Noram Ventures Inc (CVE:NRM) revealed that Alba Minerals had renegotiated the terms of the earlier option and joint venture deal for the Clayton Valley lithium project, allowing it to earn an additional 25%.
Alba and Noram shall be 50:50 joint venture partners on the project after Alba will pay $350,000 in cash for the further interest.
Of that, $125,000 will be used for the next phase of drilling -a 20 hole program to extend and earlier 46 hole first phase.
Sandy MacDougall, chairman and director of Alba, said: " Our team is expeditiously proceeding towards completion of the next phase.
"Furthermore, we are particularly excited with the results since we've been exploring just a 113-acre small (46 hectares) footprint out of a total of 12,920 contiguous acres (approximately 5228 has) that conform the Clayton Valley project.
"This is less than 1 per cent of the total land package explored. Once we formally receive the BLM permits -- which is tentatively happening in the current first quarter of 2018, the expanded exploration core drilling program will begin immediately."
A recent NI 43-101 report showed the Clayton Valley property had an inferred resource of around 17mln tonnes at a grade of around 1,060 ppm (parts per million) lithium, which equates to 96,476 metric tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent.