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Cobalt, Critical, Strategic and Rare Earth Minerals and Metals

How Governments Impact the Global Mineral Supply – by Gregory Wischer & Lyle Trytten (Real Clear Energy – August 19, 2024)

https://www.realclearenergy.org/

Mineral demand is expected to grow significantly, with mineral shortages possible later in this decade. Governments are increasing this mineral demand with policies targeting the manufacture and deployment of mineral-intensive technologies like electric vehicles.

Governments impact the mineral supply too, through policies that grow, stifle, or moderate the mineral supply. They also inadvertently affect the mineral supply when government actions unrelated to the mineral industry result in public backlash against the industry.

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Maximizing the Benefits of the Renewed Global Interest in Africa’s Strategic Minerals – by Folashadé Soulé (Carnegie Endowment – August 15, 2024)

https://carnegieendowment.org/

Negotiations between African governments and foreign investors are often characterized by the various skills, technical capacities, and information asymmetries that shape the balance of power and influence outcomes. The dynamics of these negotiations—in pursuing extractive and infrastructure projects, in particular—merit a special focus, as agreements to carry them out often bind African countries for several decades.

Africa is home to a substantial share of the world’s reserves of mineral resources needed for the clean energy transition and could therefore be the main theater for the global race among China, the United States, European countries, Persian Gulf countries, and others to secure access. The International Energy Agency estimates that manufacturers of clean energy technologies will need forty times more lithium, twenty-five times more graphite, and about twenty times more nickel and cobalt in 2040 than in 2020.

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US Gives Tiny Canadian Firm Electra $20 Million to Build Cobalt Plant – by Jacob Lorinc (Bloomberg News – August 19, 2024)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Canada’s Electra Battery Materials Corp. has received a $20 million award from the US government to build a cobalt plant close to North America’s automotive heartland.

The funds will support construction of a cobalt sulfate facility in Ontario that will be North America’s only refinery for the material used in lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, Electra said Monday in a statement. The $250 million project is about 500 kilometers (310 miles) north of Toronto at Temiskaming Shores.

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Canada invests over $11 million in critical minerals research in Saskatchewan – by Staff (Mining.com – August 14, 2024)

https://www.mining.com/

Canada’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson announced on Wednesday over C$16 million ($11.6m) in new funding to support the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) in Saskatoon. The funding builds on earlier support of nearly C$13.5 million ($9.8m) from Prairies Economic Development Canada (PrairiesCan) and Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) for SRC to establish its rare earth processing facility and develop new rare earth mineral processing technologies.

Wednesday’s announcement includes C$15.96 million through PrairiesCan to enable SRC to acquire bastnaesite (a type of ore containing rare earth elements) from Canadian sources and create new domestic capacity for bastnaesite processing, which will be integrated into SRC’s rare earth processing facility.

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Is Canada’s critical-minerals strategy a green shift or greenwashing? – by Thierry Rodon and Sophie Thériault (Policy Option – August 14, 2024)

Policy Options – Institute for Research on Public Policy

Indigenous and remote communities will bear the long-lasting ecological, social and cultural impacts of mining. This cannot be ignored.

Canada has followed the lead of many countries recently by adopting policies and measures to promote rapid development of its value chain for domestic critical minerals essential in clean energy technology.

Climate change, geopolitical and economic turmoil are leading governments to emphasize the need to secure a supply of critical minerals, such as lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt and rare earth elements, to help decarbonize the economy through, for example, solar panels, wind turbines and electric-vehicle batteries.

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China will limit exports of antimony, a mineral used in products from batteries to weapons (Associated Press – August 15, 2024)

https://apnews.com/

BEIJING (AP) — China’s Commerce Ministry announced Thursday that it will restrict exports of a mineral used in a wide range of products from batteries to weapons. Export controls will be placed on antimony starting Sept. 15 to safeguard China’s security and interests and fulfill its international non-proliferation obligations, the ministry said.

Anyone wishing to export the mineral in various forms will have to apply for a license. It wasn’t immediately clear to what extent exports would be blocked, though the “non-proliferation” wording suggested it could include weapons-related uses.

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Critical minerals are the key to 21st-century tech. Here’s the ‘trilemma’ that defines how to mine them (World Economic Forum – August 14, 2024)

https://www.weforum.org/

The era of “big oil” has passed its zenith; welcome to the era of “big shovels”. Critical minerals are the new staple of the international economy, and governments are fast realizing that they risk economic and strategic vulnerability without them.

The transition to renewable energy, digitalization of the economy and pressure to keep apace with developments in cutting-edge technology all hinge on a select few minerals (lithium, cobalt, copper, graphite, nickel and rare earths are commonly understood as the “big six”. However, others such as zinc and manganese can also be considered). It is essential that critical mineral strategies are implemented in a manner that promotes international cooperation while minimizing fragmentation due to geopolitical rivalry.

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China squeezes Western militaries with export ban on weapons metal – by Annie Lee and Mark Burton (Australian Financial Review – August 16, 2024)

https://www.afr.com/

Singapore | China is tightening its grip over global critical mineral supplies by placing export controls on antimony, a metal used widely in ammunition and other military applications that has surged in price this year.

