Deadline for working group dealing with Las Bambas conflict extended to year-end

Valentina Ruiz Leotaud | 

The working group was created following the signing of a 30-day truce between the Indigenous communities of the Cotabambas province, the Peruvian government and Las Bambas, pictured here. (Image by the Presidency of the Ministers’ Council).

The Peruvian government, until December 31, 2022, the expiration date of the working group tasked with assessing and guaranteeing compliance with the agreements signed between the government, Las Bambas representatives and the communities of Fuerabamba, Chila, Choaquere, Chuicuni, Pumamarca and Huancuire located in the south-central Apurimac department.


Following a modification of a previous decision, the expanded timeline was settled in ministerial resolution 252-2022-PCM, which was made public over the weekend in the official gazette El Peruano.

The working group was established through a series of agreements signed in mid-June, following a blockade that forced Chinese miner MMG to halt operations at its flagship mine for more than 50 days, the longest in Las Bambas history.

The protest was started in mid-April by the communities of Fuerabamba and Huancuire, who say the mining company had not honoured all of its commitments to them. Both communities sold land to the company to make way for the mine, which opened in 2016.

The Chila, Choaquere, Chuicuni and Pumamarca communities joined later and all six of them are now part of the working group, which operates under the umbrella of the Presidency of the Ministers’ Council (PCM) and was supposed to be active only until September 18, 2022, two months after it was created.

However, according to the Secretariat of Social Management and Dialogue, even though there is a set schedule for the fulfillment of the commitments agreed upon between all the parties and six working subgroups have been installed to deal with each intervening community, “to date, it has not been possible to implement all of the agreements signed on June 9, 2022.”

Following the new December deadline, the group has 30 days to present a final report to the PCM.

The entire conflict has led to a 60% output drop for MMG, which was forced to suspend its copper production targets for the year.

Peru is the world’s no. 2 copper producer and Las Bambas is one of the world’s largest producers of the red metal, accounting for 1% of the Andean country’s gross domestic product.

Health benefits of removing coal from power generation unequally distributed – study

Staff Writer 

Fayette coal-fired power plant in Texas, USA. (Reference image by Larry D. Moore, Wikimedia Commons.)

A new study drawing on data from some southern states in the US found that the most common strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from power generation also produce enough health benefits to completely offset the cost of these decarbonization efforts. However, while Black and low-income communities also benefit, they still face higher levels of air pollution and related health effects.


The research, led by a team at North Carolina State University, took a closer look at how health benefits associated with decarbonization can inform operational decisions in the power sector.

“If we can determine which specific plants are having the greatest impact on human health, and when, then power systems can modify power generation at those plants to reduce human health impacts,” said Jeremiah Johnson, co-author of the paper that explains the findings.

(Graph from Environmental Science & Technology).

In detail, Johnson and his colleagues evaluated the impacts of six decarbonization strategies. Three strategies involved using different power generation methods to replace coal-fired power plants: solar power, wind power and natural gas. Two of the strategies involved implementing carbon taxes at different levels—effectively increasing the costs of electricity generation based on the amount of carbon dioxide that power plants emit.

The sixth strategy involved requiring power plant operators to include the economic costs of health effects caused by emissions in their decision-making. The carbon tax and health damages strategies would significantly increase the expense of coal power, indirectly encouraging a shift to power generation that produces fewer emissions.
The data

The researchers drew on power generation data from across Texas, as well as health data from Texas and other states affected by air emissions from Texas’s power plants. The data was fed into an integrated suite of new and existing computational models to better understand the health effects of the various decarbonization strategies at the local level.

“We were able to assess health impacts at the census tract level, which is fairly granular—each tract represents between 1,200 and 8,000 people,” Qian Luo, first author of the paper, said. “Specifically, we drew on established studies to determine the extent to which air pollution was contributing to mortality numbers in each tract.”

