footprint of world class Ni-Cu-PGE camps.

Intrusive breccia in varied-textured sulfide matrix, The ovoid, Voisey's Bay.

April Technical Presentation

GAS HILLS URANIUM
From Volcanic Ash? or from Granite?
Robert E. Melin

The Gas Hills district in central Wyoming has produced around 90 million pounds of U308. Deposits mined were in arkose beds in an alluvium apron about 20 miles across named the Puddle Springs Member of the Wind River Formation of Lower Eocene age. In the west half of the district the Puddle Springs fanned out onto a plain cut onto Cretaceous shale and bounded on the east and south by cuestas of Mesozoic and Paleozoic formations. The arkose unit is as much as 300 feet thick. In the middle of the arkose, between the Central and West Gas Hills, is the Dry Coyote Conglomerate. It is largely altered, and uranium deposits are above, below and lateral to it.

Geologists have proposed five ways for uranium to reach the deposits. Four of the ways involve moving uranium from Sweetwater granite to the deposits; and one way involves leaching it from volcanic ash and moving it to the deposits. The volcanic ash proposal supposes that Gas Hills uranium came from volcanic ash beds of Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene and Pliocene age that totaled about 2000 feet thick before late Pliocene erosion. Volcanic ash came from a long-lived hot spot, a super-volcano we call Yellowstone. Rain water leached uranium from each newly fallen ash bed and carried it down to gravels which guided uranium-bearing water to the deposits.

The first way for getting uranium from Archean granite to the Gas Hills is that the granite eroded and became arkosic gravel in the Puddle Springs member. Ground water leached uranium from the arkose and carried it through the arkose to the deposits. Second, Robert Guilinger of Union Carbide in 1963 told of a highly radioactive cobble in core from an arkose bed in the West Gas Hills. It contained uraninite veinlets with secondary quartz in granitoid rock that had a "cataclastic texture" with "extreme shearing." He supposed that it came to Wind River arkose from a uraninite vein in the Granite Mountains.

Third, USGS geologists Rosholt and Bartel in 1969 deduced from uranium and lead isotope analyses that an absolutely colossal amount of uranium had been extracted from Archean granite. Uranium went away, and tell-tale uranogenic lead was left behind. Other workers later added that uranium was removed from granite across fifty miles of exposure and to depths of at least 1550 feet, the maximum depth cored to date in the Sweetwater batholith. Rosholt and Bartel thought the "most feasible" time for removal of uranium was Tertiary, and that rain water did it. Fourth, USGS geologists Stuckless and Peterman in 1977 and Stuckless and Miesch in 1981 wrote that crystallization of granite took place under conditions of high water content and high oxygen content. Water and oxygen are vital in ISR systems, and they were on hand to mobilize uranium from hot, newly emplaced granite in Archean time. Stuckless and Nkomo in 1978 supposed that mid-Proterozoic metamorphic heat drove as much as 45% of the uranium from Archean granite into "crystalline rocks farther north." Stuckless in 1979 added that uranium deposits could form "at any time following early Precambrian."

I choose to believe that Archean or older uraniferous terranes were granitized about 2600 Ma to make Sweetwater granite. Oxygen and water in the granite helped to move uranium from hot, newly emplaced granite into uraninite veins in crystalline rocks to the north. Uranogenic lead was left behind in the granite we walk on. The Laramide orogeny unearthed many uraninite vein clusters, and detritus from one was soon reconstituted as the Gas Hills uranium district. Guilinger told of a piece from one of the veins.

May Technical Presentation

Evolving Gold Corp. - Exploring for Covered Gold Targets,
South Carlin Trend, Nevada
Robert Barker, CEO, Evolving Gold Corporation

In late November of 2007, Evolving Gold Corporation signed an agreement with various subsidiaries of Newmont Mining Corporation covering four exploration areas in the Carlin Trend in Nevada. One of the four areas is southwest of the town of Carlin, about half way between the Gold Quarry deposit to the north and the Rain deposit to the south. We refer to this area as the Carlin Project. This exploration area covers a portion of the Humboldt gravity high, which Evolving Gold interprets as an indication that favorable Lower Plate host rocks can be intersected by drilling at reasonable depths. Drilling on the Carlin Project was delayed until the summer of 2009, when Evolving Gold drilled pa series of reverse circulation precollars. Core drilling was initiated on precollar CAR-002 in June, 2009.