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What’s behind a historic, unusual U.S. military cash transfer to Canadian mines – by Alexander Panetta (CBC News World – May 26, 2024)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/

The Pentagon fears global unrest, a shortage of raw materials, and seeks to kickstart projects here

The United States was growing desperate, months before its entry into the Second World War. It was gravely short of aluminum, and scrambling for suppliers. Its solution: turn north to Canada.

American public money flooded into Quebec, building the aluminum industry that supplied raw materials for Allied planes and tanks. “I would be willing to buy aluminum from anybody,” said Harry Truman, then still a U.S. senator, in 1941 hearings on the topic.

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Sudbury becomes a major nickel producer – by Ailbhe Goodbody (CIM Magazine – May 22, 2024)

https://magazine.cim.org/en/

In this edition of Mining the Archives, we examine the development of Sudbury as a Canadian nickel hub, which later became an example of how pollution-impacted lands can be reclaimed successfully

The Sudbury Basin was formed by a meteorite impact approximately 1.85 billion years ago, which made mineral-rich magmas rise from deeper in the earth to create the valuable mineral resource deposits in the region.

Robert C. Stanley [CIM Bulletin, July 1927] stated that the first authentic discovery of nickel in the Sudbury district was recorded about 1856. “Sudbury was at that time the terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway, from which point construction was being pushed westward,” he said. “In the course of this work, a cutting was made which passed through an outcrop of copper ore that was later to be the Murray mine. Prospectors after copper immediately flocked into the surrounding country, and a very large number of claims were staked.”

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Lithium Miners Shake Up Trading to Tackle Wild Price Swings – by Annie Lee and Yvonne Yue Li (Bloomberg News – May 19, 2024)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — The world’s lithium miners — facing an unprecedented demand surge and wild price swings — are shaking up the way the commodity is bought and sold. As lithium emerges as a linchpin of the global energy transition, the industry is in the grip of a slow-motion revolution that earlier upended commodities like iron ore: a push for more transparent and industry-wide pricing.

Albemarle Corp., the No. 1 lithium supplier, has held a series of auctions since March where potential buyers compete for cargoes via bids. These sales are a significant step for lithium, which until relatively recently was largely sold at prices fixed in long-term contracts.

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OPINION: Make no mistake, there’s an economic war happening, and the West is losing – by George Salamis and Mike St-Pierre (Globe and Mail – May 23, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

George Salamis, Lieutenant-Colonel (Hon) of the Royal Westminster Regiment, is executive chair of Integra Resources, a Canadian-based mining company that develops gold and silver mines in Canada and the U.S. Mike St-Pierre is a Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Canadian Navy.

A global race is under way to secure critical minerals essential to power the next generation of civilian and military technology and to electrify the future. Control of global supply chains has become the new strategic centre of gravity, where access to minerals and metals are strategic weapons. The West is losing the resource war that targets our core social and political values. At stake is the national security of the West.

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Critical minerals need insulation from China’s market manipulation – by Angus Barker (Australian Strategic Policy Institution – May 21, 2024)

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/

Investors can handle lots of different risks. They can price risks in construction, interest rates, weather and, with hedging, price movements in product markets. But the one risk they can’t price is political risk, the chance of some government action ruining profits. You can’t hedge against it.

How should we respond when, as the chief executive of critical-minerals company Iluka said this month, when accusing China of rigging rare earths prices, ‘monopolistic production, combined with interference in pricing … is resulting in market failure’? How should we respond when price risk is political risk?

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Canada’s at the front of the pack in the EV race — but there’s a weak link – by David Olive (Toronto Star – May 21, 2024)

https://www.thestar.com/

China still boasts the largest EV ecosystem. But like other EV contenders including India and Indonesia, it is reliant on fossil fuels for power, David Olive writes.

Two months before Honda Motor Co. announced in April that it will build $15-billion worth of electric vehicle (EV) factories in Ontario, Canada had already eclipsed China as the country with the greatest potential to build a leading “global lithium-ion battery supply” chain.

That’s the finding of BloombergNEF (BNEF), a leader in monitoring global EV initiatives. It’s worth quoting at length why BNEF says Canada, among the 30 countries it surveys, is at the front of the pack in the race to create EV ecosystems.

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U.S. tariffs on the EV supply chain pose policy dilemma for Canada – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – May 21, 2024)

https://financialpost.com/

Canadian companies now have more incentive to sell south of the border than in their own country

Eric Desaulniers, chief executive of Montreal-based Nouveau Monde Graphite Inc., figured it was spam when he received an email inviting him to the White House for a vague policy announcement.

But his IT department told him the email was authentic, and days later, on May 14, United States President Joe Biden announced sweeping tariffs on China’s electric-vehicle supply chain that affect everything from EVs themselves to critical minerals, including a 25 per cent tariff on Chinese graphite beginning in 2026.

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OPINION: The transition from the U.S.-led global order will be rocky – by Robert Muggah and Misha Glenny (Globe and Mail – May 18, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Robert Muggah is a co-founder of the Igarapé Institute and the SecDev Group and a senior adviser to the United Nations. Misha Glenny is a British journalist and currently serves as rector of the Institute for Human Sciences.

The rise in doomscrolling is a morbid sign of the times. The obsessive consumption of negative news isn’t just bad for physical and mental health, but our very survival. Recent studies confirm that overexposure to social media short-circuits the brain’s natural self-defences, leaving us disoriented and depressed. It turns out that optimism is good for us. People fortified by an optimist mindset are less prone to conspiracy theories and are generally happier, healthier and live longer.

Yet there are reasons why optimism is in short supply. Widespread screen addiction is partly to blame for headline anxiety, especially among young people. Another reason the algorithms are winning is because the world is objectively more volatile today than at any time since the Second World War.

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Nickel, guns and foreign powers: How France’s New Caledonia reached the brink of ‘civil war’ (Politico.eu – May 16, 2024)

https://www.politico.eu/

Violent protests have erupted in France’s South Pacific archipelago as decades-old tensions come to a head.

PARIS — Nickel-rich New Caledonia could have been France’s Eldorado. Instead, it has once again turned into a security time bomb. Ongoing violent protests in the French overseas territory in the South Pacific, which have already led to the death of five people around the Caledonian capital of Nouméa, have put the French government on high alert.

President Emmanuel Macron canceled several official events to hold emergency meetings, and declared a state of emergency giving the executive branch more powers to keep the situation under control. “The situation remains very tense,” French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal warned Thursday following a new emergency meeting, after the local representative for the French state said a “civil war” was imminent.

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Billionaire-backed KoBold, Midnight Sun team up for Zambia copper discovery – by Henry Lazenby (Northern Miner – May 2024)

https://www.northernminer.com/

KoBold Metals, a U.S.-based startup supported by high-profile investors such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, is venturing into Zambia’s rich copper belt. In February it partnered with Canada’s Midnight Sun Mining (TSXV: MMA) to explore the promising Dumbwa target within the Solwezi copper project.

This strategic alliance will leverage KoBold’s advanced data science techniques and Midnight Sun’s extensive local experience. The goal is for KoBold to earn a 75% stake in the Dumbwa target by investing US$15 million in exploration and making US$500,000 in cash payments over 4.5 years.

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Opinion: We’re falling further behind China in critical minerals – by Heather Exner-Pirot (Financial Post – May 16, 2024)

https://financialpost.com/

China is working hard to maintain its control of the rare earths markets that are critical to net-zero. We’re barely in the game

At the time, the opening of a small rare earths mine in the Northwest Territories in 2021 was heralded as an important step in breaking China’s monopoly over this strategic commodity. Rare earths are used in everything from electric vehicles and cell phones to wind turbines and jet engines.

China currently extracts more than 60 per cent of rare earth elements and processes as much as 90 per cent of global supply. The case of Vital Metals and the Nechalacho mine show just how far it’s willing to go to maintain a stranglehold on the rare earths market. What was once a hopeful story is now a cautionary tale.

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Seeking Access to Congo’s Metals, White House Aims to Ease Sanctions – by Eric Lipton (New York Times – May 16, 2024)

https://www.nytimes.com/

A deal to allow the Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler to cash out his mining positions in the Democratic Republic of Congo has enraged human rights activists and some government officials.

Three years after Biden administration officials tightened sanctions on a billionaire Israeli mining executive for corrupt business practices in the Democratic Republic of Congo, they have reversed themselves and are offering the executive a deal they hope will bolster the supply of a metal vital to electric vehicles.

The plan would allow the executive, Dan Gertler, to sell off his remaining stakes in three giant copper and cobalt mining operations in Congo. Once Mr. Gertler sells his positions, the Biden administration hopes Western-leaning companies will be more willing to invest in Congo, perhaps delivering a greater supply of cobalt to the United States as automakers race to increase domestic production of batteries.

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Stellantis in talks with Vale to invest in Indonesian nickel smelter – by A. Anantha Lakshi and Harry Dempsey (Financial Times – May 13, 2024)

https://www.ft.com/

Deal would bring rare western investor to world’s biggest producer of commodity critical to electric cars

Stellantis is in talks with Vale and China’s Huayou Cobalt to invest in a nickel smelter in Indonesia and secure supplies of the battery metal critical to its electric vehicle expansion plans, in a deal that if finalised would bring a rare western investor into Indonesia’s nickel industry.

Stellantis, owner of the Peugeot, Fiat and Jeep brands, is in discussions with Vale Indonesia to invest in a high-pressure acid leaching plant that converts low-grade nickel ore to battery-grade metal, three people familiar with the matter said.

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Copper can’t be mined fast enough to electrify the US – by Morgan Sherburne (Michigan News – May 15, 2024)

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Copper cannot be mined quickly enough to keep up with current U.S. policy guidelines to transition the country’s electricity and vehicle infrastructure to renewable energy, according to a University of Michigan study.

The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law in 2022, calls for 100% of cars manufactured to be electric vehicles by 2035. But an electric vehicle requires three to five times as much copper as an internal combustion engine vehicle—not to mention the copper required for upgrades to the electric grid.

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Push for new US lithium mine leaves some Americans wary (France 24.com – May 15, 2024)

https://www.france24.com/en/

Lincolnton (United States) (AFP) – When Kristal Lee and her husband bought a house in Gaston County, North Carolina two years ago, they envisioned a “forever home”. But a planned lithium mine is bringing Lee sleepless nights.

Nearby is an area earmarked for a $1.2 billion project to produce battery grade lithium for US electric vehicle (EV) supply chains — one of only a few such sites in the country. “You get very anxious when you hear about it,” she said of the project by Piedmont Lithium.

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