The iron ore boom in the 2000s ushered in a new class of mining millionaires and billionaires. While vast iron ore fortunes were amassed in the Pilbara, a graveyard of broken hopes and dreams also littered the region’s harsh landscape.
And there’s danger of history potentially repeating itself via the latest Pilbara-focused lithium frenzy. The lithium industry is no stranger to a bubble. The first bubble well and truly burst by 2020, with Alita Resources and Altura Mining two notable victims.
Billionaire acquires 18% of Azure Minerals after Chile’s SQM announces planned buyout
Billionaire Gina Rinehart has built up a strategic stake in Australian lithium developer Azure Minerals, threatening to scupper a second takeover involving the battery metal in a matter of weeks.
Chilean miner SQM said this week it had agreed to buy out Azure at an equity valuation of about $1bn. SQM, the world’s second-largest lithium producer, had bought a stake of almost 20 per cent in Azure in January to diversify beyond its home market.
Gina Rinehart might be known as a climate sceptic, but Australia’s richest person knows when there is “green” dollars to be made from digging things out of the ground. She is just one of the West Australian mining billionaires who are in a mad scramble for the state’s vast deposits of lithium – the metal dubbed “white gold” due to its market value and silver colour.
Its value lies not in its scarcity, but in the booming demand for the lightest of metals. It is essential for powering the batteries, which are the driving force behind the global electric vehicle wave. Batteries are also the most expensive component of these cars.
(Bloomberg) — Lithium mining giant SQM has won over Perth-based Azure Minerals Ltd. with a sweetened A$1.6 billion ($1 billion) cash offer, the latest deal as large battery-metal producers race to secure supply in Australia, home to some of the world’s richest deposits.
Azure’s board will back the new binding bid from SQM, which increased its cash offer by 52% to A$3.52 per share, the Australian producer said Thursday. That’s a 44% premium over Azure’s closing price on Oct. 20, and follows a previously rejected non-binding offer of A$2.31 made in August. The company’s shares jumped as much as 44% on Thursday to A$3.52, their highest price since June 2008.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/
Which of Australia’s iron ore billionaires has more money invested in advancing the energy transition? Andrew Forrest, a green evangelist who recently warned that “it’s business which will kill your children?” Or Gina Rinehart, a Trump-supporting culture warrior who’s characterized climate science as propaganda? Believe it or not, at this point it’s neck and neck.
After muscling her way into a takeover battle for lithium developer Liontown Resources Ltd., Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting Pty vehicle now has well over A$1.28 billion ($809 million) invested in energy-transition materials, including a 19.9% stake in Liontown and a royalty stream from a separate lithium project.(1) The power division of Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group Ltd., which he’s promised to turn into one of the world’s biggest energy companies, had assets of $819 million at the end of June.
Mining companies will gain an extra $2 billion to expand the production of critical minerals needed for renewable energy and high-tech devices under a federal plan to meet soaring demand for the components tightly controlled by China.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will double the finance available to key exporters from $2 billion to $4 billion in the hope of unlocking vast reserves of lithium, nickel and other essential elements for batteries and other renewable technologies.
Newly announced closures of Glencore’s copper and zinc mines in Mt Isa will add to a huge number of former mines in Australia. A 2020 study by Monash University’s Resources Trinity Group found more than 80,000 inactive mine sites across the country.
Globally, a 2023 study estimates the mining footprint at around 66,000 square kilometres. Abandoned mines account for much of this area. It’s estimated the US has about 500,000 abandoned mines and Canada at least 10,000. The UK and China have at least 1,500 and 12,000 old coalmines, respectively.
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/
The world is moving away from a rules-based order and towards power politics. Is Canberra ready?
Last month, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon stated geopolitics is now the biggest global risk to the economy. Australian business leaders on the receiving end of Chinese economic coercion could have sent that memo to Wall Street two years ago.
So could many of the world’s governments who have been busily implementing economic policy for a geopolitical world. From war in Ukraine and exploitation of energy, to economic coercion and weaponisation of wine, we are living through a geopolitical transition to a new world economy.
Mining giant BHP has sold two of its central Queensland coal mines for more than $US4 billion. Australian company Whitehaven Coal has purchased the Blackwater and Daunia mines which produce some of the world’s highest quality coking coal for steelmaking.
The Blackwater site, located south-east of Emerald, is also one of the southern hemisphere’s longest coking coal mines, with a striking rate of 80 kilometres. Daunia is located south-east of Moranbah in the Bowen Basin and has only been operational since 2013.
Oct 18 (Reuters) – Mining giant Glencore (GLEN.L) said on Wednesday it was set to close its copper operations at Mount Isa mines in Queensland, Australia by the second half of 2025.
The decision followed studies and reviews that it is not possible to further extend the life of the underground mines, the Swiss miner and trader said.
Barrick Gold (NYSE: GOLD) (TSX: ABX) has received the go-ahead from the government of Papua New Guinea to restart the Porgera mine, which has been placed on care and maintenance for three years.
On Friday, the gold miner announced that New Porgera Ltd. (NPL) was granted a special mining lease by the island country’s Governor General, clearing the way for the 700,000 oz./y operation to return to production.
MELBOURNE, Oct 3 (Reuters) – Damage caused to an Aboriginal rock shelter by mining giant Rio Tinto (RIO.AX) in August underscores the need for better heritage protection laws and a greater say for Indigenous groups promised in this month’s Voice referendum, advocates say.
Rio admitted on Sept. 21 to damaging a rock shelter on Aug. 6 in Western Australia’s Pilbara region while blasting at a nearby iron ore mine. Rio is now working with the Muntulgura Guruma people to assess what had happened, it said.
Australia’s Lithium Power International (ASX: LPI) confirmed on Friday it is engaged in talks with Chilean state-owned copper miner Codelco about a potential deal to jointly mine for the battery metal in the South American country.
Chile announced in April a new national lithium strategy, which calls for public-private partnerships for future lithium projects. Under the new model, the state takes a controlling stake in operations considered strategically significant, while private firms can retain control of projects in non-strategic areas.
Local industry extracting a key metal for electric car batteries is under pressure from rising production elsewhere
Mining and trading giant Glencore is to stop financing a lossmaking nickel mine in New Caledonia, as growing Indonesian production of a key metal in electric car batteries squeezes rivals.
Closure of the mine would be a blow to the French territory’s economy — mining accounts for 6 per cent of its GDP — and further concentrate global nickel production in Indonesia, where the supply chain is largely controlled by Chinese companies.
Ring of Fire Metals, Wyloo Metals and Mincor Resources and will unify under the brand name Wyloo after becoming the largest pure-play nickel company outside of Russia. Wyloo Metals’ acquisition of Mincor Resources, completed last month, makes Wyloo a producer of high-grade nickel sulphide from its newly acquired Cassini and Northern Operations mines in Kambalda, Western Australia.
The new name also applies to Wyloo’s Canadian subsidiary, formerly Ring of Fire Metals, which owns the high-grade Eagle’s Nest project and the only material chromite resource in North America, in the Ring of Fire region in northern Ontario, Canada.