By calculating the number of deaths associated with the relevant air pollution, the researchers were able to determine the monetized benefits of reducing that air pollution. This was done using the “value of a statistical life,” which is used by the federal government to perform cost-benefit analyses.

Low-income and Black neighbourhoods

The researchers found that all six decarbonization strategies reduced adverse health effects from air pollution more than enough to offset the cost of implementing the strategy.

However, while there were health benefits across the board, some areas still suffered from more air pollution than others. These areas tended to be low-income areas or neighbourhoods with large Black populations.

For example, the gap between Black neighbourhoods and other neighborhoods either stays the same or gets worse. In other words, while Black communities benefit from decarbonization, they don’t benefit as much as other neighborhoods. And the same holds true for low-income neighbourhoods across all races.

The researchers said that the findings were also sufficiently precise, pointing to specific emissions from specific plants at specific times, to inform operation decisions that could reduce human health impacts even if the plants are not taken completely offline.

“The takeaway message here is very simple: reducing coal power generation has significant, immediate health benefits,” Johnson said. “And all of the techniques under consideration for reducing coal power generation produce meaningful benefits.”

Russia’s secret gem sales are dividing the diamond world

Bloomberg News 

Russian diamonds. (Image by Ptukhina Natasha, Wikimedia Commons.)

The secretive sale of Russian diamonds, worth hundreds of millions of dollars every month, is fracturing the global trade that stretches from cutting factories in Mumbai to luxury stores on New York’s Fifth Avenue.


Many in the industry refuse to deal in Russian gems following the invasion of Ukraine and after mining giant Alrosa PJSC was hit with US sanctions. But there’s a handful of Indian and Belgian buyers who are snapping up large volumes at lucrative terms, getting to pick and choose the diamonds they need while others stay away.

The deals are happening quietly, even for the famously secretive diamond world.

And while they’re not breaching sanctions, there are other risks to consider — heavyweights like Tiffany & Co. and Signet Jewelers Ltd. don’t want Russian diamonds that were mined since the war began, and suppliers say they are worried about losing crucial contracts by dealing in Alrosa gems.

The sales present a problem for any attempts at a boycott: once stones enter the supply chain they can become near-impossible to track. Diamonds are sold in parcels of similar sizes and qualities — there are about 15,000 different categories — and can be retraded and remixed multiple times before ending up in an engagement ring or pendant.

Western retailers trying to avoid Russian gems are also concerned about securing enough diamonds, especially the small and cheaper types that Alrosa specializes in. The company accounts for about a third of rough diamond supply, and any Russian stones mined before the war are essentially all used up.

Some big European luxury brands have asked Alrosa’s rival, De Beers, to increase sales to suppliers they trust, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The company has made some efforts to do so, but has little extra to sell, the people said.

As Russian supplies divide the diamond world, much of the tension is focused in the “midstream,” a vast network of mostly family-owned businesses that cut, polish and trade the world’s precious stones — many of them in India — and provide the link-up between mining companies and jewelry stores.

Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Alrosa sold to more than 50 such customers every month. Sales froze up initially after the invasion but have now returned to near-normal levels.

But it’s happening very quietly. Before the war, the company ran 10 sales a year out of its Antwerp, Belgium, sales office based on a set calendar, and published the results afterwards. Alrosa has now stopped publishing any information on its sales or financial performance.

Most of the Indian midstream is still avoiding Russian purchases because of the risk that they lose western customers as a result, according to people familiar with the matter.

The US in particular is a crucial market — 50% of all polished diamonds are sold in the country, ranging from luxury pieces worth tens of millions to stones that sell for less than $200 at retailers like Walmart Inc.

While diamonds are a discretionary luxury for the people who buy them, the business itself is an economic bedrock for the major cutting and trading hubs. The diamond trade roughly supports an estimated one million jobs in India, where the government has pushed to keep business flowing. Belgium’s Prime Minister has also reiterated the country’s position that Russian stones should not be sanctioned — more than 80% of rough diamonds are traded through its port city of Antwerp at some stage.

