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Lithium

Battery Metal Price Plunge Is Closing Mines and Stalling Deals – by Thomas Biesheuvel (Bloomberg News – January 2024)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — A meltdown in some of the most-hyped energy-transition metals is wreaking havoc across the mining world, stalling projects, scuppering deals and triggering a scramble for cash that promises to reverberate through the industry for years.

Lithium — the ultra-light metal used in electric-vehicle batteries — has plunged more than 80% from a late-2022 record, as the market whiplashed from shortage fears to a mountain of surplus inventories. Nickel and cobalt have also tumbled, weighed down by an influx of new production amid concerns that the shift to EVs may not be as smooth and quick as predicted.

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Society Watch: Across the globe, indigenous rights are being trampled in lithium goldrush – by Mark Hillsdon (Reuters – January 2, 2024)

https://www.reuters.com/

January 2 – Lithium has been called the new white gold, a mineral seen as key to global decarbonisation, thanks to its use in lithium-ion batteries and their role powering EVs. But mining the mineral is proving controversial, as indigenous groups question what they stand to gain in the push for a just energy transition.

Standing outside the Palace of Justice in Buenos Aires, Olmos Desiderio feels betrayed. “We have been let down by the government for the last five hundred years, since colonisation,” he says. “Indigenous people are not properly consulted.”

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After subway e-bike blaze, Toronto fire chief shares tips to avoid battery fires (CBC News Toronto – January 2, 2023)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/

Lithium ion battery fires increased nearly 90% in 2023: Toronto Fire

Toronto’s fire chief is sharing safety tips to avoid fires sparked by lithium ion batteries after a subway train was evacuated when an e-bike caught fire on Sunday.

A man suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the fire at Sheppard-Yonge subway station around 3 p.m. Sunday, which filled several subway cars with smoke. No one else was injured and trains were moving through the station again about an hour later.

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Why India Is Buying 5 Argentine Lithium Mines – by Nitin Kumar (Rediff.com – January 2, 2024)

https://m.rediff.com/

India is close to striking a deal to acquire five lithium blocks for exploration and development in Argentina with the negotiations entering “final stages”, a senior official said, even as the country is engaged in talks with other nations rich in critical minerals.

The agreement will be signed between the Khanij Bidesh India Ltd (KABIL) — a joint venture company focused on identifying, acquiring, developing, processing and making commercial use of strategic minerals in overseas locations for supply in India — and Catamarca Minera Y Energética Sociedad Del Estado (CAMYEN), a State-owned mining and energy company in the Argentine province of Catamarca.

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March: Updates on critical mining in northern Ontario – by By Norm Tollinsky (Canadian Mining Journal – December 21, 2023)

https://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

When George Pirie, Ontario’s mines minister, closes his eyes and imagines what a resurgent northern Ontario mining industry will look like five years from now, he might see new nickel mines in Sudbury and Timmins, a battery industrial park in Cobalt, haul trucks transporting nickel concentrate on the recently completed road from the Ring of Fire, and multiple lithium mines and processing facilities in northwestern Ontario.

It is a good bet that much of the scenario will indeed materialize. The drills are confirming that the resources are there, the environmental assessments are progressing, and meetings with battery manufacturers and the automobile industry are resulting in offtake agreements.

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Gates, Bezos-backed KoBold Metals in four-continent quest for lithium – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – December 14, 2023)

https://www.mining.com/

KoBold Metals, backed by a coalition of billionaires including Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, has launched a four-continent search for deposits of lithium, the coveted metal used in batteries that power electric vehicles and high-tech devices.

The California-based startup, already working on opening a new copper-cobalt mine in Zambia, will deploy the latest technology to search for lithium in South Korea, Canada, the United States, Australia and Africa, it said in the statement.

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Gina Rinehart looks to life beyond the rivers of cash from iron ore – by Brad Thompson (Australian Financial Review – December 14, 2023)

https://www.afr.com/

The mining magnate, crowned The Australian Financial Review Business Person of the Year, is recognised for her preparedness to take big bets and the role she’s played in shaping Australia’s economy.

Wesfarmers boss Rob Scott is an unabashed fan of billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart and her achievements in business and contributions to philanthropic and community causes. Rinehart, says Scott, is “the driving force behind one of Australia’s largest and most successful private companies, which has created thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of value to the community”.

He adds: “She is ambitious for Australia and our key export industries and is investing to make a difference. “Many people would not appreciate the extent and generosity of Gina’s philanthropic and community support, but it is substantial, and her support of many of our Olympic athletes is remarkable.”

