When EnergyX founder and CEO Teague Egan first arrived as a tourist in 2018 on Bolivia’s vast salt flats, and learned they contained the world’s largest untapped lithium reserve, the entrepreneur in him saw only blue-sky opportunity.
Bolivia has 9 million tonnes of identified lithium resources buried beneath its salt flats, the largest being the Salar de Uyuni, yet the country has had barely any production of lithium chemicals.
(Bloomberg) — At 36, Gabriel Boric is Chile’s youngest ever president and the most left-wing in half a century. He also aspires to be one of the world’s greenest heads of state.
Boric is in the vanguard of a new awareness across Latin America of climate change and its link to inequality, whether through access to clean water, the rainforest’s destruction, indigenous rights or sharing the benefits from mining.
Lithium is powering the world’s electric vehicles, making it a critical component in the fight against carbon pollution. According to a new study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the conjunction of lithium mining and climate change in the Andes Mountains may be seriously impacting flamingo populations.
The research looked at the impacts of lithium mining and climate change on shallow, saltwater lakes in the Chilean Andes, where flamingos congregate for eating and mating. The findings demonstrate that two species of flamingos that exclusively breed in these mountains had lost 10 to 12% of their population in just 11 years, but only at the lake polluted through mining.
Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has pushed for a law that would allow mining on Indigenous reservations, seizing on global fertiliser shortages caused by the Ukraine war.
The speaker’s office said the government’s chief whip in the lower house of Congress had gathered enough signatures on Tuesday to fast-track the bill, which means that it could be put to a full vote without committee hearings.
South America’s Lithium Triangle contains more than half of the world’s reserves of the critical metal that is used in batteries, and China is looking to carve out a bigger piece of the pie
Just days after Argentinian President Alberto Fernandez signed his country up for China’s Belt and Road Initiative during a high-profile trip to Beijing this month, the spot price of lithium metal in the Chinese market reached 2 million yuan (US$315,000) per tonne for the first time – more than four times what it cost a year ago.
The two countries happen to be the world’s major players in the supply chain of the metal – an essential material used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries.
Barrick Gold (TSX: ABX)(NYSE: GOLD) is close to reaching an agreement with the government of the Dominican Republic on where to build a new tailings storage facility (TSF) for its $1.3 billion Pueblo Viejo gold mine.
The world’s second largest gold producer had warned last year that production at the mine would have to end in 2030 without a new mining waste depository. Building a new dam is part of the planned expansion for Pueblo Viejo, which will extend its productive life beyond 2040.
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has issued two decrees to drive gold prospecting with a focus on the Amazon rainforest, according to the texts published Monday in the official gazette.
The Program to Support Development of Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining created by one decree aims to strengthen policies and stimulate best practices, according to the text. The Amazon “will be the priority region for the development of works,” it says.
The country’s efforts to create a new constitution could serve as a model or warning for tackling climate change and inequality.
Constanza San Juan is feeling optimistic. She sits on a committee of Chile’s constitutional convention that on Feb. 1 voted to nationalize the country’s mineral wealth—its deep veins of copper, lithium, magnesium, and silver—a notion that has mining companies and markets hyperventilating.
The idea is sufficiently radical that few believe it will be endorsed by the required two-thirds of the full convention. But San Juan, a 36-year-old historian, not only hopes it will—she wants it to go further.
MMG (HKG: 1208) said on Monday that it will have to halt production at its Las Bambas copper mine in Peru by February 20, following a new and ongoing blockade of the road used by the company, which has already forced the Chinese miner to curtail operations.
Residents of the Chumbivilcas province have been blocking the main access to Las Bambas on and off since November 20. They demand jobs and economic contributions from the company, a unit of state-owned China Minmetals, which they say has failed to benefit residents despite its great wealth.
(Bloomberg) — Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is ratcheting up nationalistic rhetoric around the country’s untapped lithium deposits, signaling private capital isn’t welcome in the industry.
Unlike other metals such as gold and silver, lithium is a strategic mineral like oil that belongs to the nation, AMLO, as the populist president is known, told reporters in Mexico City on Wednesday, announcing plans to create a state lithium company.
The Liberals must stop rewarding Beijing’s unconscionable behaviour
For some time now, it has seemed as if Canada’s foreign policy approach toward China has been similar to that old Abbott and Costello baseball shtick of “Who’s on First?”
That is to say, Ottawa’s strategy, insofar as one can even call it that, has been a circular, confusing and nonsensical parody. The major difference is, clearly, there is no humour to be found; rather, this comedy of errors carries only dire consequences for Canada.
The protected old-growth forest in the Amazon of southeastern Peru appears pristine: Ancient trees with massive trunks grow alongside young, slender ones, forming a canopy so thick it sometimes feels to scientists like evening during the day.
But a new analysis of what’s inside the forest’s leaves and birds’ feathers tells a different story: The same canopy that supports some of the richest biodiversity on the planet is also sucking up alarming levels of toxic mercury, according to a study published on Friday.
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Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne would not say when he was notified of Chinese state-owned Zijin Mining Group Co. Ltd.’s ZIJMF unchno change plans to acquire Canadian lithium company Neo Lithium Corp., despite being repeatedly pressed in a parliamentary committee.
During a hearing called on Thursday by the industry and technology committee, Mr. Champagne was asked on multiple occasions when he became aware of Zijin’s plans to buy Neo Lithium, but he would not answer. Instead he repeatedly insisted the deal was subject to a rigorous security review.
The copper market has cooled since touching record levels above $10,000 a tonne in May, but longer-term fundamentals for the bellwether metal remain bullish thanks to a global effort to electrify transport and shift to renewable power generation.
While there is consensus on demand growth, the supply side outlook is murky. Some 40% of the world’s copper production is controlled by just two countries – Chile and Peru – and political developments in South America are turning the tide against copper miners, Freeport-McMoRan CEO Rich Adkerson told investors in a conference call on Wednesday.
The Conservatives accuse the Liberals of not taking Canada’s national security seriously, while the Liberals say there was no need for a security review
Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne will appear at a parliamentary committee Thursday to defend the government’s decision not to hold a national security review of the acquisition of a Canadian lithium mining company by a Chinese enterprise.
The Conservatives have charged that means the Liberals aren’t taking Canada’s national security seriously, while the Liberals say there was no need for a security review. The National Post’s Anja Karadeglija examines the issues.