For now, the vast majority of Russian stones are going through about 10 buyers. Indian companies Kiran Gems and Shree Ramkrishna Exports Pvt are the two largest buyers, according to people familiar with the matter.

Kiran and SRK did not respond to emails and calls seeking comment. Spokespeople for Alrosa and De Beers declined to comment.

After the Russian diamonds are cut and polished, the assumption is that they will end up in jewelry for markets like China, Japan and India. Those three countries together account for about 30% of global demand and — unlike western retailers — are happy to receive Russian production.

However, the opaque nature of the diamond trade with its long and convoluted supply chain means that Russian stones are likely to end up in western markets as well.

A diamond’s origin is clear at the start of the chain when it is issued a certificate under the Kimberley Process, which was designed to end the sale of “blood diamonds” that financed wars in the 1990s.

But after that, things can get murky. Parcels of gems are often intermingled at trading houses, and the original certificate will be replaced with “mixed origin” documentation, making it near-impossible to keep track of where Russian diamonds are eventually sold.

While the fear of alienating western companies is the biggest obstacle for most in the industry, the practical difficulties in buying from Russia are also a deterrent.

Following the US sanctions, most European and Middle Eastern banks have withdrawn from funding purchases from Alrosa, which previously sold almost all its diamonds in US dollars. That leaves a few Indian banks that have become more comfortable in recent months with how to facilitate transactions in other currencies, primarily euros and rupees.

In one sign of ongoing wariness, IndusInd Bank Ltd., one of the biggest financiers of India’s diamond buyers, has been requiring customers in those deals to sign waivers acknowledging they’re responsible if any transactions are frozen, according to people familiar with the situation.

A spokesperson for IndusInd said the bank “is compliant with domestic as well as international trade sanctions inter alia not undertaking transactions with sanctioned entities/individuals.”

For those who are still willing to buy, Alrosa is offering perks including unusual flexibility, although it’s kept pricing overall on par with De Beers.

Normally, customers are expected to take a pre-agreed assortment of diamond parcels. Now, the company is allowing buyers to handpick their packets, which means they can select diamonds that are in short supply or the ones that are likely to yield the best profit. In a reflection of the shifting structure of the industry, it’s also looking at establishing more permanent sales offices in India.

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/09/transparency-international-urges-eu.html

EMPLOYEE OWNERSHIP 


Nornickel plans to raise employees’ stake in mining giant, says top shareholder
Reuters | 

Norilsk Nickel biggest shareholder Vladimir Potanin. (Image by Kremlin.ru, Wikimedia Commons).

Russian mining giant Nornickel plans to increase the equity holdings of employees and other individuals to collectively comprise 25% of the company, up from 10% now, its largest shareholder Vladimir Potanin told RBC TV.


Nornickel, the world’s top palladium and refined nickel producer, was one of the biggest prizes in the post-Soviet carve-up of Russian industry in 1990s, and it currently employs 72,000 people.

“When Norilsk Nickel (Nornickel) was privatised about 25% of shares were owned by employees,” Potanin said in an interview broadcast on Saturday. “I would like to recover this historical justice and make sure that 25% of Nornickel’s shares are returned to the people, including employees.”

Potanin said the change would be included in a 10-year programme called “Digital Investor” that would begin in 2023, and would involve digital financial assets and lock-up periods. He did not give further details about the plan or how the equity holdings would be increased.

Potanin’s holding, Interros, owns 36% of Nornickel.

Aluminum producer Rusal, which owns 26% of the company, did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment.

Potanin in July floated the idea of a $60 billion merger of Nornickel with Rusal as a means of mitigating possible sanctions risks, but on Saturday said the idea had been postponed.

“I think the idea is still interesting, still alive, but we will have to put it off until later, when our colleagues are ready for talks on this,” Potanin said.

