Vancouver, British Columbia / TheNewswire / November 20, 2015 - Noka Resources Inc. (TSXV: NX) (the “Company”) is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement with arms-length vendors to acquire a 100% interest in the Columbus Lithium Project (the “Project”), comprised of 1920 acres of Federal placer claims, located in the Big Smokey Valley, Esmeralda County, Nevada. The Project is 30 minutes by road from the Clayton Valley, where the Albemarle’s Silver Peak Lithium Mine is located and where Pure Energy has recently identified a NI43-101 inferred resource of 816,000 metric tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) at a cut-off of 20mg/L. (Technical Report (2015) Spanjers, MS. PG.)
The Project is located within the Columbus Salt Marsh, near Coaldale and west of ground controlled by Ultra Lithium. The principal target at the Project is a large circular gravity low anomaly which is interpreted as an in-filled basin which may contain lithium-rich brine. The Big Smokey Valley was preliminarily drilled in 1979 by the United States Geological Survey and anomalous lithium values were encountered in the basin sediments. It is the Company’s belief that the quality and concentrations of lithium brines discovered in the Clayton Valley are present in the Big Smokey Valley.
Tesla Motors, which in September of 2015 signed an off-take agreement with Pure Energy, is driving the current lithium boom in Nevada. Tesla is constructing a lithium-ion battery factory, called Gigafactory, just outside of Sparks, Nevada, which is scheduled to be operational in 2016/17.
Under the terms of the agreement, the Company can earn a 100% interest in the Project by issuing 1,900,000 common shares to each of the vendors, for a total of 3,200,000 common shares. The Company must also make cash payments totaling $450,000 over the next three years, with the initial payment being due in December 2016, and incur no less than $1,000,000 in exploration expenditures within 36 months of the agreement. A one percent (1%) gross overriding royalty has also been granted to the vendors, of which one-half of one percent (0.5%) can be purchased by the Company for $1,000,000. This transaction is subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval.
2.About Lithium in Nevada
Lithium is a scarce and technologically important element produced primarily from brines and pegmatites. It is used in conjunction with renewable energy technologies and hybrid automobiles, primarily in the form of Li-ion batteries, currently the most used form of batteries in many electronics. The consumption of lithium carbonate is on the rise and is considered essential to the continued growth of electric and hybrid-electric transportation systems.
Located in the Basin and Range geological province in Southern Nevada, the Big Smokey Valley, which is approximately 3km wide and 14km wide, is an internally drained, fault bounded and closed basin. Geological modeling suggests that lithium-rich brines were transported and deposited in the both the Clayton and Big Smokey valleys during the Pleistocene era. The primary exploration model is to identify and map basins with ground gravity surveys and evaluate the chemistry of salts and sediments therein with DWRC or rotary-mud drilling. In the later stages of exploration, downhole geophysics and seismic reflection surveys are also utilized to define lithium-bearing aquifers.
Peter Born, P. Geo, has approved the information contained in this release. Mr. Born is a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101.
For further information, contact Nav Dhaliwal, President and Chief Executive Officer, at nav@nokaresources.com or 604-678-5308 or visit www.nokaresources.com.
3.ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD
“Nav Dhaliwal”
Nav Dhaliwal, President and Chief Executive Officer