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Cobalt, Critical, Strategic and Rare Earth Minerals and Metals

China Marks Cobalt, Copper Ascendancy in Congo With New Group – by William Clowes (Bloomberg News – June 18, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

More than 30 Chinese companies active in the Democratic Republic of Congo formed a business association backed by both countries’ governments, further cementing China’s ascendancy in copper and cobalt production in the central African nation.

The 35-member Union of Mining Companies with Chinese Capital will facilitate “communication and exchange between the Chinese mining companies and the government of our country,” Cheng Yonghong, the group’s president, said at an inauguration event in Lubumbashi in southeast Congo on June 16.

The group, known by the French acronym USMCC, was founded at the initiative of China’s embassy and on the advice of Congo’s mines minister, he said.

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Glencore settles with Gertler over Congo royalties – by Barbara Lewis (Reuters U.S. – June 15, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – Glencore has settled a mining row in Democratic Republic of Congo with Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler by agreeing to pay royalties in a currency other than U.S. dollars, lowering the risk of disruption to copper and cobalt supplies.

U.S. sanctions on Gertler, Glencore’s former Israeli partner in Congo, had triggered litigation and a legal tangle that investors said might affect supplies of cobalt, needed for electric vehicle batteries, from the world’s biggest producer of the metal.

Glencore earlier this week reached a settlement in another dispute involving its Kamoto copper and cobalt mine in Congo, although it remains at odds with the Congolese government over a mining code that increases taxes and royalties on minerals.

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After cobalt-free pledge, Panasonic to triple consumption for auto batteries: sources – by Pratima Desai (Reuters U.S. – June 14, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – Panasonic Corp expects to more than triple its cobalt consumption in five years’ time, industry sources said, even as the company aims to develop cobalt-free automotive batteries in the near future.

Panasonic is the exclusive battery cell supplier for all new Tesla vehicles, including the mass-market Model 3 electric car. Sources say cobalt-free batteries are many years away.

The scramble to secure supplies of cobalt, which stabilizes and extends the life of lithium-ion rechargeable batteries used to power electric vehicles, has seen prices rise to around $40 a lb from below $10 a lb in December 2015.

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Congo’s Miners Face Harsh New Reality as Mining Law Finalized – by Thomas Wilson (Bloomberg News – June 13, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The options for mining companies battling new legislation in the Democratic Republic of Congo — Africa’s biggest copper producer and the source of two-thirds of the world’s cobalt — have just about run out.

After six months of lobbying, companies including Glencore Plc and Randgold Resources Ltd. have got nowhere in their battle to push back against the mining law, which voids existing agreements and increases their costs. Congo approved the final part of the bill on Friday, and despite earlier indications from President Joseph Kabila that the rules might be eased, the law hasn’t been weakened in any way.

While the constitution bars Kabila from running for a third term, Congo’s embattled leader has refused to rule himself out as a candidate in elections later this year, and his campaign to wring more revenue out of mining companies is proving popular with voters.

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Cobalt Hunt Takes Aussie Explorer to Forest on BMW’s Doorstep – by Elisabeth Behrmann (Bloomberg News – June 13, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The search for cobalt, a key component of the battery-powered auto fleets of the future, has arrived on BMW AG’s doorstep with a discovery of an ore deposit not far from the plant where the German manufacturer makes its i3 electric city car.

The cobalt find in a forested section of Saxony’s Eichigt municipality, Germany’s first detection of the metal in modern times, could revive mining in an area that last saw activity during the Renaissance, and help diversify raw-materials supply, exploration company Lithium Australia NL said.

Some 60 percent of the world’s cobalt is concentrated in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where concerns over working practices and political strife have sparked a global hunt for alternatives sources.

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Vale in deal with two Canadian companies to sell cobalt – by Nicole Mordant (Reuters U.S. – June 11, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – Brazil’s Vale on Monday unveiled a $690 million financing to expand a Canadian nickel mine, agreeing to sell unmined cobalt from Voisey’s Bay as a booming electric vehicle market propels demand for the critical battery ingredient.