He also said a 10-year shareholder agreement protecting Nornickel’s dividend payouts was on track to expire at the end of 2022.

The deal ended a conflict between Interros and Rusal in 2012. There are no talks to renew the deal, sources told Reuters earlier this month.

Potanin also said Nornickel was preparing to reorient itself more towards Asian markets, to guard against any change in the West’s sanctions policy or clients trying to “twist our arms”.

Nornickel has not been directly targeted by the Western sanctions imposed on Moscow since it sent thousands of troops to Ukraine on Feb. 24.

“Some of our partners are trying to revise the terms of existing contracts in their favour, trying to reduce the volume of purchases for the upcoming period, imposing on themselves a kind of self-sanctions, moving away from goods of Russian origin as much as possible,” the Potanin said.

In the first seven months of this year, Europe accounted for the usual 50% of Nornickel’s sales and the United States about 20%, he added.

(By Polina Devitt, Anastasia Lyrchikova and Alexander Marrow; Editing by Pravin Char and Helen Popper)

Indonesia’s $600 billion plan to shut coal plants struggles for support

GREEN CAPITALI$M NEEDS MORE GREEN

Bloomberg News 

Erick Thohir. Credit: Doc. Ministry of SOEs

Indonesia’s plan to retire its coal-fired power plants over the next three decades and replace them with cleaner energy isn’t drawing support from potential investors.


Southeast Asia’s largest economy will need $600 billion to phase-out 15 gigawatts of coal generation and add a similar amount of renewable capacity over the period, State-owned Enterprises Minister Erick Thohir said in an interview late Thursday.

The plan is to keep coal fired-power plants running for another decade and then completely shift away from fossil fuels over the following 20 years, Thohir said. Indonesia, the world’s largest exporter of thermal coal, relies on the fuel to generate about 60% of its electricity.

The government has done investor roadshows in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and some European nations to promote its energy-transition plans, Thohir said. Indonesia doesn’t want to rely on bond sales to support the shift, and is looking for direct investment from developed countries, he said.

“But, no one responded to our offer.”

Indonesia’s position on the future of coal power has been a source of confusion for other nations, and is coming into sharper focus with the country hosting this year’s G-20 meeting. While Jakarta offered some support to global efforts to phase out the use of the fuel at the COP26 climate summit last year, it didn’t back a clause calling for an end to the construction or financing of new plants.

Donor countries that visited Indonesia this year raised concerns that President Joko Widodo’s cabinet has been split over the need to end the use of coal, and how to achieve that ambition, officials familiar with the discussions said in May.
Strike a balance

Indonesia wants to strike a balance between boosting economic growth and developing green energy, Thohir said. It’s seeking to reduce demand for fossil fuels by promoting the use of electric vehicles and cooking stoves, as well as developing alternative energy sources, he said.

“We want our energy mix later to consist of electricity, palm-based biodiesel and ethanol, just like Brazil and India,” Thohir said.

To support the plan, the government is proposing to tell state-owned firms to open 700,000 hectares of land for sugar cane crops for producing ethanol and cutting imports. It’s also pushing projects for processing coal into dimethyl ether, a colorless gas that can be used in fuel, in the next three to four years to help lower the nation’s $4 billion-a-year bill for liquefied petroleum gas.

“We must have energy security and we agree for transformation at our own pace, not what other countries wants us to do,” Thohir said.

Coal consuming-countries like Vietnam, South Korea and Poland were among 23 nations that backed an agreement last year to phase out the use of the fuel for electricity generation, although opposition from China and India led to the watering down of a wider COP26 pact that instead focused on reducing consumption.

(By Eko Listiyorini and Fathiya Dahrul, with assistance from Alaric Nightingale)

After South African dam collapse, diamond mine waste to be pumped into historical pit

Reuters |

The Jagersfontein-Charlesville area in the Free State where flooding from a disused mine has caused the evacuation of hundreds of people from their homes and the death of at least one person. Credit: South African Government’s Twitter page

A South African company is dumping the sludgy byproduct of mining into a historical diamond pit after the tailings dam that had stored the waste partially collapsed, killing one and leaving scores injured.


