The Government of Saskatchewan’s subsurface mineral Crown disposition public offering, held April 23 raised $10,000 in revenue for the province, based on interest in resource exploration in the Estevan area.
A single subsurface mineral permit block totalling 1,553.820 hectares was posted and received a bonus bid of $10,000. Deep Earth Production Corp. was the successful bidder.
The permit block is located along the Saskatchewan-North Dakota border, approximately 30 kilometres southwest of Estevan, an area that is prospective for brine minerals such as lithium.
“The public offering process helps facilitate exploration activity by Saskatchewan’s mining industry for this specific class of minerals in an orderly, transparent way,” Energy and Resources Minister Bronwyn Eyre said. “Enabling global access to our diverse resource potential will help sustain Saskatchewan mining in the long term.”
Introduced in 2018, subsurface mineral public offerings use an open and competitive bidding system similar to the existing process for issuing periodic oil and gas dispositions in Saskatchewan.
The system covers all natural mineral salts and their compounds found more than 60 metres below the land surface. These include boron, calcium, lithium, magnesium, potassium (of which potash is a compound), sodium, bromine, chlorine, fluorine, iodine, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur.
The next scheduled date for a subsurface mineral public offering in Saskatchewan is Dec. 17.
