International Media Resource Articles

VW Is on a Hunt for Resources to Remove China From Its EV Batteries – by William Boston (Wall Street Journal – June 4, 2023)

June 8, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/

U.S. and Europe lag behind China in the global race for components essential to carmakers’ electric transition

BERLIN—Volkswagen is searching the world, from Canada to Indonesia, for supplies to make the batteries in electric vehicles it sells in the U.S. and Europe less dependent on Chinese components, a senior VW executive said.

PowerCo, a subsidiary VW created last year, is leading the company’s search for natural resources and other critical battery ingredients. Ultimately, VW wants to secure its own supplies for battery plants outside China and not have to rely on Chinese suppliers for battery materials, most of whom are in China, VW board member and technology chief Thomas Schmall told The Wall Street Journal.

Australia moves to find new critical minerals partners but risks China’s ire – by Jonathan Peralman (The Straits Times – June 8, 2023)

June 8, 2023

https://www.straitstimes.com/

SYDNEY – For decades, Australia has been a crucial supplier of the iron ore that has helped to quench China’s insatiable appetite for steel. This massive flow of iron ore – which invoked more than A$150 billion (S$135 billion) a year of sales – enabled China to build apartment blocks, shopping centres and infrastructure projects around the country as its economy expanded.

But, in recent years, China has also invested in other Australian resources for its transformation into a technology superpower. Today, China is a major extractor and processor of critical minerals such as rare earths that are used to produce electric car batteries, superconductors, mobile phones and other high-end technologies.

US Permitting pandemic plagues Alaska (North of 60 Mining News – June 2, 2023)

June 8, 2023

https://www.miningnewsnorth.com/

Alaska’s unparalleled potential to be a major domestic supplier of the minerals and metals critical to the clean energy transition attracted some of North America’s top commodities investors and analysts to Anchorage for the second annual Alaska Sustainable Energy conference. The 49th State’s rich mineral resources, however, may remain on lockdown due to a “permitting pandemic” that plagues not only Alaska but the entire United States.

“Our country is suffering from a permitting pandemic – it leads to paralysis, lack of economic resolve, and a great deal of pain,” S&P Global Vice Chairman Daniel Yergin, a highly respected authority on international energy and geoeconomics, said during a keynote address.

How to get rich from commodities: Tips from Botswana on how to avoid the resource curse (The Economist – June 8, 2023)

June 8, 2023

https://www.economist.com/

Africa’s soil is studded with buried treasure. Half the world’s diamonds are mined there. The largest producers of cobalt, manganese and uranium are all African countries. Since 2000 more big petroleum discoveries have been made in sub-Saharan Africa than in any other region. Yet Africans are not wrong when they talk of a “resource curse”.

The continent’s political elite have squandered or stolen much of the bounty, often aided by unscrupulous private firms. The World Bank predicts that by 2030, 62% of the world’s very poor people will live in resource-rich sub-Saharan countries, up from 12% in 2000. Resource-rich states are more likely to suffer dictatorship or civil war.

America’s Long, Tortured Journey to Build EV Batteries – by Gabrielle Coppola (Bloomberg News – June 8, 2023)

June 8, 2023

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The fall of startup A123 still haunts the US decades later—and reveals everything that’s wrong with this country’s approach to innovation.

On a 3-mile stretch of farmland in southwest Michigan, Ford Motor Co. is building a battery factory. The technology Ford needs to make cheap, stable batteries to power electric vehicles will come from China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., better known as CATL, the world’s biggest battery manufacturer.

Bougainville leaders call on mining giant Rio Tinto to assist communities – by APR editor (Asia Pacific Report – June 7, 2023)

June 8, 2023

News

Community leaders around Panguna mine in the autonomous Papua New Guinea region of Bougainville want mining giant Rio Tinto to help out following recent flooding. Rio Tinto was the owner/operator of the mine which has laid derelict for more than 30 years.

Fears of the threat from flooding in the river system near the mine have increased in recent years. Recent heavy rain has choked rivers with mine tailings waste, resulting in several communities being swamped.

RPT-COLUMN-Nickel prices coming supply glut but stocks keep falling – by Andy Home (June 7, 2023)

June 8, 2023

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, June 7 (Reuters) – Nickel has been the under-performer of the London Metal Exchange (LME) base metals pack this year. LME three-month nickel sank to a nine-month low of $20,310 per tonne last week and at a current $21,500 is now down by 31% since the start of the year.

Nickel is pricing in a looming supply glut as Indonesia builds out ever more production capacity in its race to be an electric vehicle battery metals giant. The country’s mined output grew by 48% last year and by another 41% in the first three months of this year, according to The International Nickel Study Group.

Canada’s mining sector brainstorms lunar resource extraction (Equipment Journal – June 5, 2023)

June 6, 2023

Home

The unique skill sets of Canada’s mining industry may someday help propel space exploration beyond the Earth’s moon. Recently, the Sudbury, Ontario-based Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI) hosted a webinar to explain the opportunity and challenges in extracting resources on the moon.

“Mining and mineral resource exploration and taking advantage of resources on the moon is going to happen for sure in the very short term,” said Chamirai Nyabeze, Vice President of Business Development and Commercialization at CEMI.

