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Lithium

Miners must limit environmental impacts – King – by Esmarie Iannucci (MiningWeekly.com – June 26, 2023)

https://www.miningweekly.com/

PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Australia’s mining and downstream processing companies will need to move to a more sustainable footing in order to benefit from the future demand for critical minerals, federal Resources Minister Madeleine King said on Monday.

“We know the road to net zero runs through Australia’s resources sector. But we must do more to help Australians understand that the resources sector provides significant economic benefits to our country, as well as opportunities to share the benefits with First Nations communities and regional communities,” King said in a speech to the World Mining Congress in Brisbane.

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Lithium producers warn global supplies may not meet electric vehicle demand – by Ernest Scheyder (Reuters – June 22, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

LAS VEGAS, June 22 (Reuters) – Lithium producers are growing anxious that delays in mine permitting, staffing shortages and inflation may hinder their ability to supply enough of the battery metal to meet the world’s aggressive electrification timelines.

Once a niche metal used primarily in ceramics and pharmaceuticals, lithium is now one of the world’s most in-demand metals given aggressive EV plans from Stellantis (STLAM.MI), Ford (F.N) and other automakers.

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‘Lithium mania’: How Canada’s energy transition push is changing mining industry’s rush for gold – by Naimul Karim (Financial Post – June 23, 2023)

https://financialpost.com/

Scott Gryba grew up in a family of gold miners. His father headed four publicly listed gold companies, while his uncle made a living by discovering mining deposits and selling them for a profit.

Gryba, who is in his mid-40s, wants to follow suit. His day job involves analyzing the gold market for clients, but by night he turns into a prospector, researching hundreds of pages’ worth of geological reports of various land packages across Canada with hopes of finding the next big mining project.

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NASA opposes lithium mining at tabletop flat Nevada desert site used to calibrate satellites (KTAR News/Associated Press – June 22, 2023)

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RENO, Nev. (AP) — Environmentalists, ranchers and others have fought for years against lithium mining ventures in Nevada. Yet opposition to mining one particular desert tract for the silvery white metal used in electric car batteries is coming from unusual quarters: space.

An ancient Nevada lakebed beckons as a vast source of the coveted metal needed to produce cleaner electric energy and fight global warming. But NASA says the same site — flat as a tabletop and undisturbed like none other in the Western Hemisphere — is indispensable for calibrating the razor-sharp measurements of hundreds of satellites orbiting overhead.

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Lithium mine developer selects a Thunder Bay processing site – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – June 19, 2023)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Avalon Advanced Materials to repurpose former forestry property to become lithium hydroxide refinery.

A former Buchanan Woodlands property is the chosen site of a proposed lithium conversion chemical plant for Thunder Bay, possibly the first of its type in Canada. Avalon Advanced Materials, owner of a lithium deposit near Kenora, announced that 965 Strathcona Ave. is the property the Toronto company has acquired for the refinery, first proposed in 2020.

Located off Shipyard Road in the city’s north end, the site has existing road, rail and deep-water port access as well as all the utilities needed to support a lithium hydroxide processing plant, the company said in a June 19 news release.

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Albemarle to buy Lithium Power’s Australian unit – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – June 19, 2023)

https://www.mining.com/

Lithium Power International (ASX: LPI) has scrapped the demerger of its Western Australian lithium assets in favour of a $21 million (A$30m) sale of the three projects to US giant Albemarle Corporation (NYSE: ALB).

The cash transaction would see Albemarle acquire full ownership of Greenbushes, Pilgangoora and Tabba Tabba projects, which Lithium Power was attempting to spin off into a separate company — Western Lithium — that would have listed on the ASX.

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Lithium war erupts in Zimbabwe – by Staff (Bulawayo 24 – June 18, 2023)

https://bulawayo24.com/

THE scramble for lithium in Zimbabwe – which boasts Africa’s largest and the world’s fifth-biggest reserves of “white gold” – is escalating against the backdrop of soaring demand for the lucrative mineral, but local communities continue getting a raw deal and are largely excluded from benefitting.

Lithium is used in the manufacture of energy-storing batteries and has seen growing demand as electric vehicles gain global popularity. In the latest resource-curse controversy, villagers in the Muchemwa area of Buhera district are complaining that they are bearing the brunt of ruinous lithium extraction activity by First Roots Mining Company.

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China’s Sinomine eyeing major expansion at Tanco mine in Manitoba to boost critical minerals production – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – June 17, 2023)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

About 180 kilometres from Winnipeg, below Bernic Lake in eastern Manitoba, sits one of the world’s last remaining minable deposits of cesium. The soft silvery gold-coloured metal is housed in otherworldly giant pillars that hold up the roof of the Tanco underground mine.

