Calgary lithium refining company launches Saskatchewan pilot project

A Calgary-based lithium refining company has launched a pilot project that will see it produce lithium hydroxide from Saskatchewan oilfield brines.

LIEP Energy Ltd. has partnered with Prairie Lithium Corp. — a Regina-based lithium exploration junior that holds over 35,000 acres of exploration permits in Saskatchewan — for the project, which is expected to begin stage one operations in July. The pilot project will see LIEP Energy Ltd. use its proprietary electrochemical refining process to begin producing samples of battery-grade lithium hydroxide.

If the early stages of the pilot are successful, the two companies hope to construct one of Canada’s first lithium extraction and refining facilities, likely in southeast Saskatchewan. The facility would utilize existing suspended oil and gas assets and provide a transition alternative for aging oil and gas infrastructure.

It’s long been known that Alberta’s and Saskatchewan’s oil and gas-producing reservoirs are also rich in lithium deposits, but the rapid growth in global demand for the metal is a recent phenomenon driven in large part by the rise of the electric car and its lithium-ion batteries.

Haafiz Hasham, president and CEO of LIEP Energy Ltd., said there are currently about 70 new lithium-ion battery manufacturing plants under construction worldwide, and many more that have been proposed. He said he believes there is a huge opportunity for the Canadian prairies to become a supplier of lithium to these plants, and added the way to realize maximum value is to refine the product here rather than simply exporting raw material.

“That’s something we’re really passionate about. We want to ultimately localize our supply chains,” Hasham said. “There’s a big opportunity here to create a high-quality product without having to ship it somewhere else to be upgraded.”

In addition to LIEP, there are several other Calgary-based companies — including E3 Metals and Summit Nanotech, both of which are working on their own lithium extraction technologies — that are making bets on the projected boom in demand for lithium and lithium-ion batteries.