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Asia Mining

Indonesia emerges as a cobalt powerhouse amid surge in demand – by Henry Lazenby (Northern Miner – May 10, 2023)

https://www.northernminer.com/

Demand for cobalt is set to more than double by 2030 to 388,000 tonnes as the electric vehicle (EV) sector shifts into overdrive, says a new Benchmark Mineral Intelligence report. The outlook entails compound yearly cobalt demand growth of 10% over the weak 2022 figures, according to the Benchmark agency’s May 10 report commissioned by the Istanbul, Turkey-based Cobalt Institute.

“The industry is optimistic the cobalt market will continue to grow in the coming years, driven by the success of cobalt’s use in superalloys and hard metals, and particularly in EVs,” the Cobalt Institute’s interim director general, Caroline Braibant, said in an email to The Northern Miner.

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The Nickel Pickle: Everyone wants Indonesia’s nickel. But Xiang Guangda was there first. – by Eliot Chen (The Wire China – May 7, 2023)

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The floodlights at Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park stay on throughout the night. Around the clock, more than 40,000 workers operate the 8,000 acre site, which just ten years ago was nothing but dense rainforest on Sulawesi, Indonesia’s fourth largest island. Today, the sprawling park, which many refer to simply as “IMIP,” is home to a port, an airport, dormitories for Chinese workers, a four-star hotel and three mosques.

At its core, however, IMIP exists to smelt and refine at enormous scale a single mineral: nickel. Long a key ingredient in stainless steel, nickel is increasingly wanted for the production of lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles. By 2040, the International Energy Agency estimates that clean energy technologies will account for as much as 70 percent of total nickel demand.

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China’s Investment in Afghan Lithium Sector : Broad Geo-Economic – by Noman Hussaini (Khaama Press News Agency – May 4, 2023)

Khaama Press

The recent offer by China-based Gochin Company to invest USD 10 billion in Afghanistan’s lithium mining sector, estimated to be worth more than USD 1 trillion, is apparently a broad Chinese strategy to control country’s mineral resources, particularly, its lithium deposits which are critical global mineral supply chains.

According to the Afghanistan Ministry of Mines and Petroleum, the Chinese company has also offered to invest in several other Afghan infrastructure projects, including tunnels, hydro-electric dam and highways if it is awarded the lithium mining contract.

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Why China Is Investing in Africa’s Green Energy Future – by Kate Bartlett (Voice of America – May 3, 2023)

https://www.voanews.com/

JOHANNESBURG — A wind farm in Namibia and a floating solar farm on Zimbabwe’s massive Kariba Dam are among the new green energy projects Chinese companies are looking at investing in this year after Beijing pledged to help African countries address their energy problems with renewable sources rather than fossil fuels.

“Chinese overseas renewable energy investments aim to deliver China’s international climate commitments of accelerating the energy transition away from fossil fuels in Africa, China’s largest trading partner,” Lei Bian, a policy fellow at the The London School of Economics and Political Science, told VOA.

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Ray Dalio: The U.S. and China are on ‘the brink of an economic resources war’ – by Anna Golubova (Kitco News – May 01, 2023)

https://www.kitco.com/

(Kitco News) The U.S. and China are on the brink of war, billionaire and Bridgewater’s founder Ray Dalio warned in a letter he penned on LinkedIn. “We are on the brink of an economic resources war,” the founder of the world’s largest hedge fund wrote last week. And the two nations are beyond “the ability to talk,” he said.

Dalio pointed out that the two nations are close to a sanctions war and/or military war. And even though neither side wants a conflict, one is pretty probable. “A) each side is very close to the other’s red lines, b) each side is using brinksmanship to push the other at the risk of crossing each other’s red lines, and c) politics will probably cause more aggressive brinksmanship over the next 18 months,” Dalio wrote.

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Copper Mine Flashes Warning of ‘Huge Crisis’ for World Supply – by James Fernyhough (Bloomberg News – May 2, 2023)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The transition to clean energy depends on copper, but a vast Mongolian mining project offers a glimpse of the metal’s troubled future.

Accompanied by tinny taped music and overall-clad workers, Rio Tinto Group executives and Mongolian officials gathered a kilometer beneath the freezing Gobi Desert earlier this year to open one of the world’s richest underground copper mines. It was a celebration four decades in the making.

Oyu Tolgoi, in southern Mongolia just north of the Chinese border, is key to Rio’s efforts to move beyond its dependence on iron ore and expand in copper, the metal that underpins the clean energy transition. It’s also a vast deposit whose corporate, political and technical vicissitudes offer a glimpse of the red metal’s troubled future.

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Why China Could Dominate the Next Big Advance in Batteries – by Keith Bradsher (New York Times – April 12, 2023)

https://www.nytimes.com/

China is far ahead of the rest of the world in the development of batteries that use sodium, which are starting to compete with ubiquitous lithium power cells.

In Changsha, deep in China’s interior, thousands of chemists, engineers and manufacturing workers are shaping the future of batteries.

The city’s Central South University churns out the graduates who are advancing the technology, much as Stanford University molded the careers of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who pioneered microchips. Across the Xiang River, vast factories mix minerals into the highly processed compounds that make rechargeable batteries possible.