For stability reasons, it can’t be accessed safely, but the owner of the mine, Beijing-based Sinomine Resource Group, has potentially figured out a way to get around that: a partial drainage of the lake above, and the construction of an open pit mine.

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Avalon Advanced Materials secures European partner to advance northwest lithium projects – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – June 15, 2023)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Belgium-based Sibelco to invest $63 million in Toronto lithium mine developer

Avalon Advanced Materials has attracted a strategic European partner to invest $63 million to speed its lithium projects into mines and to move towards establishing a processing facility in Thunder Bay.

Avalon, a Toronto-based lithium company, announced June 15 it has signed a binding term sheet with Belgium’s SCR-Sibelco NV to form and finance a proposed joint venture to advance Avalon’s two lithium projects in northwestern Ontario into production and to site a lithium hydroxide processing facility in Thunder Bay.

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Inside the race to remake lithium extraction for EV batteries – by Ernest Scheyder (Reuters – June 16, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

LAKE CHARLES, Louisiana, June 16 (Reuters) – The global battle to reshape the lithium industry is sucking in oil producers, tech startups and entrenched mining giants, each jockeying to be the first to reinvent how a metal key to the green energy transition is produced.

A fleet of direct lithium extraction (DLE) technologies are on the verge of tapping salty brine deposits across Europe, Asia, North America and elsewhere that the U.S. Geological Survey estimates are filled with roughly 70% of the world’s reserves of the metal.

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Critical minerals stocks are now worth more than gold – by Peter Ker and Vesna Poljak (Australian Financial Review – June 13, 2023)

https://www.afr.com/

Tony Rovira was about to board a plane from Perth to Melbourne when laboratory tests of eight lithium drill holes sent shares in his company, Azure Minerals, soaring more than 40 per cent. “I will definitely have a glass of champagne on the plane to celebrate the great work of our exploration teams,” he told The Australian Financial Review from Perth Airport on Tuesday.

They can afford the expensive champagne in Perth these days; the city is at the epicentre of a boom that has lifted the value of major, ASX-listed critical minerals companies to $86.2 billion from $8.6 billion in the past decade.

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Lithium boom comes to Brazil’s ‘misery valley’ (France 24 – June 15, 2023)

https://www.france24.com/en/

Araçuaí (Brazil) (AFP) – In a cloud of gray dust, a heavy-duty excavator loads a truck with stone blocks containing lithium, the “white gold” of the clean-energy revolution, which some hope will transform this parched, impoverished region of Brazil.

Sun-scorched and drought-prone, the Jequitinhonha valley, in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, is one of the poorest places in the country. But the region, nicknamed “misery valley,” is on the cusp of a boom: it is home to around 85 percent of the lithium reserves in Brazil, the world’s fifth-biggest producer of the metal, an essential ingredient in electric vehicle batteries.

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Ground Breakers: Iron ore squillionaire Gina Rinehart wants to sell our lithium to India – by Josh Chiat (Stockhead.com – June 14, 2023)

https://stockhead.com.au/

Gina Rinehart is worth approximately a totopatrillion bucks these days, a quantum we’ve invented because Hancock’s Roy Hill royalties are so iron-clad these days it really doesn’t matter what Australia’s richest person is worth. She’s minted.

And while iron ore has been the bread and butter of Hancock going back to the Lang days, Gina’s interests have become more varied and adventurous over time. Gas, cattle stations and coal are some obvious ones.

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In China’s lithium hub, mining boom comes at a cost – by Siyi Liu and Dominique Patton (Reuters – June 14, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

YICHUN, China, June 15 (Reuters) – Down a steep dirt road from the Baishi Huashan lithium mine in southern China, trucks laden with silvery grey ore rumble towards a cluster of smelters in the valley below that have sprung up to cash in on the electric vehicle battery boom.

The city of Yichun, China’s most prospective region for lithium, is ground zero in the country’s push to cut its reliance on imports of the metal for its battery industry, which makes three-quarters of the world’s lithium-ion batteries.

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James Cameron feels he ‘walked into an ambush’ in Argentine lithium dispute – by Daniel Politi (Associated Press – June 10, 2023)

https://apnews.com/

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Movie director James Cameron says he feels he “walked into an ambush” this week during a visit to Argentina in which he believes there was an attempt to use his image as an environmentalist to give a positive spin to lithium mining operations despite Indigenous opposition.

Cameron, the director of “Avatar” and “Titanic,” said Friday he would now devote attention and money from his Avatar Alliance Foundation to support Indigenous communities opposing lithium operations in South America.

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