The country will apply the restrictions to antimony and antimony-related materials from September 15 to safeguard national security, a statement from the Ministry of Commerce said. That adds to earlier controls on other critical minerals including gallium and germanium, which have set off alarm bells in Washington.

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Securing America’s Critical Minerals: A Policy Priority Conundrum – by Ansel Bayly and Sarah Tzinieris (The Diplomat – August 8, 2024)

https://thediplomat.com/

Critical minerals sit at the intersection of three policy objectives for the United States – and at times the security, economic, and climate aims are in direct contradiction.

“When I think about climate change, I think jobs,” U.S. President Joe Biden has repeatedly said. His landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) embodies this idea, tying together U.S. climate and industrial policies with a vast array of subsidies aimed at sparking a green manufacturing boom. Built into these subsidies are mechanisms to secure U.S. supply chains and to shore up domestic manufacturing, which has atrophied in recent decades, strategic priorities that Biden inherited from his predecessor, Donald Trump.

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Status of the critical strategic minerals industry in Alberta – by Diane L.M. Cook (Canadian Mining Journal – August 6, 2024)

https://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

Critical strategic minerals are the building blocks for a green and digital economy. The six critical minerals that hold the most significant potential for Canadian economic growth are lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt, copper, and rare earth elements. These minerals are used in the production of many products including electric vehicle batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines.

The Canadian Critical Minerals Strategy (CCMS) aims to help Canada in the global energy transformation by making Canada a clean energy and technology supplier of choice in a net-zero world. The CCMS is backed by $3.8 billion of funding announced in the federal government’s Budget 2022 and includes a 30% critical mineral exploration tax credit for targeted critical minerals.

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Confusion and consternation on critical minerals – by Alisha Hiyate (Northern Miner – August 5, 2024)

https://www.northernminer.com/

What started out as optimism two years ago when the federal government turned its eye to critical minerals, introducing a strategy, incentives and funding, and pledging faster permitting for mines, has turned into confusion and consternation.

In a classic case of ‘be careful what you wish for,’ the industry fears the government’s new attentions could actually end up hurting the sector.

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Insight: Western miners push for higher metals prices to ward off Chinese rivals – by Ernest Scheyder and Pratima Desai (Reuters – July 22, 2024)

https://www.reuters.com/

SALMON-CHALLIS NATIONAL FOREST, Idaho – The only U.S. cobalt mine sits fallow in the northern Idaho woods, a mothballed hunk of steel and dirt that is too expensive for its owner to operate because Chinese rivals have flooded global markets with cheap supplies of the bluish metal used in electric vehicle batteries and electronics.

Jervois Global, which dug the mine into the side of a nearly 8,000-foot (2,400-meter) mountain, watched helplessly last year as cobalt prices plunged after China’s CMOC Group opened the Kisanfu mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo, pushing global production of the metal to an all-time high.

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Why China Is So Interested in Kazakhstan – by Daisuke Wakabayashi (New York Times – July 18, 2024)

https://www.nytimes.com/

Kazakhstan’s bounty of so-called critical minerals has enriched the country and grabbed the attention of entrepreneurs scrambling to control the ingredients needed to fight climate change.

Kenges Rakishev, one of the richest men in Kazakhstan, stepped off a private jet at a Soviet-era airport and hopped into the lead car of a convoy of sport utility vehicles. The cars tore down a two-lane road, zipping past the snow-covered steppe in eastern Kazakhstan at 90 miles per hour.

Riding shotgun, Mr. Rakishev gestured toward the vast emptiness. “Nothing, right?” he said with a chuckle. “But it’s a unique opportunity.” That opportunity is in nickel, a key mineral used in electric vehicles and other clean energy technologies. Kazakhstan, a mineral-rich country in Central Asia, has a lot of nickel, and Mr. Rakishev is investing tens of millions of dollars to extract it.

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Demand for rare elements used in clean energy could help clean up abandoned coal mines in Appalachia – by Marc Levy (Associated Press/Arizona Daily Star – July 15, 2024)

https://tucson.com/

MOUNT STORM, W.Va. — Down a long gravel road, tucked into the hills in West Virginia, is a low-slung building where researchers are extracting essential elements from an old coal mine that they hope will strengthen the nation’s energy future. They aren’t mining the coal that powered the steel mills and locomotives that helped industrialize America — and that is blamed for contributing to global warming.

Rather, researchers are finding that groundwater pouring out of this and other abandoned coal mines contains the rare earth elements and other valuable metals that are vital to making everything from electric vehicle motors to rechargeable batteries to fighter jets smaller, lighter or more powerful.

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Rare-Earth Prices Are in the Doldrums. China Wants to Keep Them That Way. – by Enes Morina (Wall Street Journal/MSN.com – July 14, 2024)

https://www.msn.com/

The U.S. and Europe would love to cut their dependence on China for rare earths. Standing in the way of that ambition are low prices and Beijing’s willingness to throw its weight around to keep the market down.

Rare-earth prices have plummeted this year and are now hovering at roughly three-year lows. The spot price of neodymium-praseodymium, a silver-gray alloy and the most profitable chunk of the market, has fallen by almost 20% since the start of January to around $50,000 a metric ton, according to data provider Argus Media. Other rare earths are down even more.

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