Vale said it would sell cobalt mined after 2021 as a by-product from the mine in Canada’s northern Labrador region to Wheaton Precious Metals Corp and Cobalt 27 Capital Corp in a so-called stream financing deal.

The transaction is the world’s biggest cobalt stream to date, a form of alternative financing that allows an investor to make an upfront payment in exchange for future production at a discounted price.

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Vale Reaches $700 Million Deal to Sell Cobalt Output – by Jack Farchy and R.T. Watson (Bloomberg News – June 8, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Vale SA reached an agreement to sell future production of cobalt as battery makers look to shore up supply of the metal amid a nascent electric-vehicle boom, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The deal is for about $700 million of cobalt produced at the Voisey’s Bay complex in Canada that predominately churns out nickel, the people said, asking not to be identified because talks are private. Vale’s Rio de Janeiro-based press department declined to comment.

The Brazilian miner has been looking for financing to extend the life of the mine by transiting to underground from open-pit operations and has said publicly that a so-called streaming arrangement was among options.

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Taylor: Eying the critical mineral supply – by Dr. Danny Taylor (Elko Daily Free Press – June 8, 2018)

https://elkodaily.com/

Mining consultant and professional engineer Dr. Danny Taylor is an industry expert specializing in mine operation economic analysis.

One of the hot topics over the past several months for the mining industry has been a resurgence of discussions on “Strategic and Critical” minerals. On December 20, 2017, just two days before he signed the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” President Donald Trump issued Executive Order No. 13817, “A Federal Strategy to Ensure Secure and Reliable Supplies of Critical Minerals.”Now this is nothing new.

In the early 1980s, then-Senate Majority Leader Paul Laxalt secured funding for a new 60,000-square-foot building for the Mackay School of Mines (the Laxalt Mineral Research Building) designated to house a Center for the Study of Strategic and Critical Minerals.

This was during the Cold War era, and folks in Washington were very concerned about the U.S. not having access to minerals essential to national defense (Strategic) due to disruptions in import supply lines (Critical). The initial report from the Center identified four mineral groups that met the criteria of Strategic and Critical: platinum group metals, chrome ores, manganese and rare earth elements.

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Glencore Faces New Legal Challenge Against Congo Cobalt Mine – by William Clowes and Thomas Wilson (Bloomberg News – June 8, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

(Bloomberg) — For Glencore Plc in the Democratic Republic of Congo, problems don’t form an orderly queue: they pile up on top of each other.

In the latest example of the commodity giant’s deteriorating relationships in the country, a convicted fraudster has resurrected a legal claim the company considered dead, launching a billion-dollar bid for compensation for a 19 percent stake he previously held in Mutanda Mining Sarl — the world’s biggest cobalt miner.

The lawsuit, the third court action this year challenging Glencore’s control of its prized Congolese mines, is another headache for the Swiss commodity trader as it faces down the government over a new mining code that hiked taxes.

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ALTERNATIVES TO COBALT, THE BLOOD DIAMOND OF BATTERIES – by Ellen Airhart (Wired Magazine – June 7, 2018)

https://www.wired.com/

WHEN JOHN GOODENOUGH created the first lithium-ion rechargeable battery at Oxford in 1980, he needed some cobalt. Experiments had already established that the metal is energy-dense, perfect for small batteries that need a lot of power.1 So Goodenough made the cobalt himself, heating the precursors at very high temperatures.

Today, cobalt appears in most commercial lithium-ion batteries—but it comes at a price. The silvery metal is expensive, yes. But it also has a darker cost: a long history of human rights violations, including child mining, associated with production in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Electronics devices and electric car companies don’t want to pay big bucks and connect themselves with these atrocities, so they have tried to cut down on the amount of cobalt their batteries use. Panasonic, Tesla’s battery supplier, announced at the end of last month that they are developing batteries that don’t need cobalt. And they have some help: Goodenough and other researchers have also developed rechargeable batteries that don’t need cobalt.

