Harmony Gold reports mine fatality
Reuters | December 19, 2022 | 

Kusasalethu gold mine is one of the world’s deepest.

 (Image courtesy of Harmony Gold.)

South Africa’s Harmony Gold on Monday reported a fatality at its Kusasalethu mine 90 kilometres west of Johannesburg after a fall-of-ground accident.


The accident occurred on Dec.15 following a “seismic event”, the company said in a statement. Internal investigations are underway, it added.

Harmony reported 13 fatalities in its 2022 financial year to June 30, up from 11 work-related deaths reported the previous year. The company has so far reported three fatalities during the first six months of the current financial year.

(By Nelson Banya)

THERE ARE NO ACCIDENTS ONLY PREVENTABLE INCIDENTS

A SEISMIC EVENT IS AN EARTH TREMOR

Perpetua awarded up to $24.8m under US Defense Production Act; stock jumps
Staff Writer | December 19, 2022 |

Stibnite gold project in Idaho. Credit: United States Forest Service.

Perpetua Resources (Nasdaq: PPTA) (TSX: PPTA) announced on Monday that its Idaho-based subsidiary has received a technology investment of up to $24.8 million under Title III of the Defense Production Act (DPA).


The objective of the funding, issued by the Air Force Research Laboratory, is to complete the environmental and engineering studies necessary for Perpetua to obtain the required permits to sustain the domestic production of antimony trisulphide, which is essential to national defense as a key component for munitions.

The US currently has no mined supply of antimony trisulphide. Perpetua is planning to re-establish a domestic supply of the critical mineral antimony as a byproduct from its Stibnite gold project located in central Idaho.

According to the United States Geological Survey, the Stibnite project contains one of the largest economic reserves of antimony (estimated at 14.2 million tonnes grading 0.42% antimony) and could supply approximately 35% of US demand in the first six years of production.

Site visit: Perpetua Resources’ Stibnite gold project in Idaho named preferred alternative

The DPA funding allows the company to advance the construction readiness of the Stibnite project while the company continues through the ongoing permitting process, including a final environmental impact statement and a final record of decision, led by the United States Forest Service.

Under the funding agreement, Perpetua said it may request reimbursement for certain costs incurred over 24 months related to environmental baseline data monitoring, environmental and technical studies, and other activities related to advancing the construction and permitting process for the Stibnite project.

The DPA funding does not interrupt the ongoing National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review process. The DPA award is separate from the previously announced Small Business Innovation Research Phase 1 funding awarded to Perpetua by the Defense Logistics Agency in September.

In October, the USFS released the Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the project, which provided clarity for the remainder of the NEPA process.

“As Perpetua continues advancing our project through the permitting process, we are honoured to enter this agreement to help advance our construction readiness for future development,” Perpetua CEO Laurel Sayer said in a media statement.

“Our vision remains unchanged, which is to redevelop a world-class gold deposit, provide the country with a critical mineral and restore an abandoned brownfield site,” Sayer said. “Today, we continue to build momentum towards turning our vision into a reality.”

Perpetua’s proposed Stibnite gold project is in the sixth year of review under NEPA. The project is designed to restore environmental conditions in the historic Stibnite mining district while responsibly redeveloping one of the highest-grade open-pit gold resources in the US and becoming the only domestically mined source of the critical mineral antimony.

Perpetua expects that current cash resources, combined with the full DPA agreement, would provide the company with sufficient liquidity to complete permitting and early restoration activities on the current timeline as well as additional liquidity to begin advancing construction readiness.

Shares of Perpetua Resources jumped 12.8% by noon ET following the latest announcement. The company’s market capitalization has now shot up to C$177.6 million ($130.3m).

Toronto hedge fund surges 39% on lithium bets

Bloomberg News | December 19, 2022 |

(Stock Image)

Vivid Capital Management Inc., a small Canadian hedge fund, has returned 39% this year through November with bets on the lithium sector.


Toronto-based Vivid, a relatively young firm that manages less than C$50 million ($36.5 million), runs a single fund with a primary focus on energy-transition investments.


