Lithium – Page 60 – Republic of Mining

Tiny WA town of Greenbushes is ground zero for global lithium energy revolution – by Sean Smith (The West Australian – September 2, 2018)

September 4, 2018

https://thewest.com.au/

Just out of sight of the South Western Highway, in State forest between the tourism hotspots of Bridgetown and Balingup, one of WA’s oldest mining centres and its sleepy host town are at the heart of a global energy revolution.

More than a century after the area was first worked by tin miners, the Greenbushes mine and the town of the same name on its doorstep have emerged front and centre of the State’s multibillion-dollar development boom around lithium.

The metal and its chemical compounds have long been used in aluminium smelting, lubricants, pharmaceuticals, glassware and ceramics. Its light weight and energy density means it is also found in the batteries powering laptop computers, mobile phones, calculators and digital cameras.

Neo Lithium in Talks for $490 Million Argentine Mine Venture – by Jonathan Gilbert and Carolina Millan (Bloomberg News – September 4, 2018)

September 4, 2018

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Neo Lithium Corp. is negotiating a $490 million deal to finance development of a mine in Argentina as the Toronto-based penny stock looks to tap a nascent lithium boom in the South American country. Shares rose.

The company is in talks with would-be U.S., European and Asian joint-venture partners for Tres Quebradas in Catamarca province, Chief Executive Officer Waldo Perez said.

The project, which straddles salt flats and lakes across 135 square miles near the Chilean border, is billed as having high concentrations of the mineral used in rechargeable batteries and low impurities.

Australia-based lithium company looks to set up shop in Sudbury – by Jim Moodie (Sudbury Star – August 31, 2018)

August 31, 2018

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

As demand grows for batteries to power eco-friendly vehicles, an Australia-based lithium company is looking at setting up shop in Sudbury.

Lepidico, with a head office in Perth, is planning to launch a plant in the Nickel City that will extract lithium concentrate from hard-rock deposits, using a unique process it touts as more efficient than existing methods.

The company says its system can “achieve high lithium recovery,” while also offsetting production costs and eliminating tailings or effluent by refining a variety of useful byproducts. “We’re doing the full feasibility study now and if it proves viable, it means we would have a chemical plant that effectively has no waste coming out of it,” said Joe Walsh, managing director of Lepidico.

The company has already secured an Australia patent for its L-Max technology, with other patent applications pending in Europe, the U.S. and Japan. “There are other processes out there but they tend to employ roasting technology, which is power-intensive and not the greenest,” said Walsh.

Nevada Mine Could Produce 25% of World’s Lithium – by Paul Nelson (KTVN News – August 29, 2018)

August 30, 2018

http://www.ktvn.com/

The largest known lithium deposit in the United States is in northern Nevada, and a mining company says it has big plans for the property.

The largest known lithium deposit in the United States is in northern Nevada, and a mining company says it has big plans for the property. The high-grade, highly-concentrated mineral is found in the McDermitt Caldera, stretching from Humboldt County into Oregon.

“Chevron started drilling this site out back in the 70s, looking for uranium and they found lithium instead, so it’s a known resource,” Alexi Zawadzki, CEO of Lithium Nevada said. “The McDermitt Caldera is one of the most highly mineralized calderas in the world.”

A prehistoric volcano created the caldera, which turned into a lake. The lithium is in the clay that sat at the bottom of the water. “This was basically the Yellowstone hot spot, which has moved over the last 16 million years to the east and this is a geological artifact of that,” Zawadzki said.

Inside Albemarle’s quest to reinvent the lithium market – by Ernest Scheyder (Reuters U.S. – August 30, 2018)

August 30, 2018

https://www.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – As global demand for lithium hits overdrive, Albemarle Corp is investing millions of dollars to engineer specialized types of the light metal for electric car batteries, part of a strategy to remain the niche market’s top producer.

The pivot comes as battery makers such as Panasonic Corp, the sole battery supplier to Tesla Inc, increasingly demand more purified versions of lithium that can help boost electricity storage and increase a battery’s charge, shaping Albemarle’s strategy, according to sources and documents reviewed by Reuters and confirmed by the company.

