An Australian company on track to become Europe’s first lithium producer said China’s appetite for the material, which is key to the renewable-energy transition, has created a clear runway for further expansion in the continent.
“A lot of supply is going into China, and China’s own needs are growing,” Critical Metals Corp. Executive Chairman Tony Sage said in a Bloomberg Television interview from Perth on Wednesday.
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/
The company that has the lion’s share of its industrial activities in the remote Russian Arctic says it is determined to reduce dependency on western equipment and technology. According to Production Director Sergei Stepanov, there are now major risks related with the supply of spare parts for the company’s existing equipment.
“At the moment, risks related to the punctual deliveries of spare parts to imported mining machinery and equipment, as well as the more complicated supply logistics, are of major importance,” Stepanov says in a comment published in the company’s recently issued Q3 report.
Nouveau Monde inks agreement with one of world’s biggest battery makers
The “main limiting factor” of an emerging strategy to offset China’s dominance of the battery supply chain for electric vehicles (EVs) will be the Asian powerhouse’s grip on the market for graphite, said the head of a Canadian company attempting to become a significant supplier of the material.
Democratic countries in North America and Europe have begun using their spending and regulatory powers to ensure EV production occurs close to home, or at least in places where they wield influence. The effort is a response to the growing animosity between Beijing and the United States and its allies.
https://www.northernminer.com/
Ontario has joined a country-wide consultation process to hammer out energy and mining strategies for transitioning to clean power using critical minerals, Canada’s natural resources minister said on Tuesday.
The province joins nine other provinces and territories who’ve already signed up for the ministry’s Regional Energy and Resource Tables or said they will soon join the effort, Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said. Quebec and Alberta have been delayed by leadership changes but should agree, leaving out one prairie province for now.
The U.S. is doubling down on nuclear power generation as a means to reduce emissions and is supporting demonstration projects of advanced smaller nuclear reactors that promise to be more efficient and cost less to build than the current nuclear fleet.
However, there is one major hurdle to the construction of most advanced reactors under development in the United States—the uranium type of fuel on which those reactors are designed to run is currently sold commercially by only one company in the world. And that company is a subsidiary of Russia’s ROSATOM, the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation.
Ottawa is going nuclear in a big way, putting almost $1 billion into building a new reactor at Darlington, near Toronto. It’s a move that has been years in the making and comes with plenty of controversy — as well as prospects to test a new low-emissions technology to generate electricity, and enough power for 300,000 homes.
It’s the latest sign that Canada’s climate change commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050 will have to be a voyage full of political compromise and big bucks that come not just from government but from the private sector.
The Narwhal
Twenty-five years ago, five First Nations brought power to their remote, underserved communities, defying skepticism, scorn and swampy terrain
For the Indigenous communities along northern Ontario’s James Bay — the ones that have lived on and taken care of the lands as long as anyone can remember — the new millenium marked the start of a diesel-less future.
While the southern part of the province took Ontario’s power grid for granted, the vast majority of these communities had never been plugged in. Their only source of power was a handful of very loud diesel-powered generators. Because of that, daily life in the Attawapiskat, Kashechewan and Fort Albany First Nations involved deliberating a series of tradeoffs.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Yamana Gold Inc. executives and board members are in line for more than US$100-million in cash payments for their shares and severance packages if the proposed acquisition of the Canadian gold miner by South Africa’s Gold Fields Ltd. succeeds.
The figure is based on disclosures by Toronto-based Yamana in a proxy circular to shareholders released in advance of its shareholder vote on the deal on Nov. 21. Yamana declined to comment on the payouts.
Oct 21 (Reuters) – The world’s top automakers are planning to spend nearly $1.2 trillion through 2030 to develop and produce millions of electric vehicles, along with the batteries and raw materials to support that production, according to a Reuters analysis of public data and projections released by those companies.
The EV investment figure, which has not previously been published, dwarfs previous investment estimates by Reuters and is more than twice the most recent calculation published just a year ago.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Ring of Fire Metals prepares for big exploration push as critical minerals supply crunch looms
There’s new ownership, new branding and a new name for the former Noront Resources in the Ring of Fire. But the path to start mining in Ontario’s Far North doesn’t look to be getting any shorter.
After being shuttered for more than a year, field exploration activity is picking up again at the remote Esker camp of Ring of Fire Metals, the new name on the marquee as chosen by Wyloo Metals of Australia following its acquisition of Noront last April.
A new venture near Salmon signals an uptick in hardrock mining across the West.
Idaho’s Cobalt Belt is a 34-mile-long desirable stretch of ore tucked under the Salmon River Mountains that’s considered “globally significant” by mining companies. And miners are interested in that cobalt: a hard, brittle metal used in electric vehicle batteries. On Oct. 7, Australia-based Jervois Global opened the only cobalt mine in the U.S. there to much fanfare.
The new mine, which will be at full operating capacity in 2023, is part of a burgeoning Western mineral rush. These modern prospectors are focused on so-called green metals like cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel and rare earth elements that are used in clean energy applications.
As Premier Moe aims to assert provincial jurisdiction over resources, First Nations say he is missing a key piece of history.
Standing at a podium inside the Saskatchewan Legislative Building earlier this week, Onion Lake Cree Nation Councillor Bernadine Harper held up a feather and shared a piece of history.
Oral teachings, she said, have long stated that traditional lands were never meant to be surrendered once the treaty was signed. Instead, they were to be shared, to the depth of a plow, in exchange for assistance when in need.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
John Rapley is a political economist at the University of Cambridge and a senior fellow of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study.
Heading into an intense midterm election year, with soaring oil prices resulting from the Ukraine war, U.S. President Joe Biden felt no choice in July but to fly to Saudi Arabia, tail between his legs, and beg the country he’d called a “pariah” to open the oil taps.
A lot of good it did him. In return for the fist bump seen (and scorned) around the world, Saudi Arabia, in a move co-ordinated with Russia, spearheaded an OPEC+ output cut to raise prices.
It’s not the first time the 145-year-old London Metal Exchange (LME) has found itself in crisis. There was the Tin Crisis of 1986, the Nickel Crisis of 1988, and what at the time was dubbed “The Sumitomo Scandal” but could now better be described as The 1996 Copper Crisis.
This year, however, is still something of a stand-out with not one but two tsunamis rocking the grand old dame of industrial metals trading. March brought Nickel Crisis II, a much scarier update of the original, and now we have the unfolding Russian Metal Crisis.
With its stable and established resource and agriculture sector, the province has found itself in a position to help fill the global gap caused by the war.
Cameco Corp. is in a position to grow, the president of the Saskatoon-based Uranium giant recently told investors, because a “geopolitical crisis has hit our market” with Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Tim Gitzel was speaking earlier this month after the company announced it had partnered with Brookfield Renewable Partners to acquire Westinghouse Electric, a nuclear power plant equipment maker.