“We saw the lithium industry this year was still not very well understood,” President James Bradford said in an interview. “Investors were buying these companies with really poor assets because they had a slick management team. It seemed to us like people weren’t valuing the high-quality projects properly.”

The Vivid Energy Fund is short companies that focus on direct lithium extraction, such as Vancouver-based Standard Lithium Ltd., which has plunged 61% this year. Standard was the subject of a short-selling report in February by Hindenberg Research that expressed skepticism about its technology.

Direct lithium extraction is a method used to accelerate the lithium production process, one of the technologies that dozens of companies are pursuing to lower costs. It sounds “amazing on paper” but in reality has lots of problems, including impurities, Bradford said.

By contrast, Bradford sees value in lithium companies with projects based on high-quality conventional brine reservoirs, such as Australia’s Lithium Power International Ltd.. The fund also has positions in small hard-rock lithium developers, such as Frontier Lithium Inc. and Grid Metals Corp., he said

.
Battery growth

The world needs lithium supplies to grow fivefold by the end of the decade to meet projected demand as the electric-vehicle revolution gets into full swing, according to BloombergNEF. A potential shortage of the white silvery metal has led miners to engage in bidding wars for assets in countries such as Argentina.

Vivid is also focusing on other ways to invest in battery inputs and technologies. Even if the energy density of batteries triples over the next few decades, “we’re still going to need 15 times more battery materials,” Bradford said, based on the projected shift away from fossil fuels. “We feel that battery metals or critical elements are more durable than a typical economically-sensitive sector such as zinc and iron ore, given the robustness of the growth and political will and support.”

The fund has also owned the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust, a play on potential growth in nuclear power as governments turn to it as a way to reduce emissions.

Vivid has gained more than 300% over the last three years, in part because it had a huge year in 2020, returning 116%. Bradford took a large short position on cruise lines early in the pandemic — the fund gained 46% in March 2020, even as equity markets were melting down in panic over the spread of Covid-19.

However, returns have been volatile, and the fund lost more than 24% a year for three straight years from 2017 to 2019, according to figures posted on the Vivid’s website.

From inception in 2014 to Oct. 31 of this year, the fund gained 151%.

(By Layan Odeh)

WTO on ‘thin ice’ with metals tariff ruling, US trade chief says 

CANADA WAS A CHALLENGER TO TARIFFS

Bloomberg News | December 19, 2022 

United States Trade Ambassador Katherine Tai. Credit: United States Mission Geneva via Flickr

The World Trade Organization “is getting itself on very, very thin ice” by ruling that the US violated trade rules with Trump-era steel and aluminum tariffs, Trade Representative Katherine Tai said, adding that the finding “challenges the integrity of the system.”


The WTO ruling, issued earlier this month, “really challenges the integrity of the system,” Tai said Monday. That’s because it “gets deep into creating requirements and parameters for what is or is not a legitimate national-security decision.”

The organization “should not get into the business of second-guessing the national-security decisions that are made by sovereign governments,” she said. “It is the responsibility of governments to bring integrity to their decisions on national security.”

On Dec. 9, the WTO dispute-settlement panel said the 25% tariffs on global steel imports and 10% import taxes on global aluminum instituted under former President Donald Trump violated the body’s rules. It said US national-security claims “are not justified” because they were not “taken in time of war or other emergency in international relations.”

The US strongly rejected the report’s findings and won’t remove its duties as a result of the rulings, the Office of the US Trade Representative said at the time.

Tai on Monday reinforced the rejection of the findings.

“Our response is very much focused on the reasoning that is in that panel report, Tai said in an interview at the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington.

“It is a very challenging place to be to have unelected, not really accountable decision-makers in Geneva second-guess processes that are run through a government like ours which is democratic,” she said.

(By Ana Monteiro)

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Ivanhoe Mines hits back at Sentry, Globe and Mail reports on police search of Vancouver office
Staff Writer | December 19, 2022 | 

Robert Friedland, founder of Ivanhoe Mines. (Image courtesy of Mines and Money | Flickr.)

Ivanhoe Mines (TSX: IVN) issued a statement Monday in response to media reports on December 15 that police had searched the company’s Vancouver office seeking information on $2.7 million in bank transfers from Ivanhoe to a Swiss bank account in connection with contracts for its Congolese mining operations.


