Olympio Metals Ltd (ASX:OLY, OTC:COPGF) has started diamond drilling at the underexplored Cadillac Lithium Project, which covers 190 square kilometres in the rapidly emerging Cadillac-Pontiac lithium camp of Quebec, Canada.
The maiden diamond drilling campaign of up to 3,000 metres will test several of the approximately 400 pegmatite targets across the project and Olympio expects the program will extend for around four weeks.
Priority drill targets include lithium-caesium-tantalum (LCT) Dyke Z, which measures 1.3 kilometres long and up to 150 metres wide, which the company believes provides sufficient scale for a potentially significant discovery.
Strategic location
The Cadillac project is strategically located, around 50 kilometres from the mining town of Val d’Or, a major mining centre hosting available core cutting and laboratory facilities.
The location provides providing easy access through existing infrastructure and is less than 100 kilometres from Canada’s only operating lithium mine in southwest Québec.
Olympio’s managing director Sean Delaney said: “The diamond drilling has commenced on schedule and we are very excited to start drill testing some of our high priority lithium targets at the underexplored Cadillac Lithium Project.
“Cadillac is in a great location with all infrastructure in place serviced by the mining town of Val d’Or which helps keep our exploration costs down. “We look forward to updating the market as drilling progresses.”
Cadillac Project location, Quebec.
Drilling preparations
All preparations and permitting for the drilling have been completed ahead of schedule by Val D’Or-based exploration consultants, Explo-Logik, which is overseeing the drilling and is also the principal consultant for the project.
First-pass drilling at the Cadillac Lithium Project was conducted by Vision Lithium in 2022, which intersected spodumene-bearing LCT pegmatites with visible crystals in the drill core.
High grades were returned up to 3.14% Li2O, confirming the presence of significant lithium and warranting follow-up drilling.
Cadillac was acquired from Vision Lithium in 2023 and remains very underexplored beyond the historic Wells-Lacourcière lithium prospect.
Drilling targets
Diamond drilling will test multiple targets that include:
- Z Dyke - Recently discovered large dyke with great potential as a large-scale target;
- M Dyke Zone of at least six pegmatite dykes with dimensions up to 400 metres long x 70 metres wide;
- F-G Dykes Zone of dykes exhibiting highly encouraging K/Rb ratios, indicative of fractionated, spodumene bearing pegmatites; and
- B Dyke - Strongly spodumene-mineralised dyke within the Wells-Lacourcière Lithium Prospect, previously drilled in 2022, with historical grades up to 3.14 %Li2O.