The government agency overseeing cultural preservation said on Thursday it approved plans to fill the historic Jagersfontein diamond mining pit with waste from a second compartment of the tailings dam in order to prevent a secondary breach after one compartment of the dam failed.

Public documents show Jagersfontein Developments, the company reprocessing old tailings around the disused pit to recover diamonds, has lodged five applications over the past decade with the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) seeking permission to store liquid mine waste that is a byproduct of that reprocessing in the pit rather than the dam.

The latest request was made on Aug. 17, just four weeks before the tailings dam disaster.

An earlier decision to move the waste into the pit could have relieved pressure on the tailings dam which burst on Sunday morning, unleashing a flood of gray sludge that swept away houses and cars in Jagersfontein, a small town in South Africa’s Free State province.

But the pit, the oldest and biggest hand-dug diamond mine in the world, is classed as a historical site and filling it up requires approval by SAHRA.

The Department of Water and Sanitation authorised the “immediate” pumping of slime from the second compartment of the tailings dam into the pit on Monday, the day after the dam burst, prompting SAHRA to approve the backfilling on Thursday.

“As the town of Jagersfontein is in a state of disaster because of the collapsed tailings dam (…) no further assessment of the impact to heritage resources are required,” SAHRA said, adding it had no objections to the plan submitted on Aug. 17.

Jagersfontein Developments first applied to backfill the historical pit in September 2012, and SAHRA granted it permission in June 2013, but the Jagersfontein Community Trust appealed the decision and the company withdrew its application in January 2014.

SAHRA said the subsequent applications made by Jagersfontein Developments in 2018, 2019 and 2020 were incomplete.

Fortune seekers drawn by South Africa’s diamond rush started digging at Jagersfontein in 1870. By 1907 the pit was bigger even than the more famous “Big Hole” in Kimberley, and reached a depth of 250 metres (820 ft).

Since then it has changed hands multiple times.

De Beers, the diamond mining unit of Anglo American Plc, was the last company to mine Jagersfontein until 1971, selling the mine and surrounding dry tailings dumps in 2010 to Superkolong Consortium.

Dubai-based Stargems Group purchased the assets from the Luxembourg-based investment fund Reinet in April 2022. Reuters could not immediately establish when Reinet bought Jagersfontein from Superkolong, and Reinet did not respond to requests for comment.

Neither Stargems nor Jagersfontein Development, a Stargems subsidiary, replied to questions about their plans to backfill the pit.

Sunday’s disaster has raised questions about oversight of hundreds of tailings dams littered across South Africa.

In 2007 South Africa’s High Court ruled that the Jagersfontein tailings dumps do not fall under the purview of the mines ministry, meaning companies processing the dumps do not require a mining licence.

Visiting Jagersfontein on Tuesday, minerals and energy minister Gwede Mantashe criticised that ruling, saying it should be “revisited” so that the ministry can inspect tailings dams.

“A (tailings) dam, you can’t trust it, it can break anytime,” he said in a video posted on his Twitter account.

(By Nelson Banya and Helen Reid; Editing by Ernest Scheyder and Jonathan Oatis)

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/09/another-mine-dam-wall-collapses-in.html

Teck says Elkview outage to cost 1.5 million tonnes in coal production

Cecilia Jamasmie | 

Elkview is one of Teck’s main steelmaking coal operations.

 (Image courtesy of Teck Resources.)

Canada’s largest diversified miner Teck Resources (TSX: TCK.A, TCK.B) (NYSE: TCK) said on Wednesday it expects to lose coal production of about 1.5 million tonnes due to a structural failure at its Elkview coal mine in British Columbia.


The Elkview steelmaking coal mine will remain halted for one to two months, Teck noted, while repairs to the plant feed conveyor belt take place.