US-based investigative organization the Sentry published a report titled: “Gaming the System: How a Canadian Mining Giant Undermined the Law in the DRC, and a subsequent story ran in The Globe and Mail.

Some of the documents authorized for seizure were related to three bank transfers from Ivanhoe to the Swiss bank account from 2015 to 2018 of Stucky Technologies, a Swiss engineering firm, to work with Congo’s state electricity company on hydropower supplies for Ivanhoe’s Kamoa-Kakula copper project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), The Globe and Mail reported.

The headline stated that the Ivanhoe Mines’ office in Vancouver had been searched by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Canada’s federal police force.

After its introduction, the story reported that the police search took place more than one year ago and was publicly disclosed by Ivanhoe Mines on March 30, 2022. Ivanhoe said it cooperated with the search in November 2021 and that no charges have been laid against the company or its directors or employees and that no financial provision has been made in relation to the matter.

The Sentry’s report examined the miner’s control of deposits in the DRC’s copper belt, alleging that Ivanhoe received preferential treatment when Congolese authorities extended its exploration licences.

Ivanhoe’s statement, issued by billionaire founder Robert Friedland, said both reports “include incomplete, selective and speculative content pertaining to Ivanhoe Mines’ business activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and mineral exploration investments on its Western Foreland Exploration Project.”

Ivanhoe has an interest in three projects in the DRC, the Kamoa-Kakula Complex in a joint venture with Zijin Mining Group and the Government of the DRC; the Kipushi Project, in a joint venture with state-owned Gécamines; and the Western Foreland Exploration Project. The miner said it conducts its business in alignment with national and international laws, including in its partnering with DRC shareholders where required by law.

Ivanhoe said both reports “are irresponsibly framed to infer or theorize that some form of corporate malpractice involving Ivanhoe’s Western Foreland Exploration Project took place,” and added, “they lack any tangible evidence that misconduct occurred.”

The miner said The Globe and Mail’s story failed to note that the search warrant obtained in 2021 by the RCMP was not related to Kamoa-Kakula or any of Ivanhoe Mines’ other mineral projects. Ivanhoe noted it is continuing its cooperation with the RCMP investigation, but because it is an ongoing matter, Ivanhoe Mines is making only limited comments regarding the investigation in this public statement.

Ivanhoe said The Sentry report “demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the DRC mining code, the mining industry, and Ivanhoe’s Western Foreland Exploration Project.”

“The Sentry organization promotes itself as “an investigative and policy organization that seeks to disable multinational predatory networks that benefit from violent conflict, repression, and kleptocracy,” Ivanhoe said.

The miner also said t is unclear how this relates in any way to Ivanhoe Mines’ history of exploration activities, what expertise the organization has in terms of mineral exploration and development, or the DRC as a mining jurisdiction.

Ivanhoe Mines said it invites The Sentry to visit its operations and witness partnership in the DRC first-hand.

Read the full statement here.

Electric vehicle production set to surge in 2023 despite low sales

Reuters | December 19, 2022 |


The past year was sobering for investors who poured money into Tesla Inc and rival electric vehicle startups that hoped to emulate Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s success.


As interest rates rose and financial markets gyrated, shares in many EV startups deflated. Rivian Automotive Inc, which had a higher market value than Ford Motor Co shortly after it went public in 2021, lost more than 70% of its value over the past year.

Other EV startups fared worse. Electric van maker Arrival warned it could run out of cash in less than a year. Lucid Group Inc, backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, struggled to build its sleek Air luxury EVs. Chinese Tesla challenger Xpeng Inc’s shares lost more than 80% of their value.

Now comes the hard part: Persuading more mainstream consumers to come along for the ride.

Why it matters

The automobile industry is pouring more than $1 trillion into a revolutionary shift from combustion engines to electric vehicles guided by software. From Detroit to Shanghai, automakers and government policymakers have embraced the promise of electric vehicles to provide cleaner, safer transportation. European countries and California have set 2035 as the deadline for ending sales of new combustion passenger vehicles.

