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ASX-listed and Wyoming-based lithium explorer Chariot Corporation (ASX:CC9) clearly has good luck up its sleeve.
Not only does the company boast one of the largest hard rock lithium resources in all of North America, acquiring the company’s main digs in the state of Wyoming, USA, could prove to have been a very good decision.
That’s because that same state where Chariot’s major projects are located could become America’s next major hard rock battery metal province. And that’s a story not without significant modern history.
Nicknamed ‘the equality state’ – but better known as the Cowboy State – Wyoming is about to emerge into the lithium spotlight and redirect the focus away from Canada’s James Bay region.
“There is a sense of urgency in the U.S.A. to deploy for the energy transition,” Chariot CEO Shanthar Pathmanathan said.
“Significant funds are now flowing into the downstream components of the sector from battery and battery chemicals manufacturing to billions of dollars of investment into charging infrastructure companies. Wyoming, unlike James Bay, is in excellent terrain.”
“Black Mountain has fresh spodumene at surface and we have intersected high grade lithium from just 1.83m below surface. The James Bay pegmatites are all in lake systems, under meters of sediment and mud.”
“Wyoming is a great state for developing a lithium production hub. It has a population of less than 700 thousand people and natural resources are already the largest contributor to the state’s GDP. The geology is exposed with minimal overburden cover and the undulating hill and prairie terrain is very favourable for mining.”
Outmanoeuvring to acquire Black Mountain
Chariot acquired the Black Mountain project with a pioneering mindset.
The company was attracted by the claims of large pegmatite dykes at surface with up to 40-centimetre long spodumene crystals exposed to the surface at the top of the mountain. Chariot was invited to bid on 2 small claims with crystals of spodumene sticking out of the mountain.
Chariot sent its staking crew up the mountain on the 2nd of January 2022 to encircle the 2 claims being auctioned off with an aggressive staking initiative. The company was later told that it had lost the bid for the two claims, but it knew that they would come back around given that Chariot owned 89 claims of its own surrounding the remaining 2.
In August 2022, the vendor of the 2 claims contacted Chariot and came back to the table – a deal was consummated a few months later in December 2022.
Chariot has since substantially, expanded its land position at Black Mountain to 352 claims and a total area of 6,637 acres.
In short, the Australian company was able to acquire a mountain in Wyoming through a combination of strategic tactics, an emboldened management, and a motivated and incentivised staking crew that mobilized to the site only two days into the 2022 calendar year – and yes, this was right in the middle of a bitterly cold Wyoming winter.
Future hard rock lithium production hub in Wyoming
The company also holds clay-based lithium projects in Oregon and Nevada, but it’s the company’s Wyoming assets which reflect the company’s flagship.
Notably, the combination of boasting a hard rock lithium project in Wyoming and early-stage exploration results, coupled with massive landholding potential, underscore Chariot’s ability to assist the Cowboy State reach a possible future where it becomes the USA’s next battery metal province. Think Canada’s James Bay region, but in the USA.
Chariot’s peak flagship project is the Black Mountain play, which is 93.3% owned by Chariot and covers a total landholding of 2,686 hectares. Recently, the company has further boosted its Wyoming landholding by 124%.
Chariot has basically taken-out and staked every available, visible pegmatite in areas with lithium cesium tantalum pegmatite potential to amass a total of 795 claims across 7 Wyoming-based projects, including the flagship Black Mountain project and Copper Mountain, Tin Cup, South Pass, Pathfinder, Barlow Gap and Jeffery City.
Copper Mountain is a hard-rock lithium exploration asset covering 648ha. The asset contains 83 unpatented lode mining claims as of mid-July according to Chariot and is located 80km northwest of Chariot Corporation’s Black Mountain play.
The other five projects – Tin Cup, South Pass, Pathfinder, Barlow Gap and Jeffery City – are classified as ‘regional Wyoming lithium projects’ by Chariot.
The company’s Jeffery City project, for one, is located in Fremont County, Wyoming, along with South Pass and Tin Cup. It too is on the radar due to being underexplored; Chariot describes Jeffery City as “early-stage.”
The remaining Barlow Gap and Pathfinder projects are both located in Natrona County, Wyoming – Barlow Gap is known to boast outcropping pegmatites, and Pathfinder boasts the same.
In other words: Black Mountain could be just the start. Chariot outmanoeuvred all road blocks to get onto Black Mountain, and the company says that similar plays are still on the cards for it to develop an unassailable position in Wyoming for lithium.
700 pegmatites across current projects
Worth noting is that in 2023, the company reported it had 700 pegmatites in Wyoming covered by its overall body of tenement claims.
Recent drilling announced in May 2024 at Black Mountain came back with positive intercepts of hard-rock lithium in pegmatites – a well understood form of lithium mineralisation that is easily managed by downstream mills and engineering processes standardised in the industry.
The company announced similar discoveries back in February of this year.
Better yet, it’s targeting spodumene – the holy grail for hard rock lithium for downstream processing into battery-grade lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide.
Chariot Corporation is planning to develop an onshore hard rock lithium supply for the multiple onshore lithium refineries being built in the USA, including Tesla’s in-house lithium refinery in the greater Corpus Christi area of Texas, Albemarle Corporation’s lithium hydroxide Mega-Flex facility in South Carolina and Stardust Power’s lithium refinery in Oklahoma.
Chariot’s ultimate goal for Wyoming is to align it with the factors that could deliver the state a newfound status of a battery metals province.
By 2030, the US is expected to see its battery manufacturing capacity grow tenfold versus 2022. China will continue to dominate global battery cell manufacturing capacity, but the USA and Europe will have the fastest growth in new capacity due to substantial incentives being provided for local production.
Developed road and rail infrastructure in the region boosts Chariot’s chances of hauling ore to the onshore USA lithium refineries and other assets, as well as being placed to take advantage of the next lithium price upswing.
And of course, the company’s plans to develop a Wyoming lithium hub align with the overhead Federal US government’s goals to see its energy supply chain (and critical minerals supply chain) decoupled from China wherever possible.
With Chariot perceiving domestic US lithium supplies as being too little, even as prices remain subdued and throw a wet blanket on the sector – it’s clear the company has wisely embedded itself at the intersection of these overhead themes and initiatives.
Chariot is focussed on the availability of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) compliant supply, noting that much of that supply from Australia, Chile and Argentina is already contracted to Chinese buyers, leaving the USA’s rapidly growing market for lithium, structurally short of IRA-compliant supply.
“There is more to come on our plans to dominate the Wyoming lithium play and build a lithium production hub there,” Chariot CEO Shanthar Pathmanathan has previously told The Market Online.
“We were successful in outmanoeuvring a large NASDAQ listed lithium company that also sought to obtain the Black Mountain project for its portfolio. We did that with limited financial resources. We now have considerably greater financial resources. We can’t expand on what’s in store for the rest of the calendar year, but more outmanoeuvring is definitely on the cards – it is in our nature!”
