OTTAWA — The pending takeover of a Canadian lithium mining company by a Chinese state-owned company raises no national security concerns, federal Liberals argued Thursday.
Liberal MP Andy Fillmore, parliamentary secretary to Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne, told a House of Commons committee that the Industry Department reviewed last fall the proposed takeover of Neo Lithium Corp. by China’s Zijin Mining Group Ltd.
The more people I speak with about lithium, the bigger this story gets. Following my previous article — How The U.S. Is Losing The Lithium Industry To China — several readers told me that this battle is already lost. And, I have to admit that the trajectory we are currently on gives little reason to believe that China’s dominance will be threatened any time soon.
In today’s article, I want to reiterate two threats to U.S. national security based on the current trajectory. Then, I want to revisit why China jumped ahead of the U.S. Finally, I want to talk about steps that are aimed at addressing this.
(Bloomberg) — Vast deposits and more welcoming policies have turned Argentina into a lithium hot-spot in recent years. Now the global copper industry is taking another look at the South American nation.
That’s the view of Rob McEwen, whose namesake company is drilling a property in San Juan province near the border with Chile. Called Los Azules, it’s attracted the attention of large producers such as Vale SA, Anglo American Plc and Barrick Gold Corp. as a potential acquisition, he said. All three companies declined to comment.
First Quantum Minerals (TSX: FM) has reached a deal with Panama’s government to increase royalty payments at the giant Cobre Panama copper mine, the company’s flagship operation.
The Canadian miner’s subsidiary, Minera Panama, said it considered “reasonable” the $375 million a year-figure the country has asked for. In return, the company asked authorities to guarantee the continuity of operations during the mine’s productive life. The Vancouver-based miner had been in talks with Panama since September last year, a period during which copper prices have traded at record levels.
RAPOSA SERRA DO SOL INDIGENOUS TERRITORY, Brazil (AP) — The mining encampment that stretches across a mountainside in Brazil’s Amazon is dotted with plastic tarpaulin covers. Under them, dozens of men toil in rocky pits, excavating sacks of ore to be transported by truck. Gold will be extracted from the ore.
Of all places this squatter settlement shouldn’t exist, it’s here: in Brazil’s northernmost Roraima state that doesn’t permit gold prospecting, inside one of the nation’s Indigenous reserves where mining activity is illegal and on the flanks of this mountain – Serra do Atola – that traditional leaders of the Macuxi people hold sacred.
Countries across the globe are pursuing zero-emission goals, which have created a bottleneck of critical rare earth elements (REE) such as cobalt, copper, and lithium. These are essential components in producing renewable energy technology, from electric vehicle batteries to wind turbine blades. REEs also play a key role in manufacturing semiconductors and other electronics.
Access to these resources – both in raw and refined forms – has never been more important. Much like oil was throughout the 20th century, critical minerals are the primary inputs of future economic growth. Governments and private companies are increasingly acknowledging this, resulting in a global “gold rush” for these strategic minerals.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
The Conservative Party of Canada is calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government to conduct a formal national security review on the pending acquisition of Canadian lithium development company Neo Lithium Corp. by Chinese state-owned Zijin Mining Group Ltd.
In October, Zijin announced its intention to buy Toronto-based Neo Lithium for $960-million. Neo Lithium is developing a mine in Argentina and hopes to eventually supply the silvery white mineral to the electric-vehicle industry for batteries.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/
For 13 years, Angélica Choc has been fighting to stop alleged abuses carried out on Indigenous peoples in her native Guatemala by Canadian mining companies and their subsidiaries — and she wants the Canadian government to do its part.
“It’s exhausting. I am so tired. And I continue persevering, seeking justice in the Canadian courts,” she told The Current’s Matt Galloway. In 2009, Choc’s husband, Mayan Q’eqchi’ community leader Adolfo Ich Chamán, was killed by security personnel working at a Guatemalan mine that he opposed. The mine was owned by a subsidiary of Canadian mining company Hudbay Minerals.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
A Brazilian state environmental regulator has fined Canadian precious metals producer Great Panther Mining Ltd.GPL-A -3.41%decrease $11.4-million, after ruling a cyanide leak at the company’s gold mine in Brazil polluted local rivers and killed a large fish population.
Vancouver-based Great Panther operates the open-pit Tucano gold mine in Amapa state in northern Brazil. Until a few days ago, the company’s chairman was well-known Canadian mining executive David Garofalo, who is also the former head of Goldcorp Inc., a onetime high flier in the gold mining industry.
The mining industry brushed aside risks posed by left-leaning politician Gabriel Boric’s resounding victory in Chile’s runoff presidential election Dec. 19, despite the president-elect’s campaign promises to rein in the sector and raise fees.
After winning roughly 56% of the vote in the second round of elections, 35-year-old Boric underscored his opposition to Minera Andes Iron’s Dominga iron-copper-gold project, and on the campaign trail, Boric promised to create a state-run lithium company and supported mining tax hikes and royalties. Boric is looking to squeeze miners to bring in cash for public services while protecting the environment.
(Bloomberg) — Environmental activists like Constanza San Juan have been peripheral figures at best in Chile’s emergence as the dominant supplier of copper over the past few decades. Now, she and others like her are rewriting the rules, with tens of billions of dollars in investments riding on the outcome.
The 35 year old, who’s been fighting mining ever since Barrick Gold Corp. arrived to her region two decades ago, is on a committee that will decide how the environment and natural resources will figure in a new constitution to replace the one that dates back to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
https://www.bnamericas.com/en/
Social unrest in Peru this year led to lower production of about 150,000t of copper, according to estimates by mining-energy association SNMPE.
In a conference organized by the Peruvian Institute of Mining Engineers, association head Raúl Jacob said that if 100,000t are not produced, the State loses 1.45bn soles (US$363mn) in taxes.
Illegal gold mining in the north Amazonian territory of Brazil’s indigenous Munduruku people has led to more than half of several hundred people tested showing unsafe mercury levels in their bodies, including children, health researchers say.
That is a particular worry to human rights defenders, as the country’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro pushes plans to introduce or expand mining and farming in protected areas of the world’s largest rainforest. That would include into indigenenous territory, where mining is currently forbidden by Brazil’s constitution.
SALAR DE UYUNI, Bolivia — The mission was quixotic for a small Texas energy start-up: Beat out Chinese and Russian industrial giants in unlocking mineral riches that could one day power tens of millions of electric vehicles.
A team traveled from Austin to Bolivia in late August to meet with local and national leaders at a government lithium complex and convince them that the company, EnergyX, had a technology that would fulfill Bolivia’s potential to be a global green-energy power. On arriving, they found that the conference they had planned to attend was canceled and that security guards blocked the location.
(Bloomberg) — In the endless jousting between global mining conglomerates and many Peruvians, Julio Guillermo had long been considered pretty marginal — an anti-government rabble rouser fighting not for a bigger share of the spoils but to shut mines down in his south-central highlands.
Like his fellow local activists, Guillermo, 49, bases his demands on pollution of waterways, which miners dismiss, and on an argument that’s harder to counter: his land in Ayacucho is sacred, no place to be gouging for silver and gold. “It’s like undoing your temple, your beliefs,” he says in an interview.
