https://www.northernminer.com/
With the aim to supply raw materials for about half a million electric vehicles annually by 2025, Frontier Lithium (TSXV: FL; US-OTC: LITOF) has stepped up its pace by quadrupling indicated resources at its Spark deposit in northwestern Ontario.
Spark now hosts 14.4 million tonnes grading 1.40%, up from the previously estimated 3.3 million tonnes grading 1.59%, after the company conducted two drill programs last year covering 3,269 meters.
Thacker Pass today is a quiet stretch of land in Northern Nevada, rolling prairie nestled against the mountains, with lots of sagebrush and few people around.
But in the past year the area has become a hotspot of controversy, with national media pulling in to talk with protesters opposed to the Thacker Pass lithium mine that Lithium Americas is working toward building on the site. Some protesters have been camped out near the project site. Lengthy stories have been written on the protesters and the project.
Lithium is powering the world’s electric vehicles, making it a critical component in the fight against carbon pollution. According to a new study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the conjunction of lithium mining and climate change in the Andes Mountains may be seriously impacting flamingo populations.
The research looked at the impacts of lithium mining and climate change on shallow, saltwater lakes in the Chilean Andes, where flamingos congregate for eating and mating. The findings demonstrate that two species of flamingos that exclusively breed in these mountains had lost 10 to 12% of their population in just 11 years, but only at the lake polluted through mining.
Lithium is a metal that is used in almost all electronics today, with a surge in demand over the last two years pushing up the price more than ten times during that time.
The metal’s production is concentrated in only a few countries, with 80% of the global production and refining coming from China. This presents a unique national and economic security challenge. In fact, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has declared that lithium is “essential” to U.S. economic security and “critical” to national security.
Near the rusting carcass of a smelter, barefoot men and women scratch the ground in the quest for cassiterite — the tin oxide ore that generations ago gave the town of Manono a taste of the good life.
The diggers carry the sandy earth to the Lukushi River where women wash the grit in metal bowls, hoping to find some black nuggets from which to make a living. Standing in the water from morning to evening and looking for ore brings in between 15 000 and 18 000 Congolese francs ($7.50 to $9) a day.
Deep below the ground in Ukraine, where Russia continues to mount an aggressive attack, lies vast, untapped mineral wealth that could hold the keys to a lucrative, clean-energy future for the Eastern European nation.
Ukrainian researchers have speculated that the country’s eastern region holds close to 500,000 tons of lithium oxide, a source of lithium, which is critical to the production of the batteries that power electric vehicles. That preliminary assessment, if it holds, would make Ukraine’s lithium reserves one of the largest in the world.
Zeng Yuqun, chairman of China’s largest electric-vehicle (EV) battery manufacturer, has suggested that the Chinese government speed up “exploration and development” of lithium resources in the country to ensure supply chain security amid a global shortage of the rare earth metal as more people move to EVs.
Zeng, chairman of Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited (CATL), included lithium development as one of his proposals submitted to authorities in his capacity as a delegate of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the country’s top political consultative body.
As the Imperial Valley begins its transformation into what some are calling Lithium Valley, one company says it could have lithium production at commercial scale by 2026, President Joe Biden said Tuesday at an event with Gov. Gavin Newsom, industry executives, community representatives and labor leaders.
Biden met with the group to announce several investments in domestic production of critical minerals and materials, including lithium extraction in Imperial County.
A trio of U.S. lawmakers are blasting Canada’s “complicit approval” that allowed the sale of a Toronto-listed lithium mining company to a Chinese state-owned firm, and are urging Biden administration officials to investigate the acquisition.
In a letter to several U.S. Cabinet secretaries obtained by CTV News, Rep. Michael Walz (R-Florida), Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Lance Gooden (R-TX) describe the takeover of Neo Lithium Corp by China’s Zijin Mining Group Ltd. as “highly concerning,” and accuse the Canadian government of underestimating “the threat imposed by the Chinese Communist Party.”
South America’s Lithium Triangle contains more than half of the world’s reserves of the critical metal that is used in batteries, and China is looking to carve out a bigger piece of the pie
Just days after Argentinian President Alberto Fernandez signed his country up for China’s Belt and Road Initiative during a high-profile trip to Beijing this month, the spot price of lithium metal in the Chinese market reached 2 million yuan (US$315,000) per tonne for the first time – more than four times what it cost a year ago.
The two countries happen to be the world’s major players in the supply chain of the metal – an essential material used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries.
As the price of lithium has skyrocketed over 400% in the past year, the demand for lithium-ion batteries appears more intense than ever. Lithium has earned the ‘white petroleum’ label due to its dramatic need for supplies from the rise of battery giga-factories, electric vehicles, powerwalls and energy storage businesses.
Battery makers including Tesla, Panasonic and LG Chem, have to budget for the rising cost of lithium. Batteries that go into electric cars require lithium. More battery makers will need to expand production to keep up with demand from electric cars.
The lithium industry may be able to narrow the gap between tight supply and expanding market growth by 2030, even as demand forecasts continue to rise and analysts warn of a large deficit, Albemarle executives said Feb. 17.
“I think you’re seeing that we’re getting through some of those growing pains,” CEO Kent Masters said during a call with analysts. “It is a stretch, and it does require some new technology and operating in some places where historically the lithium industry hasn’t done that, but it’s not impossible.”
The deal went through swiftly – and almost immediately prompted calls for a national security review. Just three months after Chinese-state-owned Zijin Mining Group announced its US$960 million plans to buy Canadian miner Neo Lithium, the proposal was signed, screened and delivered.
At a corporate level, the deal made sense. Neo Lithium’s biggest mine operation is in Argentina, where Zijin already has interests and plans to build a lithium carbonate plant. Canadian officials also said carmakers in North America were unlikely to use lithium produced so far away.
LONDON, Feb 15 (Reuters) – The lithium supply crunch has arrived in full force. The price boom of 2016-2017, it’s now clear, was just the dry run. This is the real deal.
Back in November 2017 the spot price for battery-grade lithium carbonate in China peaked at 175,000 yuan per tonne. Fastmarkets currently assesses it at 400,000-430,000 yuan, up 47% on the start of the year and eight times higher than it was at the start of 2021.
The country’s efforts to create a new constitution could serve as a model or warning for tackling climate change and inequality.
Constanza San Juan is feeling optimistic. She sits on a committee of Chile’s constitutional convention that on Feb. 1 voted to nationalize the country’s mineral wealth—its deep veins of copper, lithium, magnesium, and silver—a notion that has mining companies and markets hyperventilating.
The idea is sufficiently radical that few believe it will be endorsed by the required two-thirds of the full convention. But San Juan, a 36-year-old historian, not only hopes it will—she wants it to go further.
