https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/
An Anishinabeg First Nation in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region wants to lead its own environmental assessment of a lithium mining project that the company Sayona is looking to develop on ancestral land.
The Long Point First Nation, whose 800 members mostly live in Winneway, Que., is concerned about the potential impacts that the project could have on its land and its traditional way of life.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Essar Group and Avalon Advanced Materials team up with aim of having $500-million processing plant in operation by 2025 to serve electric vehicle market
Avalon Advanced Materials has found a global financing partner from India to help build a $500-million lithium refinery in Thunder Bay.
After its first development partner backed out, Avalon, a Toronto-based junior miner, announced April 4 that it’s signed a binding letter of intent with RenJoules International, a subsidiary of the Essar Group.
Nickel, cobalt and lithium continue to benefit from electric vehicle demand
A strong end to the year and accelerated prices in January have led to higher commodities forecasts, and metals such as copper, nickel and lithium are benefiting from “the red-hot EV market.”
In S&P Global’s State of the Market: Mining Q4-21 conference, Sean Decoff, senior analyst, metals and mining research at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said that in general, the industry is seeing positives. COVID-19 cases are dropping, many countries are completely scrapping restrictions and persistent inflation is benefiting commodity prices.
(Bloomberg) — Nickel has captured much of the limelight among battery metals in recent weeks, and understandably so. Wild price swings, including an unprecedented 250% advance over two trading sessions amid a short squeeze, and concerns tied to Russia’s role as a key supplier have added to longstanding worries among automakers about securing enough of the material.
Even so, it’s another metal that’s been causing concern in the world’s largest electric vehicle market. China’s government last month hauled in a whole range of market players for two days of talks focused on halting a breakneck run-up in lithium, the metal that’s vital for almost all rechargeable batteries and critical to the roll-out of emissions-free cars and clean energy.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Jonathan Evans, head of Canada’s biggest lithium company, is hopeful that U.S. efforts to ignite domestic critical-minerals production will help fill the gap in private-sector lithium investment, as he searches for a partner to build a major new mine in Nevada.
U.S. President Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act this week, which opens up the spigot further on the already extensive U.S. government funding for critical-minerals industries, including lithium.
The industry minister’s decision not to launch a formal national security review over the sale of Neo-Lithium to China led to controversy in January
Canada should launch a full security review for every investment by a state-owned company from an “authoritarian state,” a parliamentary committee says.
On Tuesday, the House of Commons industry committee released its report on the acquisition of Canadian-owned mining company Neo-Lithium by a Chinese enterprise. It said “all investments by state-owned enterprises from authoritarian states” meet the Investment Canada Act’s threshold of potentially being “injurious to national security.”
The United States will likely need to massively increase its reliance on imports of foreign metals if it is to meet the Biden administration’s goal of moving the country to mainly electric vehicles.
U.S. production of the key metals needed to make EV batteries is already only a small percentage of national demand, so increasing sales of electric vehicles to 50 percent of all new car sales by 2030 will require replacing one set of trading relationships — ones built on oil — for another.
https://www.canadianminingjournal.com/
Frontier Lithium (TSXV: FL; OTC: LITOF; FRA: HL2) has successfully concluded a pilot-scale campaign to produce 500 kg of spodumene concentrate that will be used to conduct piloting of a hydrometallurgical conversion process.
A 7,800-kg sample of blended material from the Spark (89%) and PAC (11%) deposits was collected. It averaged 1.57% lithium oxide and 0.8% iron oxide. The Spark material is fine-grained, which necessitated desliming, magnetic separation and gravity concentration before flotation.
NEWRY, Maine (AP) — The race is on to produce more lithium in the United States. The U.S. will need far more lithium to achieve its clean energy goals — and the industry that mines, extracts and processes the chemical element is poised to grow. But it also faces a host of challenges from environmentalists, Indigenous groups and government regulators.
Although lithium reserves are distributed widely across the globe, the U.S. is home to just one active lithium mine, in Nevada. The element is critical to development of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that are seen as key to reducing climate-changing carbon emissions created by cars and other forms of transportation.
The find, one of the richest on Earth, could test Maine’s 2017 metallic mining laws, considered the strictest in the nation.
NEWRY — The richest known hard rock lithium deposit in the world lies a few miles northeast of the ski slopes of Sunday River and not far from Step Falls, where swimmers can wade in shallow pools formed by hundreds of feet of cascading granite ledge. Smaller deposits have been known in Maine for decades, but this recent discovery, just north of Plumbago Mountain in Newry, is the first to have a major resource potential.
And that potential is staggering: At current market prices, the deposit, thought to contain 11 million tons of ore, is valued at roughly $1.5 billion. Measuring up to 36 feet in length, some of the lithium-bearing crystals are among the largest ever found.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Imagine Lithium defining and expanding deposit first discovered in the 1950s
A Vancouver lithium outfit has signed an exploration agreement with three northwestern Ontario First Nation communities – Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek, Biinjitiwaabik Zaaging Anishinaabek. and Red Rock Indian Band – in the Lake Nipigon area.
A March 21 news release from Imagine Lithium said the document sets up a framework with the communities for ongoing consultation and accommodation around the company’s exploration work at its Jackpot Lithium Project, 140 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/
Canada only supplies a small percentage of the word’s critical minerals
The president and CEO of a Sudbury-based junior miner says the province’s new critical minerals strategy presents an opportunity for Ontario to become more self-sufficient in that area. On Thursday, March 17, Ontario Premier Doug Ford unveiled the province’s new five-year critical minerals strategy at a press conference at the Lac Des Iles mine, about 125 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, Ont.
The strategy aims to help Ontario capitalize on growing demand for minerals like nickel, lithium and cobalt, which are key components in the batteries used for smart phones and electric vehicles.
When EnergyX founder and CEO Teague Egan first arrived as a tourist in 2018 on Bolivia’s vast salt flats, and learned they contained the world’s largest untapped lithium reserve, the entrepreneur in him saw only blue-sky opportunity.
Bolivia has 9 million tonnes of identified lithium resources buried beneath its salt flats, the largest being the Salar de Uyuni, yet the country has had barely any production of lithium chemicals.
https://www.northernbeachesreview.com.au/
Mining for metals and rare earth elements will be a crucial part of a renewable energy future despite the environmental risks, University of Newcastle experts say. The need to eliminate the world’s dependence on fossil fuels means the benefits of mining for green technology outweigh the costs.
University of Newcastle Associate Professor Hao Tan said the mining of critical minerals would present environmental challenges. “But the scale of mining activities in relation to critical minerals is much smaller than those of other major resources in Australia, such as iron ore and coal,” Dr Tan said.
The federal government should block a Russian state-backed investment in a Canadian-owned lithium mine, critics say, as Ottawa looks for ways to punish Russia economically for its invasion of Ukraine.
At the end of November, Vancouver-based Alpha Lithium announced a deal to sell 15 per cent stake of its Tolillar Salar mine in Argentina to a subsidiary of Uranium One, which is part of a network of companies owned by ROSATOM, Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation.
