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Lithium

The lithium stocks best placed to capture price boom – by Alex Gluyas (Australian Financial Review – May 4, 2022)

https://www.afr.com/

Fund managers favour established lithium producers, rather than explorers, given they’re more likely to capture soaring prices.

The powerful rally in lithium stocks is not sustainable for all companies in the sector, strategists warn, meaning investors will need to become more selective if they want exposure to one of the hottest pockets of the local sharemarket.

The price of lithium, a key ingredient in batteries, has exploded in the past year as tight supply has been met with booming demand fuelled by the transition to electric vehicles.

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Why Lithium Mining For EV Batteries Should Be Our ‘Absolute Last Resort’ – by Kea Wilson (Streets Blog USA – May 3, 2022)

https://usa.streetsblog.org/

Lithium mining is having a devastating impact on local and indigenous communities as well as ecosystems around the globe, and reducing dependence on automobiles must be a key part of our strategy to curb the damage, a new report says.

According to a new analysis from the Natural Resources Defense Council, the rapid expansion of the electric vehicle battery market is driving a boom in demand for lithium carbonate, a synthesized compound whose key component — lithium itself — is derived from just a tiny handful of natural deposits located throughout the world.

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Could there be another lithium processing plant coming to Thunder Bay? – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – May 2, 2022)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Australia’s Green Technology Metals has been scoping out the city for a processing plant site

Thunder Bay was once known as one of the forest products manufacturing capitals of Canada. These days, the city looks to be shaping up to become the North American centre of lithium processing for the electric vehicle revolution.

Australia’s Green Technology Metals is looking to fast-track one of its four lithium properties in the Armstrong area of northwestern Ontario into mine production. The company is further eyeballing Thunder Bay as a regional processing hub to convert lithium concentrate mined from its flagship Seymour Project into battery-grade material for the electric vehicle industry.

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Skyrocketing Lithium Prices Highlight Need For New Technologies – by David Blackmon (Forbes Magazine – May 2, 2022)

https://www.forbes.com/

Concerns over the ultimate availability of adequate supplies of lithium and other minerals that are critical to the energy transition have elevated recently. On April 8, Tesla and SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk tweeted that he was considering starting his own mining company in light of rising prices for lithium, which he said had reached “insane levels.”

“Tesla might actually have to get into the mining & refining directly at scale, unless costs improve,” Musk said in his tweet. “There is no shortage of the element itself, as lithium is almost everywhere on Earth, but pace of extraction/refinement is slow.”

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The Geopolitics of the Rare-Metals Race – by Guillaume Pitron (The Washington Quarterly – April 25, 2022)

The Washington Quarterly

The 20th century was the era of black gold; the 21st will
undoubtedly be the era of metals

In 2010, a team of Pentagon officials and American geologists uncovered Afghanistan’s best kept secret: a plethora of mining resources such as lithium, copper, cobalt—including 1.4 million metric tons of rare-earth elements, estimated to be worth more than $1 trillion, all of them essential to modern industry.

After this development, Afghanistan, according to The New York Times, rapidly became heralded as a country which could “be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world.” More than a decade later, however, US forces filing out of Afghanistan were leaving these resources untapped, attracting the interest of neighboring nations.

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So You Think You Can Drill: How do I know if my lithium stock is onto a winner? – by Josh Chiat (Stockhead.com.au – April 27, 2022)

https://stockhead.com.au/

Lithium is the word on every investors’ lips right now and for good reason. Equities in the key battery metal have been on a tear as low supplies and rising EV demand has seen prices soar up to five times higher than the price factored in by car manufacturers.

“Right now, lithium prices are at least 3x past the pain point for electric vehicle makers,” Simon Moores, the head honcho of pricing agency Benchmark Minerals Intelligence, says.

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Top Bid for Lithium Up 140% After Musk’s ‘Insane Levels’ Call – by Annie Lee (Bloomberg News – April 28, 2022)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — The highest bid for lithium at an online sale surged by 140% in just six months, an indication the stampede for supplies of the main ingredient used in electric vehicle batteries could get even more intense.

Pilbara Minerals Ltd.’s auction of spodumene concentrate — a partly-processed form of lithium — attracted a top bid of $5,650 a ton on Wednesday for a cargo of 5,000 tons. That compares with $2,350 at the previous sale in late October on the Australian miner’s Battery Metal Exchange.

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‘Mr. Lithium’ Warns There’s Not Enough Battery Metal to Go Around – by Gabrielle Coppola (Bloomberg News – April 22, 2022)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

Batteries, and more precisely battery metals, are poised to replace chips as the new bottleneck for the auto industry.