Once used primarily as a pharmacological treatment for bipolar disorder, lithium has become one of the world’s most in-demand commodities thanks to the rising popularity of electric vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries.

In Chilean desert, global thirst for lithium is fueling a ‘water war’ – by Dave Sherwood (Reuters India – August 29, 2018)

August 29, 2018

https://in.reuters.com/

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – On Chilean water regulator Oscar Cristi’s desk, a small white espresso cup teeters atop piles of documents and loose folders that appear on the point of collapse, perhaps an apt metaphor for the growing water crisis in parts of the Andean country.

Sitting in his eighth-floor office adjacent the presidential palace, Cristi, a PhD economist, lays out a map of Chile showing key watersheds for mining. Swaths of the mineral-rich north are colored blue, denoting areas where aquifers are over-exploited. Soon, if Cristi gets his way, they will be red, meaning new water rights will be banned.

Reams of water rights were granted by Chilean governments over decades with little consideration for their cumulative impact as miners scrambled to stake claims on the small pockets of water available in the salt flats of the Salar de Atacama.

Chile’s SQM expects lithium prices to dip in second half – by Felipe Iturrieta and Aislinn Laing (Reuters U.S. – August 24, 2018)

August 27, 2018

https://www.reuters.com/

SANTIAGO, Aug 24 (Reuters) – Chilean lithium miner SQM said it forecast lithium prices dropping as much as 10 percent in the second half of the year compared to the first but stressed it saw no problems with potential water restrictions in the Atacama salt flat where it operates.

Chief executive Patricio de Solminihac said on a second-quarter earnings call that Australian lithium concentrate being converted in China for use in car and cell phone batteries was responsible for downward “price pressure.”

“There’s consensus the market will continue to grow, but on supply there’s more uncertainty,” he said. “We see that the price will be slightly lower in the second half of the year, although still significantly higher than in the second half of last year.”

Exclusive: Chile says to clamp down on water rights in lithium-rich Salar de Atacama – by Dave Sherwood and Fabian Cambero (Reuters U.S. – August 23, 2018)

August 24, 2018

https://www.reuters.com/

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Chile is preparing major new restrictions on the extraction of water from the lithium-rich Salar de Atacama salt flats, home to top lithium miners Albemarle and SQM SQM_pb.SN, the head of the country’s water authority told Reuters on Thursday.

Water authority chief Oscar Cristi said in an exclusive interview that regulators had stopped issuing new permits to extract water from the southernmost sector of the Salar’s watershed, known as C2, which is a key water supply for BHP’s Escondida copper mine, the world’s largest, and Antofagasta’s Zaldivar mine.

Cristi said the government had granted BHP and Antofagasta permits to pump six times more water from an aquifer at Atacama than it could sustain, prompting the ban. BHP has since proposed to cut water extraction from wells in C2 by more than half, but Cristi said regulators still believed that rate to be “insufficient.”

Avalon plans smaller scale Ontario lithium project – by Mariaan Webb (MiningWeekly.com – August 23, 2018)

August 24, 2018

http://www.miningweekly.com/

TSX-listed junior Avalon Advanced Materials has outlined a new preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for its Separation Rapids lithium project, which simplifies the Kenora, Ontario-based project to initially produce lithium mineral concentrates, with the potential for later expansion to produce battery materials lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide.

The smaller scale development model “substantially” reduced capital expenditure (capex) requirements from the original model completed in September 2016, the company said in a news release, adding that the full updated PEA would be published online in the next few weeks.

The updated PEA uses a plant throughput rate of 475 000 t/y, compared with the 950 000 t/y rate used in the 2016 PEA. This will result in a 20-year operating life, based on the present known mineral resources, with production of 71 500 t/y of petalite concentrate and 11 800 t/y of lepidolite concentrate for 18.5 years.

