A recent public offering for the subsurface minerals was able to get $10,000 in revenue for the province.

A permit block of 1,553.820 hectares of land near the Saskatchewan-North Dakota border was posted and received a bonus bid of $10,000. Deep Earth Production Corp. was the successful bidder on the area southwest of Estevan and the area is considered to be prospective for brine minerals such as lithium.

Bidders are able to use the offerings to search for mineral salts and compounds more than 60 metres below land surface. As well as lithium, those would include boron, calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium, among others.

“Enabling global access to our diverse resource potential will help sustain Saskatchewan mining in the long term,” said energy and resources minister Bronwyn Eyre in a media release.

The next date for subsurface mineral public offering will be Dec. 17, 2019.