While there’s been a lot of attention on nickel, especially after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, another key metal — lithium — is a source of concern for manufacturers dealing with all manner of supply chain challenges.

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Renewable energy depends on rare metal, but can it be mined sustainably? – by Benjamin Powless (Welland Tribune – April 25, 2022)

https://www.wellandtribune.ca/

Long Point First Nation is calling for more comprehensive environmental reviews after an Australian mining company said it wants to expand operations in the area. The Anishinabek community situated in Winneway is concerned about the impacts of lithium mining, a key component in the global efforts to move towards sustainable energy.

As environmental initiatives push consumers towards electric vehicles, debates rage over how “green” is the production of key elements like lithium, as mining can devastate landscapes.

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New Lithium-Extraction Technology Attracts Investors. But Is It Viable? – by Scott Patterson and Amrith Ramkumar (Wall Street Journal – April 21, 2022)

https://www.wsj.com/

Developing a domestic supply is an important part of the U.S. push to expand alternative energy sources

Lithium is a key component of rechargeable batteries, and developing domestic supply is seen as an important step in a broad push for the U.S. to transition to alternative energy sources.

In February, the Biden administration unveiled plans to invest $2.9 billion to boost production of advanced batteries and strengthen the battery supply chain in the U.S., including the development of domestic supplies of lithium. Last month President Biden also invoked the Defense Protection Act to increase production of battery metals.

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Musk’s tweets fuel mining industry’s hopes of a buyout by Tesla – by Ernest Scheyder (Reuters – April 19, 2022)

https://www.reuters.com/

Elon Musk’s recent musings that high lithium prices may force Tesla Inc to make its own supply of the electric vehicle battery metal have fueled hopes by some that the billionaire entrepreneur will instead opt for a buyout of an established mining company.

The auto giant already has supply contracts for nickel, lithium and a range of other EV metals from suppliers across the globe. But it needs more, and industry analysts say Tesla may soon realize that building a mine or processing facility from scratch is not as easy as it sounds and the automaker should instead consider a buyout.

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Australia Should Be a Green Mining Superpower: Expert – by Victoria Kelly-Clark The Epoch Times – April 19, 2022)

https://www.theepochtimes.com/

Australia needs to start focusing on utilising its abundant natural advantages to take advantage of the global financial push for green energy, an expert has said. Director of Climate Energy Finance (CEF) Tim Buckley told The Epoch Times he believes that Australia has the potential to become a world leader in the green revolution that is now he says, inevitable.

However, the country is lagging behind. “Australia should be a renewable energy superpower,” Buckley said. “We should be a renewable mining industry superpower.”

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GM and Ford Join Tesla in Race to Secure EV Battery Material Supplies – by Al Root (Barrons – April 13, 2022)

https://www.barrons.com/

Auto makers are trying to secure supplies of critical materials for meeting their electric-vehicle goals, particularly as prices rise . Ford Motor, General Motors, and Tesla have all made some recent strategic moves to shore up materials to produce EV batteries. On Tuesday, General Motors (ticker: GM) signed a cobalt supply deal with global mining giant Glencore (GLEN.London).

Cobalt is used along with metals such as lithium, nickel, and iron in rechargeable EV batteries. Cobalt gets more attention than other EV materials because most of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has a reputation for poor mining practices and a weak human rights record. The cobalt GM is buying from Glencore , however, will be sourced from Australia.

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Mexican president to fast-track nationalization of lithium if power reform thwarted – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – April 13, 2022)

https://www.mining.com/

Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) is ready to send a bill to Congress next week declaring lithium a “strategic mineral” and reserving future exploration and mining for the government if lawmakers fail to pass his constitutional reform tightening state control of the electricity market.

The country’s lower house is set to vote on Sunday on a constitutional energy overhaul that includes nationalizing lithium and guaranteeing state-owned utility Comisión Federal de Electricidad, or CFE, 54% of the market.

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As EV market grows, mining exec says he wants keep Northern Ontario control over lithium project – by Len Gilles (Sudbury.com – April 9, 2022)

https://www.sudbury.com/

Lithium is one of the key minerals used in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles

A Sudbury mining executive told the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce Wednesday that he is working hard to keep managerial control of his company and its assets in Northern Ontario.

Trevor Walker, President and CEO of Frontier Lithium, was speaking at the chamber’s president’s series luncheon held in Copper Cliff. Walker said Frontier has spent more than 10 years developing an incredibly rich and significantly large lithium mineral deposit in Northwestern Ontario. Lithium is one of the key minerals used in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs).

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