Tesla Inc’s surge to become the world’s most valuable automaker – achieving a $1 trillion valuation last year – humbled established automakers such as Toyota Motor Corp and Volkswagen AG that once were reluctant to go electric.

Starting next year, a wave of new electric vehicles from pickup trucks to middle market SUVs and sedans will hit the world’s major markets.

Industry executives and forecasters do not agree on how rapidly electric vehicles could take over half the global vehicle market, let alone all of it.

In China, the world’s largest single automotive market, battery electric vehicles have captured about 21% of the market. In Europe, EVs account for about 12% of total passenger vehicle sales. But in the United States, EV market share is only about 6%.

Among the barriers to EV adoption, industry executives and analysts said, were a dearth of public fast-charging infrastructure, and the rising cost of EV batteries, driven by shortages of key materials and uncertainty over government subsidies that have buoyed EV purchases in major markets including the United States, China and Europe.

By 2029, electric vehicles could account for a third of the North American market, and about 26% of vehicles produced worldwide, according to AutoForecast Solutions, a consultancy.

Electric vehicle sales likely will not increase in a smooth, ever-ascending curve, said AFS President Joe McCabe. If there is a recession next year, as many economists forecast, that will slow EV adoption.

Wards Intelligence forecasts that combustion vehicles will make up just under 80% of North American sales in 2027. Based on automakers’ product plans, Wards analyst Haig Stoddard said at a recent conference that manufacturers “expect strong ICE (internal combustion engine) volume heading into the next decade.”

What does it mean for 2023?

Throughout 2022, established automakers such as Mercedes, Ford and General Motors Co unveiled dozens of new electric vehicles to challenge Tesla and the upstarts.

Mass production of most of these vehicles kicks into gear starting in 2023 and 2024.

By 2025, there could be 74 different electric vehicle models offered in North America, McCabe said. But he predicts fewer than 20% of those models are likely to sell at volumes above 50,000 vehicles a year. Automakers could be stuck with too many niche models and too much capacity.

Slowing economies threaten overall vehicle demand in Europe and China, too.

During the early years of the 20th Century, new auto companies sprang up, backed by investors eager to catch the wave of mass mobility that Henry Ford and other automotive pioneers started. By the 1950s, the global auto industry had consolidated and once-heralded brands such as Duesenberg had disappeared.

The next few years will determine whether the 21st Century’s crop of electric vehicle brands will follow a similar path.

(By Joe White; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

IAMGOLD gets $340 million funding from Sumitomo for Côté gold project; stock jumps

Staff Writer | December 20, 2022 |

The Côté gold project in northeastern Ontario, Canada.

(Image courtesy of IAMGOLD.)

IAMGOLD (TSX: IMG) (NYSE: IAG) has reached an agreement to amend its existing joint venture agreement with Japan’s Sumitomo Metal Mining in order to secure funding for the company’s Côté gold project in Ontario.


Under the agreement, beginning in January 2023, Sumitomo will contribute funding amounts to the Côté gold project for approximately $340 million over the course of 2023. In exchange, IAMGOLD will transfer an approximate 10% interest in the Côté JV to Sumitomo.

IAMGOLD will retain a repurchase option that can be exercised until December 2026 to return to its full 70% interest in the Côté gold project. The company will remain as project operator.

“The financial support of Sumitomo demonstrates to all of our stakeholders the strong validation of the Côté gold project from our partner and our alignment to complete construction and commence production,” Maryse Bélanger, interim CEO of IAMGOLD, said in a news release.

“On behalf of the Board and IAMGOLD, I want to thank Sumitomo for their continued support and dedication as together we continue to build what will be Canada’s third largest gold mine by production.”

“The Côté gold project remains on track for gold production in early 2024, in line with the updated schedule and cost to complete as outlined on our most recent project update,” Bélanger said.

In separate move to raise funds for the Côté project, IAMGOLD has also sold its exploration and developments assets in Senegal, Mali and Guinea to Morocco’s Managem for $282 million, which together with the Sumitomo funding would almost cover the remaining $1 billion required to complete construction.