The Unheralded Potential for Lithium Mining in the Northwest Territories (Investing News Network – August 21st, 2018)

August 23, 2018

Investing News Network

This Investing News Network article is sponsored by Equitorial Exploration TSXV:EXX

As the market for rechargeable batteries, electric cars and solar panels continues to expand, so does the market for one their instrumental materials: lithium.

As such, mining firms are searching the globe for economically viable lithium deposits to fulfill the burgeoning market deficiency and meet the explosive demand for the metal. Some companies are turning their efforts towards a jurisdiction historically associated with diamonds and gold, but with massive untapped potential for lithium extraction: the Northwest Territories (NWT).

The NWT’s latent potential for mineral production

Much of the history of mining in the NWT is in the southern region of the territory; the north remains one of the largest untapped mining areas in the entire world.

Lithium price: Chile giant’s scorched earth strategy – by Frik Els (Mining.com – August 17, 2018)

August 20, 2018

http://www.mining.com/

SQM this week sold its 50%-share in an Argentinian brine joint venture, leaving the world’s number two producer of lithium with a single project outside its core Chilean operations.

The $12.8 billion Santiago based company can afford to let assets go – its pipeline is choc full already.

Production startup for the 40,000 tonnes per year Mt Holland project alongside Kidman Resources in Western Australia is 2020. The spodumene mine will begin producing lithium carbonate and hydroxide a year later.

State urged to strike while lithium ion’s hot – by Daniel Mercer (The West Australian – August 13, 2018)

August 14, 2018

https://thewest.com.au/

An influential mining lobby has urged the McGowan Government to grasp the “once-in-a-generation” chance to make batteries in WA, saying it could deliver huge economic benefits to the State.

In a submission to a parliamentary inquiry, the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies said WA had natural advantages in lithium ion battery manufacturing and needed to exploit them.

Mines Minister Bill Johnston said there was “no question” WA had a finite chance to get a share of the lithium battery market but it was imperative to have a clear plan about how to build the industry.

Auto industry’s use of lithium-ion batteries to grow seven-fold by 2025 – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – August 13, 2018)

August 13, 2018

http://www.mining.com/

The use of lithium-ion batteries by automakers is expected grow seven-fold by 2025, helped mainly by their dropping costs as well as by subsidies and incentives in many countries, particularly in China, to encourage sales of electric vehicles (EVs)

According to Will Adams, Metal Bulletin’s Head of Research for the battery materials, base metals and precious metals markets, demand for lithium-ion batteries will soar to 650 GWh by 2025, from only 70 GWh last year.

The need to store electricity, generated by renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, will also help demand to grow, he said on a report published Monday.

Climate Changed: The Battery Boom Could End Up Burning Some Investors – by Anna Hirtenstein (Bloomberg News – August‎ ‎13‎, ‎2018‎)

August 13, 2018

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Spending on battery start-ups has boomed to $1.5 billion in the first half of this year. Not all projects will survive.

Some of the latest battery technologies may become obsolete before reaching the market because of the breakneck pace of advances in the industry.

Teams of scientists from San Francisco to Shenzhen are experimenting with new chemical processes to improve the traditional lithium-ion cell and find new ways to bottle up electricity for use at another time. Investors in those projects are starting to worry that they might have picked the wrong technology.

That’s turning the debate about so-called stranded assets on its head. To date, the term has been deployed to refer to fossil-fuel projects that may turn unprofitable as pollution regulations tighten. In the future, upheaval in the way energy storage devices are made mean that investments in batteries may turn unprofitable even though they’re at the heart of transforming the way the energy system works.

Australian miners steam ahead with lithium exploration – by Melanie Burton (Reuters U.S. – August 9, 2018)

August 10, 2018

https://www.reuters.com/

KALGOORLIE (Reuters) – Australian miners are ramping up exploration for lithium even as prices dip, betting on renewed strength in the raw material used for rechargeable batteries.

Australian miners’ enthusiasm for lithium projects appears undimmed by sliding prices as they expand their exploration and development efforts on the back of expected strong demand for battery chemicals.

Australia accounts for around half the world’s supply of lithium where it is mined from hard rock deposits, with the rest of the world’s supply found below salt lakes, mostly in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile.