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Latin America Mining

Copper mine protests roil in Panama – by Michael Fox (The World.org – October 26, 2023)

https://theworld.org/

The government approved a new contract with the mine late last week. Since then, protests have rippled across Panama, and people are afraid they could bring the country to a standstill.

Thousands of protesters in Panama have blocked roads and shut down major portions of the Pan-American Highway this week over a Supreme Court decision to fast-track a contract with a copper mining company.

Cobre Panamá is a massive copper mine owned by First Quantum Minerals that has been in production since 2019. In 2021, the Supreme Court declared the government contract with the mine unconstitutional for not living up to stipulations that it serves the “public good.” Panamá has been renegotiating a new contract over the last two years, attempting to provide greater environmental benefits to the state.

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Latin America eyes the lithium boom, but opposition endures – by Rocío Lloret Céspedes and Javier Lewkowicz (Dialogo Chino.net – October 26, 2023)

Dialogo Chino.net

The region could define the global lithium market and is making moves to boost its industries. But lithium extraction’s impacts and water use remain sensitive

Andrea Calcina has lived all of her 58 years in the community of Calcha K, a group of adobe houses at 3,800 metres above sea level in the Bolivian Andes. Though everything seems to be drying up quickly here, Calcina points to a water well that is still providing for residents, if not like it used to.

“There used to be more. With this water we wash, we sow, we water vegetables and quinoa,” says Andrea, who lives in a community of 100 families, where recurring complaints that “it doesn’t rain like it used to” are heard. Calcha K, in the southwestern department of Potosí, is one of 46 communities settled around the Uyuni and Pastos Grandes salt flats, two of the country’s three major lithium reserves. The third, Salar de Coipasa, is found in Oruro, in the west of the country.

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Vale to sell sand from Brazilian iron ore tailings – by Len Gillis (Northern Ontario Business – October 24, 2023)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

International miners creates spinoff company to market treated tailings as ‘sustainable sand’ for construction, road projects

Vale SA, the international parent company of Vale Canada, has had difficulty with the safety of some of its tailings dams, said it has created a new company to sell and distribute sand from its iron ore tailings properties.

Two dams operated by Vale SA failed in recent years, leaving hundreds of miners and civilians dead and creating significant environmental damage. Vale said the new company, named Agera, will be based in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil and is planned to develop and expand what Vale calls the Sustainable Sand business.

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First Quantum’s 20-year deal on Cobre Panama is now official – by Staff (Mining.com – October 23, 2023)

https://www.mining.com/

First Quantum Minerals (TSX: FM) says the law governing the mining concession for its Cobre Panama copper mine was passed and published in the Official Gazette of Panama on Oct. 20. Thus ends a period of uncertainty that began last year for the company.

The Panamanian government last December ordered First Quantum to halt operations at Cobre Panama amid disagreements during contract negotiations, which later broke down. Talks eventually resumed and the parties reached an agreement in March.

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The China-West Lithium Tango in South America – by Ali Rahman and Leland Lazarus (The Diplomat – October 23, 2023)

https://thediplomat.com/

Despite the push toward decoupling, China-West collaboration persists in South America’s Lithium Triangle. But in the age of strategic competition, how long will this last?

In the vast, almost haunting expanse of the high Argentine desert, beneath layers of brine and time, lies an element that could easily be mistaken for table salt. Yet, this mineral holds the key to power electric vehicles, cell phones, and the whole green energy revolution. They call it “white gold” – lithium.

The Cauchari-Olaroz mine, located in Argentina’s Jujuy province, promises to churn out 40,000 tons of lithium over the next 40 years. But more riveting than the mineral is the strange corporate partnership extracting it. The mine is jointly owned by Canada’s Lithium Americas and China’s Ganfeng Lithium.

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Codelco to buy Lithium Power for $244 million – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – October 18, 2023)

https://www.mining.com/

Chilean state-owned copper miner Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer, has reached a deal with Lithium Power International (ASX: LPI) to buy the Australian producer of the battery metal for A$385 million ($244 million).

The deal reached by the parties, which have been involved in negotiations for weeks, involves a cash offer of 0.57 Australian dollars per LPI share.

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China’s Tsingshan Gets Access to Chilean Lithium in Battery Metal Race – by James Attwood (Bloomberg News – October 16, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — China’s latest investments in South America’s lithium triangle show the challenges for US efforts to counter the dominance of the world’s second-largest economy in key parts of battery metal supply chains.

On Monday, Chile unveiled a deal that gives Tsingshan Holding Group preferential lithium prices for a project to make value-added products in the South American nation. It was announced as part of President Gabriel Boric’s trip to China, where he met with Xiang Guangda, the metal group’s billionaire owner.

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Canadian miner appoints Chinese firm despite Ottawa’s curbs against ‘non-like-minded’ nations – by Naimul Karim (Financial Post – October 3, 2023)

https://financialpost.com/

Ottawa’s policy of preventing Chinese companies from investing in Canadian-owned critical minerals projects may be put to test after a Vancouver-based miner appointed a Chinese firm to help it sell either all or a portion of a copper project it owns in Ecuador.

Solaris Resources Inc., which is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and has a market cap of around $800 million, appointed Beijing-based China International Capital Corp. Ltd. to assist in “fielding and evaluating the merit” of proposals it has received from parties interested in its Warintza copper project in southeast Ecuador.

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Adventus, Salazar delay construction of Ecuador project – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – October 3, 2023)

https://www.mining.com/

Canadian miners Adventus Mining (TSX-V: ADZN) and Salazar Resources (TSX-V: SRL) have delayed the start of construction at their $250 million Curipamba-El Domo copper-gold project in Ecuador from October to the second quarter of 2024.

The schedule revision comes as the Andean country’s constitutional court suspended in August an executive decree allowing environmental consultations for mining and other projects. President Guillermo Lasso’s move sought to speed up permitting before the end of his term this year.

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Codelco in talks with Australia’s Lithium Power – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – September 28, 2023)

https://www.mining.com/

Australia’s Lithium Power International (ASX: LPI) confirmed on Friday it is engaged in talks with Chilean state-owned copper miner Codelco about a potential deal to jointly mine for the battery metal in the South American country.

Chile announced in April a new national lithium strategy, which calls for public-private partnerships for future lithium projects. Under the new model, the state takes a controlling stake in operations considered strategically significant, while private firms can retain control of projects in non-strategic areas.

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Exclusive: Brazil mineral rights dispute casts shadow on Sigma Lithium expansion -by Fabio Teixeira (Reuters – September 28, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sept 28 (Reuters) – A Brazilian court injunction is halting the sale or mining of two plots of land where takeover target Sigma Lithium (SGML.V) is planning open pits, according to court documents seen by Reuters.

Vancouver-based Sigma Lithium is one of the hottest names in Brazil’s budding lithium sector – a pioneer in sustainable mining practices and, according to the firm, a potential acquisition target for some of the world’s top carmakers.

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Lithium Americas and Ioneer Carrying the Weight of all Lithium Clay Deposits on their Shoulders – by Ryan D. Long (Linkedin.com – September 21, 2023)

https://www.linkedin.com/

Introduction

Sedimentary (clay) lithium deposits are formed from volcanic eruptions that deposit lithium bearing volcanic glass and ash (tuffs), which is gradually eroded and leached over time to create a lithium-bearing clay, called smectite. The smectite clays can then be subject to hydrothermal alteration, which increase the lithium content and alters the smectite to illite clay.

Surprisingly over 90% of sedimentary lithium exploration/development projects are located in the US, with an incredible 75% found in Nevada. In general, sedimentary lithium deposits are lower-grade than igneous (hard rock) lithium deposits but higher grade than lithium brine deposits, and in terms of scale (contained LCE) they tend to be larger than igneous lithium deposits but smaller than lithium brine deposits.

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Gold and mercury, not books, for Venezuela’s child miners (Channel News Asia – September 20, 2023)

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/

EL CALLAO, Venezuela: At 10-years-old, Martin cannot read, but he is an old hand at detecting traces of the gold he and his young cousins dig for at an open-pit mine in south-eastern Venezuela. In the town of El Callao, extracting gold from soil starts as a kid’s game, but soon becomes a full-time job that human rights activists slam as dangerous exploitation.

Small and agile, the children’s size helps them shimmy into narrow wells to hack out muddy earth, hoping it will contain gold – which has become ever more precious as Venezuela’s oil production has plummeted.

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Critical Mineral Geopolitics: Latin America’s untapped potential – by Alex Blair (Mining Technology – September 13, 2023)

https://www.mining-technology.com/

Latin America holds half the world’s lithium. How will increasing government control, foreign exploitation and a proposed Argentina-Chile-Bolivia alliance affect production?

Every day, 160km south-east of Antofagasta in Chile, some 2,500 miners don their overalls and head to the Escondida copper mine.

Meaning “hidden” in Spanish, the name Escondida comes from the mine’s main orebody, which does not outcrop on the surface but is concealed by hundreds of meters of overburden. Escondida is also the world’s largest copper mine, producing 2,904 tonnes of copper each day.

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First Quantum’s copper deal with Panama in jeopardy as protesters take to the streets – by Nathan Vanderklippe (Globe and Mail – September 8, 2023)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

A hard-won Canadian copper mining contract in Panama has become the target of protests and legal denunciations as it nears the final steps to finalization.

Panama’s National Assembly has begun consideration of a contract law for First Quantum Minerals Ltd.’s Cobre Panama mine, which would end a lengthy period of uncertainty for the Vancouver-based company and formalize a royalty structure that promises hundreds of millions of dollars a year for Panama, establishing a new economic pillar alongside the country’s namesake canal.

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