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Commentary: Tesla leads electric vehicle race to cut cobalt dependency – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – June 6, 2018)

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – If Elon Musk had his way, there would be no cobalt in any of the batteries powering the next generation of Tesla. At the very least, “we think we can get the cobalt to almost nothing”, he told analysts on the company’s first quarter results call.

Panasonic, which supplies the batteries for Tesla’s electric cars, is “aiming to achieve zero usage in the near future and development is under way”, according to Kenji Tamura, who is in charge of the Japanese firm’s automotive battery business.

The two companies are leading an industry race to reduce exposure to the metal even before the electric vehicle (EV)revolution truly builds momentum. It’s not difficult to see why. The London Metal Exchange price of the battery input has already rocketed from under $30,000 per tonne at the end of 2016 to a current $86,750.

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Reliance on Congo Cobalt Grows Despite European Discoveries – by Jason Deign (Green Tech Media – June 5, 2018)

https://www.greentechmedia.com/

“Ultimately, there will be no lithium-ion industry without DRC cobalt.”

The lithium-ion battery industry’s dependence on cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo will rise despite ore discoveries in Europe, analysts believe.

Caspar Rawles, an analyst with Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, said the percentage of global cobalt supply coming from the DRC was set to go up from 66 percent in 2017 to more than 73 percent by 2023, even though mining firms are rushing to uncover deposits elsewhere.

Last month, for example, the Australian production and processing company Lithium Australia announced the discovery of cobalt mineralization at mines in Eichigt, in the state of Saxony in Germany.

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China goes all out to secure lithium, cobalt supplies – key to dominating the world electric car market – by Eric Ng (South China Morning Post – June 4, 2018)

http://www.scmp.com/

Cobalt, however, faces bigger challenges than lithium, which has seen bigger price gains over the past two years amid lack of certainty over new supplies, stockpiling and traders taking speculative positions

The emergence of electric vehicles has seen Chinese companies go on a global hunt to secure lithium resources. Now they are rapidly clinching deals to get hold of cobalt whose supply is even more concentrated geographically.

Cobalt, a hard, shiny, greyish metal, a by-product of copper and nickel mining, has seen the biggest price increase among various metals used to make electric vehicle batteries after a demand boom began two years ago, according to Ciaran Roe, global manager of metals pricing at S&P Global Platts.

“Unlike manganese, lithium and nickel, cobalt is limited in supply not just in terms of tonnage but also origin,” he said. “I can’t think of another commodity where supply is so reliant on one origin nation than cobalt.”

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Electric vehicles seen driving cobalt crunch by mid-2020s – by Salvador Rodriguez (Reuters U.S. – May 24, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – The increasing popularity of electric vehicles may create a crunch for supplies of cobalt in the early-to-mid 2020s, miners and analysts say, adding that small operators trying to start up mines outside Africa could play a bigger role over time in satisfying demand for the metal used in rechargeable batteries.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) produces nearly two-thirds of the world’s cobalt as a by-product of its copper mines and is taking an increasingly confrontational stance toward foreign mining companies, including a new mining code that hikes royalties and taxes.

Human rights groups have said some cobalt from the Central African country could come from mines using child labor, raising additional concerns about sourcing within the industry and among buyers of the metal.

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Uranium makes feds’ list of minerals ‘critical’ to national security, setting off a debate in Utah and beyond – by Brian Maffly (The Salt Lake Tribune – May 23, 2018)

https://www.sltrib.com/

The Interior Department has identified 35 “nonfuel” mineral commodities that are essential to national security, including uranium and several others found in Utah.

Interior’s U.S. Geological Survey helped compile the list under an executive order President Donald Trump issued in December, calling for a national strategy for reducing reliance on critical minerals and promoting access to domestic supplies.

The appearance of uranium on the list, published Friday in the Federal Register, has spurred controversy among those who contend uranium does not qualify as either nonfuel or critical. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., sent a letter Monday to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke demanding an explanation.

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