How new lithium extraction technology could help us meet electric vehicle targets – by Katie Brigham (CNBC.com – June 5, 2023)

June 6, 2023

https://www.cnbc.com/

The world contains vast quantities of lithium, an integral element in electric vehicle batteries. And though lithium is commonly mined from hard rock, the majority of the world’s lithium reserves are actually found in brine, extremely salty water beneath the Earth’s surface.

Today, brine mining involves evaporating the brine in massive, extravagantly colored pools over a series of about 18 months, leaving high concentrations of lithium behind. It’s a simple but inefficient process that takes up vast swaths of land and is ecologically disruptive.

COLUMN-LME aluminium stocks battle comes with a Russian twist – by Andy Home (Reuters – June 5, 2023)

June 6, 2023

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, June 5 (Reuters) – There was another raid on London Metal Exchange (LME) aluminium stocks last week. While headline inventory MALSTX-TOTAL fell by a marginal 1,475 tonnes over the holiday-shortened week, available stocks slumped by 19% thanks to 83,875 tonnes of net cancellations.

It was the second swoop on exchange stocks of aluminium in the space of a month after the mass cancellation of 132,700 tonnes of metal on May 10. LME on-warrant stocks have fallen from over 500,000 tonnes in the middle of April to a four-month low of 324,650 tonnes.

Every man and his dog is looking for lithium in Canada right now. Which ASX companies have joined the craze? – by Josh Chiat (Stockhead – June 4, 2023)

June 6, 2023

https://stockhead.com.au/

Back in ye olden days they told explorers, vagabonds and wayward youth to ‘Go West’ in search of a better life. Now the catchphrase for down on their luck ASX explorers is ‘Go North’, spreading like a virus across its moose populated plains in search of today’s go-to metal, lithium.

But is much of it moose pasture? Thanks to Twitter’s Viking Trader we have a running weekly commentary on the number of ASX explorers taking the plunge in Canada’s vast outback. According to Viking Trader, he counted 21 greenfields projects on the ASX just one week earlier. A craze to rival the Monster Mash.

Who is keeping coal alive? (The Economist – June 4, 2023)

June 6, 2023

https://www.economist.com/

The financiers saving the world’s dirtiest fuel from extinction

Mountains of coal are piled beneath azure skies at the port of Newcastle, Australia. Giant shovels chip away at them, scooping the fuel onto conveyor belts, which whizz it to cargo ships that can be as long as three football pitches. The harbour’s terminals handle 200m tonnes of the stuff a year, making Newcastle the world’s biggest coal port.

Throughput is roaring back after floods hurt supply last year. Aaron Johansen, who oversees NCIG, the newest, uber-automated terminal, expects it to stay near all-time highs for at least seven years. Rich Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea, are hungry for the premium coal that passes through the terminal. So, increasingly, are developing ones like Malaysia and Vietnam.

China’s Auto Export Wave Echoes Japan’s in the ’70s – by Niall Ferguson (Bloomberg News – June 4, 2023)

June 6, 2023

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Will electric vehicles change the world as much as railroads and internal-combustion engines did in centuries past?

Revolutions in transportation are rare and can define epochs. This has been true since men figured out how to ride horses (6,000 years ago) and to construct vehicles with wheels (just over 5,000 years ago).

How did the steam engine change the world? A lot. How did the internal combustion engine change the world? A lot. So how will battery-powered electric vehicles change the world? Probably a lot — but, if history is our guide, not necessarily in the ways we now anticipate.

Revised plan for mining Mary River iron – by Rose Ragsdale (North of 60 Mining News – June 2, 2023)

June 2, 2023

https://www.miningnewsnorth.com/

Six months after the Canadian government rejected a plan to double approved output from the Mary River iron mine on Nunavut’s Baffin Island, the mine’s operator, Baffinland Iron Mines Corp., is working to get the green light to move ahead with a different proposal.

The new plan, which the company calls a “Sustaining Operations Proposal,” surfaced in December, about a month after federal Northern Affairs Minister Daniel Vandal rejected the earlier plan Nov. 16 to expand operations and double approved shipping output from the mine to 12 million metric tons of iron ore annually.

A ‘Dirty’ Job That Few Want: Mining Companies Struggle to Hire for the Energy Transition – by Yusuf Khan (Wall Street Journal – June 1, 2023)

June 2, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/

A skills shortage is threatening to slow the shift to a green economy, as more young people are turning their noses up at mining jobs

Lily Dickson was hurrying across the University of Leeds campus when a student campaigner handed her a flier that called for a ban on campus recruiting by mining and oil-and-gas companies. The 24-year old doctoral student in geology was taken aback. She had recently returned from a trip to Finland, having worked with Vancouver-based miner Mawson Gold, exploring new places to mine cobalt in Europe.

The ban wasn’t an empty threat or an isolated incident. Last year, four U.K. universities—but not Leeds—banned mining firms from recruiting on campus and attending careers fairs, part of a broader trend of college graduates and young workers turning their backs on extractive industries that they fear harm the planet.