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Lithium

Lithium Players Race for Breakthrough to Meet Electric Car Demand – by James Attwood and Yvonne Yue Li (Bloomberg News – August 30, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — On the outskirts of El Dorado — heart of Arkansas’ 1920s oil boom — a company backed by Koch Industries Inc. is looking to dramatically speed up extraction of a battery metal essential to weaning the world off fossil fuels, while proving naysayers wrong in the process.

Standard Lithium Ltd. is working on the breakthrough inside a white warehouse near a massive chemical factory run by Germany’s Lanxess AG that feeds brackish wastewater into the facility. A cluster of pipes and tanks in the demonstration plant turn brine into a lithium compound within days instead of the year or more that traditional recovery methods take.

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Lithium revival a dead cat bounce as prices slump to 20-month low – by Frik Els (Mining.com – August 30, 2023)

https://www.mining.com/

The lithium market has been in turmoil with dramatic rises and falls in prices over the last five years as demand from electric cars take off and global supply growth struggles to keep up.

In its latest market assessment for the two weeks ending August 23, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence tracks an eye-popping 10.7% sequential decline in its lithium index, a sales weighted measure of global prices across grades.

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The key ingredient to millions of EVs is buried under a former volcano — but there’s still a lot we don’t know – by Justine Calma (The Verge – August 30, 2023)

https://www.theverge.com/

The company constructing a controversial new lithium mine to supply GM’s electric vehicles knows where it wants to drill next based on new research it published today.

Lithium Americas broke ground on its mine at Thacker Pass in Nevada after facing fierce opposition from Native American tribes, environmental advocates, and local ranchers. But that mine is just one slice of the McDermitt Caldera, the remnants of a supervolcano that’s now believed to hold one of the biggest lithium deposits in the world.

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E3 to test whether it can get lithium from abandoned oil fields in first for Canada – by Naimul Karim (Financial Post – August 30, 2023)

https://financialpost.com/

CEO predicts direct lithium extraction process will dominate the industry

The technology that isolates lithium from brine solution without the need for traditional evaporation methods wasn’t something Chris Doornbos was keen on when he founded E3 Lithium Ltd. in 2016.

But seven years on, the chief executive predicts the direct lithium extraction (DLE) process, which is yet to be commercially used by miners outside China, will dominate an industry looking to boost supplies of the metal to meet the rising demand for electric vehicles (EVs) in the next few years.

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A worldwide lithium shortage could come as soon as 2025 – by Lee Ying Shan (CNBC.com – August 29, 2023)

https://www.cnbc.com/

The world could face a shortage for lithium as demand for the metal ramps up, with some analysts forecasting that it could come as soon as 2025. Others, however, see a longer time frame before that shortfall hits.

BMI, a Fitch Solutions research unit, was among those that predict a lithium supply deficit by 2025. In a recently published report, BMI largely attributed the deficit to China’s lithium demand exceeding that of its supply. “We expect an average of 20.4% year-on-year annual growth for China’s lithium demand for EVs alone over 2023-2032,” the report stated.

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China buys half of the lithium mines on the market – by Elouise Fowler (Australian Financial Review – August 27, 2023)

https://www.afr.com/

Half of the world’s biggest lithium mines put on the market since 2018 were bought by Chinese companies, underscoring the tightening grip of the world’s second-largest economy over the global battery metal supply chain.

But a closer look suggests national interest arguments are posing a hurdle to future deals where the United States and its allies are concerned, pushing China deeper into emerging markets for new sources of the coveted raw material.

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Municipal leaders talk future ‘billion-dollar’ lithium industry in Thunder Bay, Ont., at AMO conference – by Sarah Law (CBC News Thunder Bay – August 24, 2023)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/

Leaders in Thunder Bay, Ont., voiced some of the city’s top priorities at the Association of Municipalities Ontario’s (AMO) annual general meeting and conference this week. The conference gives municipal leaders the chance to meet with provincial ministers and raise local concerns at a larger level in the hopes of getting more support.

The city sent Coun. Kristen Oliver and Coun. Shelby Ch’ng — chair and vice-chair, respectively, of the intergovernmental affairs committee — along with mayor Ken Boshcoff and city manager Norm Gale to London, Ont., to participate in a marathon of meetings.

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Frenzy of Foreign Suitors Wooing Australian Lithium Miners (Asia Financial – August 23, 2023)

https://www.asiafinancial.com/

The deals mania comes as Australia undertakes a critical minerals strategy that envisages major collaborations with investors and global partners to become a renewables superpower

Emerging Australian lithium companies have seen a surge of buyouts from suitors seeking to secure cheaper supplies of electric-vehicle battery materials.