When also factoring in the impact of recent labour action at Westshore Terminals, Canada’s biggest export coal terminal, Teck’s third quarter steelmaking coal sales are now expected to be between 5.5 – 5.9 million tonnes, compared to the previously announced 5.8 – 6.2 million tonnes range.

Unionized workers at Westshore Terminals, located in the Metro Vancouver area, walked out of the job over the weekend causing a complete halt of operations.

The port, with a capacity to handle 33 million tonnes of coal exports per year, takes production from British Columbia and Alberta, as well as the Powder River basin and Montana to international markets, mainly in the Asia-Pacific area.

The Vancouver-based miner said Elkview would reschedule planned plant maintenance to take advantage of plant downtime and mine operations would focus on pre-stripping during the outage.

Teck, which is also the world’s second-biggest exporter of steelmaking coal, had to halt production at Elkview in 2018 for almost two months. At the time, it lost about 200,000 tonnes in coal output.

Elkview Operations set a new production record in 2021, the first full year of operations since its plant expansion to a capacity of 9 million tonnes per annum.

Teck projects that proven and probable reserves at Elkview are enough to support mining for a further 30 years.

Researchers working on smart drone capable of preventing tailings dams failures

Staff Writer |

Researchers Guilherme Pereira and Ihsan Berk Tulu. 

(Image by Paige Nesbit, courtesy of WVU).

Engineers at West Virginia University are developing new technologies for coal waste storage facilities that will detect and prevent potential failures like leakage of hazardous materials into the environment.


After receiving almost half a million dollars in funding from the United States Department of Energy, the researchers plan to deliver an aerial robot-enabled inspection and monitoring system for active and abandoned coal ash and tailings or waste storage facilities.

The goal of the project is to find a way to detect leakages and failures at coal waste facilities before tailings and coal ash are released into the environment. Coal ash is considered one of the largest US supplies of industrial waste, containing metals such as lead, mercury, chromium, selenium, cadmium and arsenic, which never biodegrade and are toxic to humans.

“Failure of these structures has been shown to be catastrophic, causing massive mudslides that have devastated entire communities and created irreversible environmental damage,” Ihsan Berk Tulu, one of the engineers involved in the project, said. “Industry and federal and state governments spend great effort and time inspecting these structures, finding hazards that might lead to wastewater leakages or failures.”

AI + autonomous features

Tulu and his colleague Guilherme Pereira’s intelligent drone is expected to do its work autonomously and be able to create thermal and visual images and high-resolution, three-dimensional maps of the coal waste storage facilities, which will permit the detection of cracks, deformities and other hazards in the structures.

A second objective of the project is to create and equip the device with software that uses artificial intelligence-based algorithms to detect potential hazards. The software will collect and use thermal and visual images, as well as 3D point clouds, a technology that utilizes laser scanners to measure where light hits a particular surface or object, to generate highly accurate 3D models of the coal storage facilities. This will allow researchers to identify potential hazards quickly and efficiently without having to physically be at the inspection site.

“I’m originally from Minas Gerais state in Brazil, where catastrophic accidents with tailing dams happened recently, so the project has a special motivation for me,” Pereira said. “It is an opportunity to develop a technology that can save lives in the United States and in my country.”

In 2015, the Samarco mine tailings dam in Bento Rodrigues, Brazil collapsed, unleashing thousands of pounds of hazardous mud spill that killed 19 people. The mine waste eventually flowed more than 400 miles from its source to the Atlantic Ocean, contaminating water supplies along its route.

In the US, a tailings dam in Logan County, West Virginia, failed in 1972 following a heavy rainstorm, known as the Buffalo Creek Flood. This catastrophic collapse released 132 million gallons of wastewater into the surrounding community. The incident killed 125 people, injured 1,100 others and left 4,000 people without homes.

