Tesla scales back German battery plans, won over by U.S. incentives – by Victoria Waldersee (Reuters – February 22, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

BERLIN, Feb 22 (Reuters) – Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) has begun assembling batteries in Germany but will focus cell production in the U.S. in light of Inflation Reduction Act incentives, the company said, making it one of the first firms to declare a strategy shift prompted by the package.

The U.S. electric-vehicle maker is also preparing to produce cell components such as electrodes, some of which will be sent from its site in Gruenheide in the state of Brandenburg, to the United States, Tesla said on Wednesday.

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Exploitation Of Illegal Nickel Mines In Indonesia – OpEd – by Silvanah (Eurasia Review – February 19, 2023)

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Indonesia has abundant natural resources, especially nickel. Nickel is the raw material for making electric vehicle batteries. Electric vehicles are predicted to be low in emissions or environmentally friendly.

Developed countries are currently competing to produce electric vehicles. Indonesia is not left behind with big plans to form a company producing electric vehicle batteries. This has attracted the interest of foreign mining companies including China to enter and explore for nickel in Indonesia.

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Indonesia’s uncertain climb up the nickel value chain – by Kyunghoon Kim (The Interperter/Lowy Institute – February 20, 2023)

https://www.lowyinstitute.org/

Demand for is driving domestic and foreign direct investment in the country’s minerals sector. But caution is needed.

Indonesia has historically had limited success with industrial policy. That may now be changing, with recent interventionist policies targeting the nickel sector suggesting initial success in developing downstream segments of the value chain. So successful have these industrial policies been that the government is planning to target other minerals in a similar fashion, despite the objections of major trading partners.

After a period of liberalisation following the Asian financial crisis, Indonesia saw strong economic nationalism emerge again in the late 2000s. Nationalistic policies have been particularly strong in the natural resource sector.

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Nevada’s vast lithium deposits offer economic opportunity, difficult decisions – by Daniel Rothberg (The Nevada Independent – February 19, 2023)

https://thenevadaindependent.com/

Nevada, as with other arid parts of the globe such as Chile and Argentina, is awash with lithium. The soft, silvery white mineral is in high demand as a key component of batteries used to power electric vehicles in the transition away from fossil fuel-based economies.

For years, state officials have positioned Nevada as the central node in the domestic lithium supply chain, a place to extract, recycle and market the metal. But the new increasing demand — how it plays out and where mining is permitted — could have major consequences for local communities, the environment, public land and the management of a critical resource: water.

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Alberta miner replaces Chinese investor that Ottawa barred from owning Canadian assets – by Naimul Karim (Financial Post – February 16, 2023)

https://financialpost.com/

Lithium Chile regrets losing ‘an incredible shareholder,’ COO says

Lithium Chile Inc., one of three Canadian miners affected by Ottawa’s snap decision to block Chinese investment in critical minerals, said the order has been satisfied, although it regrets losing an “incredible shareholder” that supplied valuable expertise.

Chengze Lithium International Ltd. had purchased a 19.4 per cent stake in Lithium Chile, making it one of the Calgary-based company’s largest shareholders. Chengze sold its shares to Gator Capital Ltd., a Toronto-based firm that focuses on investment consulting and asset management. The transaction was completed for about $34.5 million, or 91 cents per share.

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Magna investing $470 million to build new Ontario battery assembly plant, retool factories – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – February 15, 2023)

https://financialpost.com/

Will build a 500,000 square foot factory in Brampton, Ont., to help Ford keep up with surging demand for its F-150 Lightning

Canada’s biggest maker of automobile parts is set to assemble batteries for Ford Motor Co.’s F-150 Lightning pickup trucks — the electric version of the best-selling vehicle in North America and perhaps the most hotly anticipated EV since Teslas hit the market more than a decade ago.

Magna International Inc. said Feb. 15 that it will invest $470 million to build a 500,000 square foot factory in Brampton, Ont., to help Ford keep up with surging demand for its F-150 Lightning and also to retool five existing factories in the province. Aurora-based Magna said the expansion will create more than 1,000 jobs.

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Column: The devil’s metal strikes again in Trafigura nickel fraud case – by Andy Home (Reuters – February 19, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Feb 17 (Reuters) – Another year, another nickel scandal as the devil’s metal lives up to its reputation. When German miners first came across the stuff in fifteenth century Saxony, they dubbed it “Kupfernickel”, or “Devil’s Copper” because it looked like copper but wasn’t.

Appearances can be deceptive when it comes to nickel, as Trafigura has just found out half a millennium later. The commodity trader will take a $577 million charge in the first half of 2023 against potential losses arising from what it called a “systematic fraud” involving cargoes of nickel that were not nickel.

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Russia’s Lesser-Known Intentions in Ukraine – by Olivia Lazard (Carnegie Europe – June 14, 2022)

https://carnegieeurope.eu/

Up until the last days before Russia’s invasion, the European Union did not believe that Putin was about to attack Ukraine. If the EU—an organization whose premise was based on “never again”—missed a war, what else could it be missing?

Quite a lot, as it turns out. For all the violence already unfolding in Ukraine, the war may actually be but a single fragment in a much larger puzzle that Russia has been piecing together through trial and error in the last few years.

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Another ASX-listed lithium explorer is poised to roll the dice in Canada’s battery ecosystem – by Josh Chiat (Stockhead.com – January 27, 2023)

https://stockhead.com.au/

The new CEO of ASX lithium hopeful Battery Age Minerals (ASX:BM8) Gerard O’Donovan has seen it all since he first stepped into lithium in 2015, eventually becoming the project manager on the concentrator at Pilbara Minerals’ (ASX:PLS) Pilgangoora mine.

From there he saw the downturn as the new supply brought on by WA miners like Pilbara flooded the market, before leaving to work on Rio’s Winu’s copper-gold discovery, and returned to oversee the rebuild of the Ngangaju plant at Pilgangoora, acquired from PLS’ collapsed neighbour Altura, as the lithium market rose like a phoenix to new heights.

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Once-Hot Battery Metals Set to Slide, Leading China Group Warns (Bloomberg News – February 13, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Battery-metals prices are set to retreat from highs this year as surging supplies trigger gluts, a leading Chinese industry group warned following a similar note of caution from Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Nickel prices are likely to drop in the second half as the global market may see a surplus on rising supply led by mines in Indonesia, according to Chen Xuesen, a spokesman for the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association.

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Northwestern Ontario sees the green lithium rush – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – February 14, 2023)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Lithium exploration activity starts to surge in Nipigon, Red Lake

Northwestern Ontario is becoming a popular place find new sources of lithium as the electric vehicle revolution starts to accelerate. This region hosts a handful of established junior mining players ready to take the next step into mine production with some new players on the scene with more grassroots projects.

Hard-charging Green Technology Metals is running two simultaneous drilling programs at two properties . Since last fall, the Western Australian company has been releasing a steady flow of high-grade lithium results at its Seymour and Root Projects.

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BOOKS: The horrors behind the mining industry that powers your life – by Russ Mitchell (Los Angeles Times – February 13, 2023)

https://www.latimes.com/

You, the smartphone addict. The modern nomad, lugging your fancy laptop. The electric car driver, smug in your certainty that you’re making the world a better place. Look over here, under this rock; look at what you’d rather not see.

That’s what Siddharth Kara invites you to do in his damning new book, “Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives.” Maybe you already know our booming battery-based economy depends on cobalt mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo. You’ve heard things are bad there. But I’d guess that, like me — smartphone addict, laptop lugger, owner of an electric car — you had no idea just how bad.

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War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition (The Economist – February 13, 2023)

https://www.economist.com/

They may have knocked as much as ten years off its timeline

To many activists, Lutzerath, an abandoned hamlet in Germany, encapsulates the nightmare of the global energy crisis. For months campaigners blocked the site’s demolition, after Robert Habeck, the country’s energy minister, allowed a utility firm to mine for lignite—the dirtiest form of coal—under its graffitied houses.

As a giant excavator swallowed its way closer, hundreds of police, unfazed by the pyrotechnics propelled at them, dragged protesters from their stations. Now the village is empty; its last buildings gone.

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Metals are the new oil — with all the geopolitical and environmental complications – by Daniel F. Runde (The Hill – February 11, 2023)

https://thehill.com/

For good or for ill, metals are the new oil. We need more “rare earths” and “everyday earths” to build the technologies of the future and make real a carbon transition. The geopolitics around mines, minerals, and the processing of metals are heating up. For that reason, the U.S. needs a more sophisticated strategy to ensure that the U.S. and our allies have access to mines and minerals.

The amount of minerals needed for a carbon transition will require a vast expansion of mining and the processing of minerals. For example, given current technologies and techniques, we will need to increase the production of cobalt and lithium by 40 times for the electric batteries needed to move from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles.

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Lithium stock bubble pops for retail investors – by Tom Richardson (Australian Financial Review – February 14, 2023)

https://www.afr.com/

Benchmark lithium carbonate prices fell for an eleventh straight day in China on Monday to an 11-month low, as short sellers raised their bets on Australian lithium stocks falling in 2023.

The latest ASIC data shows that five of the 16 most shorted stocks on the ASX are lithium hopefuls, after a younger demographic of retail investors hooked on mobile share trading apps made the same businesses the most popular stocks to own in 2022.

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