Companies such as Albemarle Corp, the biggest lithium producer, have been seeking buys in Australia, which makes the most lithium in the world and has more than 80 lithium-related companies listed on its main stock exchange. Their interest has been driven by falling prices for the commodity and a move by major producer Chile to nationalise its lithium industry earlier this year.

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Lithium Craze Sparks 1,100% Stock Gains as Well as Deep Losses – by Georgina McKay and James Fernyhough (Yahoo News/Bloomberg – August 22, 2023)

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/

(Bloomberg) — Investors who bought Australian lithium stocks at the start of the year could have doubled their money or lost more than half of it — reflecting the extreme volatility of companies mining one of the world’s hottest commodities.

Lithium mining is dominated by small and mid-sized firms in Australia, the world’s No.1 producer of the critical electric vehicle battery ingredient. Previously unknown companies have soared in value after striking large deposits of lithium-bearing spodumene, mainly in Western Australia, while others have sputtered on uncertainty.

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Sayona advances planning for Quebec lithium carbonate plant – by Silvia Pikal (CIM Magazine – August 21, 2023)

https://magazine.cim.org/en/

NAL is set to become the only lithium operation with a concentrator and carbonate plant all on the same site in North America

Australian miner Sayona Mining Limited announced it is moving forward with the restart of a lithium carbonate production plant at its North American Lithium (NAL) operation in Quebec, bringing it closer to becoming a downstream producer of lithium chemicals.

In late June, the company released the results of a preliminary study for the standalone lithium carbonate project, outlining the production of 372,000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium carbonate from 2.9 million tonnes of spodumene concentrate from the NAL mine over a project life of 16 years. All-in sustaining costs per tonne of lithium carbonate are estimated to be $15,996.

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Stellantis invests more than $100 million in California lithium project – by Ernest Scheyder (Reuters – August 17, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – Automaker Stellantis said it would invest more than $100 million in California’s Controlled Thermal Resources, its latest bet on the direct lithium extraction (DLE) sector amid the global hunt for new sources of the electric vehicle battery metal.

The investment by the Chrysler and Jeep parent announced on Thursday comes as the green energy transition and U.S. Inflation Reduction Act have fueled concerns that supplies of lithium and other materials may fall short of strong demand forecasts.

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Lithium Royalty wins legal victory in dispute over revenue from Thacker Pass mine in Nevada – by Andrew Willis (Globe and Mail – August 17, 2023)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Lithium Royalty Corp. has won a court battle over a stake in one of the world’s largest lithium projects, the Thacker Pass mine in Nevada, setting the stage for a settlement analysts estimate could be worth more than $300-million.

Toronto-based Lithium Royalty, which has helped finance 32 mining projects, spent the past two years in a dispute with asset manager Orion Resource Partners over a royalty on future revenues from Thacker Pass, which is owned by Vancouver-based Lithium Americas Corp.

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China Goes after South America’s New Treasure: Lithium PART II – by Sabina Nicholls (Dialogo Americas – August 14, 2023)

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With a triple action of state investment, diplomacy, and geostrategic corruption, China is leading the race for lithium. This situation was discussed in the first part of this report, exposing the tactics of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to conquer the Andean countries rich in this metal.

But what is a gain for China is a loss for Latin America. Experts and analysts are alarmed by the socio-environmental impact of Chinese investments in the exploration and exploitation of lithium and fear a dependence on the Asian country to obtain this mineral, indispensable for the modern world and the energy transition.

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More Than 50 Firms Want In on New Lithium-Mining Model in Chile – by James Attwood (Bloomberg News – August 15, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Mining companies are jostling to negotiate lithium deals under a new government model in Chile, home to the world’s biggest reserves of the metal that’s a key component in electric-vehicle batteries.

To meet the demand, authorities are well advanced in work to identify new extraction areas and are compiling bidding rules for contracts to explore and possibly mine them, Karla Flores, head of InvestChile, said in an interview.

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Lithium-ion battery fires from electric cars, bikes and scooters are on the rise. Are firefighters ready? – by BY ASH-HAR QURAISHI, APARNA ZALANI, RYAN BEARD and DILCIA MERCEDES (CBS News – August 15, 2023)

https://www.cbsnews.com/

The rechargeable batteries that power common items like e-bikes, scooters and electric cars can pose a dangerous new threat to firefighters. They burn hotter and longer — and many fire departments may be unprepared to tackle them.

In June, four people were killed and two others seriously injured after a lithium-ion battery malfunctioned and sparked a fire in a first-floor e-bike shop in New York. Fire officials say the blaze quickly spread to apartments above the shop.

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