“We will train the next generation of engineers in the application of robotics technologies for our mining communities,” Tulu said. “A successful outcome from this project will be another technology tool for both West Virginia’s and the nation’s mining industries to improve the safety of the mines and the health of the nearby communities.”

ESG IS REAL
Australian mining firm IPOs lag on board gender balance
Bloomberg News | 

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

New Australian stock exchange listings are lagging the broader market in terms of board gender diversity, with just 12.2% of directorships at companies that went public in recent years held by women.


The issue was particularly acute for the materials industry. The sector, which accounted for nearly half of the 401 ASX Ltd. listings between 2019 and 2022, had only 5% of board seats held by women, the Australian Institute of Company Directors Gender Diversity Progress Report showed, citing data from OpenDirector.

That contrasts with more established companies, with 35.1% of board positions at Australia’s 200 largest listed companies held by women on Sept. 1, the report said.

There is “a tendency to increase the proportion of women on IPO boards in the years following their listing,” said Mark Rigotti, chief executive officer of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. “This seems to indicate either a late recognition or late effort to redress the imbalance.”

Companies need to consider board composition as early as possible in the listing process to optimize their skillset and diversity, said Nicola Wakefield Evans, chair of the 30% Club Australia, in the report. The 30% Club advocates for a minimum of 30% of board and C-suite roles to be held by women.

The mining industry, a key pillar of the nation’s economy, has come under intense scrutiny in recent years for its treatment of women, following an inquiry into cases of abuse of workers at companies including BHP Group Ltd. and Rio Tinto Group.

(By Adam Haigh)

Mexico values its Sonora lithium deposits at $600bn

Reuters 

Sonora lithium project in Mexico. Credit: Bacanora

A potentially vast lithium deposit in Mexico’s northern Sonora state could be worth as much as 12 trillion Mexican pesos ($602 billion), according to a recent finance ministry report, or over a third of the country’s projected economic output this year.


Mexico hopes its reserves of the key battery component will help it benefit from a global shift toward electric vehicle production that has turbo-charged demand, but experts are skeptical it will be able to quickly mobilize its industry.

Lithium prices have soared to surpass $70,000 per tonne this year.

While the ultra-light white metal is typically extracted from rock or brine deposits, lithium in Sonora is mostly trapped in clay soils, from which it has not yet been mined on a commercial scale.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has urged the private sector to work with the new state miner, saying the size of the investment needed means the government needs partners.

But analysts argue that companies are more likely to focus near-term investments in Chile or Argentina’s sprawling salt flats, where industries are more established and policies more market-friendly.

The massive projected lithium demand should, however, eventually draw interest to Mexico, they added.

“We have a product which can define what will happen with the world’s energy,” Bolivia’s Mexico ambassador Jose Crespo said in a statement published on Thursday.

Mexican newspaper La Jornada reported the government’s lithium valuation earlier on Thursday.

Though Mexico does not currently produce the metal, the finance ministry estimated the Sonora reserves could add some 0.3 percentage points to potential GDP in the medium-term.

($1 = 19.9400 Mexican pesos)

(By Sarah Morland; Editing by David Alire Garcia and Sam Holmes)

LG Energy inks cobalt, lithium supply deals with three Canadian miners
Reuters 

Credit: Avalon Advanced Materials.

South Korean battery maker LG Energy Solution said on Friday it has signed agreements on lithium and cobalt sourcing with three Canadian mining firms in a bid to expand its footprint in North America.


The Tesla supplier said in a statement the agreements were part of an effort to expand mid- to long-term supply contracts with companies that mine and process key battery materials in North America.

The US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed into law by US President Joe Biden in August, requires a percentage of critical minerals used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries come from the United States or an American free-trade partner.

LG said the three Canadian mining firms, Electra, Avalon and Snowlake, will supply LG with 7,000 tonnes of cobalt sulfate for three years from 2023, 55,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide for five years from 2025, and 200,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide for 10 years, respectively.

(By Joyce Lee; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)