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Bolivia Takes a Key Step in Long Road to Tapping Vast Lithium Riches – by Sergio Mendoza and James Attwood (Bloomberg News – December 15, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Bolivia is cutting the ribbon on its first industrial-scale lithium plant, the dawn of what it hopes will be an export boom of the battery metal that could bring it back from the brink of economic crisis. It’s going to be a long road though.

In a ceremony Friday on the world’s largest salt flat, President Luis Arce will open the $100 million lithium carbonate facility, designed to churn out 15,000 metric tons a year to fuel electric vehicles in the global shift away from fossil fuels.

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Northwestern Ontario lithium miner paints a picture to production – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – December 7, 2023)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Green Technology Metals meets with strategic investors to fund $1.2-billion lithium development

A key economic study posted this week by Australia’s Green Technology Metals “validates” their potential to become a large-scale lithium player in northwestern Ontario and Canada. With a proposed two-mine lithium operation valued at $1.2 billion in the works, the hunt is on to secure both private and government funding to make the mines and a Thunder Bay lithium refinery a reality.

Green Tech gave investors and stakeholders a better idea of what their mining and processing operations could look like with the release of a preliminary economic assessment (PEA), Dec. 7.

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Lithium is not oil: A critical minerals perspective on what makes a resilient energy transition – by David G. Victor (World Economic Forum – December 5, 2023)

https://www.weforum.org/

After years in a wilderness of neglect, fears of energy security are back. Policy-makers and geopolitical strategists are worrying, again, about familiar problems – such as Europe’s excessive dependence on natural gas that’s no longer flowing from Russia and flakiness in global oil supplies.

Alongside those worries is a fresh fear: that the transition to a new, clean energy system will create a host of new dependencies and insecurities on the purveyors of critical materials such as lithium, copper, graphite, aluminum, nickel and rare earth minerals.

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Electric Vehicle Push Returns North Carolina to Its Lithium Mining Roots – by Alan Rappeport (New York Times – November 30, 2023)

https://www.nytimes.com/

After decades of stagnation, the Tar Heel State is the beneficiary of a lithium rush fueled by demand for car batteries.

The Kings Mountain hiking trail known as Cardio Hill overlooks a pit full of rainwater the size of a lake, but the craggy terrain situated about 30 miles west of Charlotte is now one of the most precious pieces of real estate in the United States.

Beneath that ground is a mine that has been stagnant since the 1980s and is believed to contain one of the nation’s largest deposits of lithium, a critical ingredient in the batteries needed to power electric vehicles.

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Electric-Car Makers Can Stop Worrying So Much About Lithium – by Annie Lee (Bloomberg News – November 29, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Lithium’s price slump over the past year has been as dramatic as its climb — and it’s probably not finished yet. The battery material’s benchmark price in China is now down about 80% from its November 2022 record high. At that time, lithium miners were enjoying soaring profits and carmakers were bemoaning surging costs.

Now, lithium’s sharp decline, together with steep drops for nickel and cobalt, are driving battery prices to all-time lows, according to BloombergNEF.

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The Salton Sea has even more lithium than previously thought, new report finds – by Sammy Roth (Los Angeles – November 28, 2023)

https://www.latimes.com/

Want to produce a huge amount of lithium for electric vehicle batteries — and also batteries that keep our homes powered after sundown — without causing the environmental destruction that lithium extraction often entails? Then the Salton Sea may be your jam.

Companies big and small have been swarming California’s largest lake for years, trying to find a cost-effective way to pull out the lithium dissolved in scorching hot fluid deep beneath the lake’s southern end. Now a new federal analysis suggests even more of the valuable metal is buried down there than we previously understood.

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Mining tycoons battle over lithium’s ‘corridor of power’ in Australia – by Nic Fildes and Harry Dempsey (Financial Times – November 26, 2023)

https://www.ft.com/

Local billionaires disrupt consolidation as industry positions itself for boom in mineral vital to electric cars

The vast tracts of desert in Western Australia, which have yielded gold, nickel and iron ore to prospectors in decades past, have now become a major battleground for miners of lithium, a key raw material for batteries as the world transitions to greener energy.

A struggle for control of the resource has been ignited this year as multinational companies have clashed with Australian mining billionaires over a series of takeover attempts in two of the remotest parts of the state.

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Giant Lithium Deposit in Democratic Republic of Congo Sparks Boardroom Battle – by William Clowes, Annie Lee and Michael J. Kavanagh (Bloomberg News – November 22, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — A battle over control of a massive untapped lithium deposit shifted gear as AVZ Minerals Ltd.’s biggest shareholder signaled it will support the ouster of the Australian miner’s board.

The Manono project in the Democratic Republic of Congo has the potential to be one of the world’s largest sources of the battery metal but, after acquiring exploration rights seven years ago, AVZ has found itself locked in lawsuits and arbitration against its partners and the Congolese government.

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