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Column: Nickel faces huge supply glut as Indonesian output booms – by Andy Home (Reuters – April 27, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, April 27 (Reuters) – The nickel market is facing a massive supply glut this year as surging Indonesian production continues to outpace global demand. The International Nickel Study Group (INSG) is forecasting a supply-demand surplus of 239,000 tonnes, the largest in at least a decade and a significant increase from last year’s excess of 105,000 tonnes.

It also represents a lift from the Group’s last assessment in October, when it expected a surplus of 171,000 tonnes for this year. Demand expectations have been tempered, although nickel usage is on track to register healthy 6.1% growth in 2023. It still won’t be enough to absorb the wave of new production coming out of Indonesia.

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Australia seeks Japan’s help to be critical minerals ‘superpower’ – by Michael Smith (Australian Financial Review – April 21, 2023)

https://www.afr.com/

Tokyo | Australian critical mineral producers say Japan offers crucial capital and a growing market for their products at a time when the federal government is promoting investment from “like-minded” countries instead of dominant player China.

A delegation of Australian critical minerals companies visiting Tokyo this week said they were optimistic about Japan’s ability to replicate the huge investments it has made in Australian gas and iron ore over the decades, but they also warned it was pointless trying to compete with China.

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The View from England: Famous gems being both flaunted and hidden – by Chris Hinde (Northern Miner – April 20, 2023)

https://www.northernminer.com/

By now you should have received your invitation to the coronation of Charles III and his wife, Camilla, as king and queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms. If you are at Westminster Abbey on May 6 (or watching, having mislaid your invitation) you will see a sparkling parade, but not the Koh-i-noor diamond.

One of the world’s most famous gems, the 106 carat Koh-i-noor (Persian for ‘Mountain of Light’) will not be used by Camilla. Instead, Queen Mary’s crown will be modified using diamonds from Queen Elizabeth II’s personal collection, including three of the stones cut from the largest gem-quality diamond ever found (South Africa’s 3,106 carat Cullinan).

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Red Book / Global Production Down 12% With Kazakhstan ‘By Far’ World’s Largest Producer – by David Dalton (Nucnet.org – April 6, 2023)

https://www.nucnet.org/

Global uranium mine production decreased by nearly 12% from 2018 to 2020 with major producing countries including Canada and Kazakhstan limiting total production in recent years in response to a depressed uranium market, according to the Nuclear Energy Agency.

In the latest edition of Uranium Resources, Production and Demand, known as the Red Book, the NEA says uranium production cuts deepened suddenly with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020.

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Saudi Quest to Become a Nuclear Player Is Coming Up Short – by Jonathan Tirone (Bloomberg News – April 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Saudi Arabia’s efforts to break into the ranks of global uranium suppliers — and feed a nascent nuclear power program — are coming up short, with exploration investments failing to find any significant deposits of the heavy metal.

The amount worth developing is smaller than that found in Botswana, Tanzania or the US, according to an assessment published by the Nuclear Energy Agency and the International Atomic Energy Agency. This is the first time the Saudi government submitted data for the biennial Red Book, which is used by geologists prospecting for the commodity that fuels nuclear reactors.

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Exclusive: Chinese lithium producers set price floor as demand evaporates, sources say – by Siyi Liu and Dominique Patton (Reuters – March 31, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

BEIJING, March 31 (Reuters) – China’s top lithium producers agreed this week to set a floor price of 250,000 yuan ($36,380) per tonne of lithium carbonate, six people familiar with the matter said, in an effort to slow a plunge in the price of the battery raw material.

The price was agreed on Tuesday by around 10 companies including Tianqi Lithium (002466.SZ) and Ganfeng Lithium (002460.SZ) that met on the sidelines of a conference in Nanchang in southern China, said one person who attended the meeting and five others briefed on the discussions.

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How China is winning the race for Africa’s lithium – by Harry Dempsey and Joseph Cotterill (Financial Times – April 2, 2023)

https://www.ft.com/

The country already dominates processing of the metal for use in electric vehicle batteries and is now investing heavily in mines, leaving western operators scrambling to keep up

The settlement of Uis in a remote part of Namibia seems an unlikely hotspot for a mineral cold war over the future of electric vehicles.

Uis lies in the arid hills of Erongo, a large and sparsely populated province of the south-west African country. For decades the only signs of its mineral wealth were the gemstones sold to tourists by artisanal miners, who scrabbled a living in the shadow of a disused tin mine.

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Canada-China trade not expected to change much amid critical mineral protectionism – by Nelson Bennett (Business In Vancouver – March 31, 2023)

https://biv.com/

China is a trade partner and export market that is simply too big to lose – including when it comes to Canadian copper

The federal government’s decision last November to order Chinese companies to divest from three Canadian lithium junior exploration ventures may have sent a chill up the Canadian resource sector’s spine.

“What’s next?” mining and energy companies might well ask. “Will Chinese investors in Canadian uranium, potash or copper miners also be told to pack their bags and take their billions with them?”

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