Shares of IAMGOLD shot up 25% by 12:50 ET Tuesday following the Côté funding announcement. The company has a current market value of C$1.49 billion ($1.1bn).

Column: Zinc stocks at historic lows after a year of smelter woes
Reuters | December 20, 2022

Precious metals smelter at Glencore’s Kazzinc operations

Source: VisMedia

Where has all the zinc gone?


London Metal Exchange (LME) warehouse stocks of the galvanizing metal total 36,525 tonnes, the lowest amount this century.

Almost 60% of that metal is earmarked for physical load-out, leaving just 15,175 tonnes of live tonnage, no more than a few hours worth of global consumption.

Shanghai Futures Exchange stocks are equally depleted at 22,642 tonnes.

The clear-out of visible zinc inventory has played out in a year of weak demand, usage falling by 3.2% over the first 10 months of this year, according to the International Lead and Zinc Study Group (ILZSG).

But supply has fallen just as hard, reflecting an unprecedented year of smelter problems, particularly in Europe.

The LME zinc price has been under pressure this month, sliding from a high of $3,339 per tonne to a current $3,060 as the prospect of European recession further darkens the demand outlook.

But extremely low stocks and uncertainty over Europe’s smelter sector are cushioning the downside as the market continues to weigh up the relative under-performance of both supply and demand.

Smelter disruption

Global refined zinc output fell by 3.2% in January-October, according to the ILZSG, matching the drop-off in usage.

Production fell in China, Kazakhstan, Canada and Mexico, all of which are major sources of refined metal.

But the biggest hit was to European production this year as the region’s smelters faced an acute margin squeeze due to the rolling energy crisis.

Glencore mothballed its 100,000-tonne per year Portovesme plant in Italy at the end of 2021 and put its 165,000-tonne per year Nordenham smelter in Germany on care and maintenance last month.

Nyrstar, owned by Trafigura, did the same with its 315,000-tonne per year Dutch smelter in September, although the plant has since resumed production “on a limited basis”.

The company’s Auby smelter in France, by contrast, will now not come back from scheduled maintenance but remain on care and maintenance until further notice.

Other operators continue to adjust capacity in response to changes in local power pricing, which in Europe remains a fractured and highly variable landscape.

Changed trade flows

The loss of regional supply has kept European physical premiums elevated despite softening demand.

Fastmarkets assesses the northern European premium at a mid-point of $520 per tonne over LME cash and the southern at premium at $585 per tonne, a fresh record high.

The US physical market has been equally stretched, with availability not helped by the planned permanent closure of the Flin Flon smelter in Canada.

Such historically high premiums in the physical supply chain have both diverted metal from the terminal market and inverted China’s normal trade flows.

China has historically been a significant importer of refined zinc to the annual tune of 400,000-700,000 tonnes over the last decade.

This year it is on course to turn a net exporter for the first time since 2007. Imports collapsed and exports surged to 78,500 tonnes in the January-October period.

Almost half that tonnage has been shipped to Taiwan, noticeably one of the few LME delivery points to have seen any fresh inflows this year.

But Chinese zinc has also been exported to far-flung destinations such as Turkey, Italy, Mexico and the United States to plug gaps in the rest of the world’s supply.

The outbound flow of metal has acted to drain Chinese stocks, both visible and those lying in the off-market shadows. Shanghai Metal Market (SMM) estimates total “social” inventories of zinc ingot across seven domestic markets at a low 56,000 tonnes.

Recovery rates

Zinc pricing this year has reflected the conundrum of weak Chinese demand, thanks largely to a struggling property sector, and simultaneous supply-chain tightness in the rest of the world.

Next year’s outlook depends a lot on whether demand or supply recovers fastest, assuming either recovers at all.

Recession in Europe will come before recovery in China, according to analysts at Citi. The bank’s base-case forecast is for the zinc price to ease steadily to $2,600 per tonne in the third quarter of 2023 to reflect the Western demand hit.

Macquarie Bank agrees, forecasting prices to bottom out at $2,500 in the second quarter and to remain subdued as the market shifts back to surplus.

A return to surplus, however, assumes that the supply side can recover from this year’s collective under-performance.

China’s lifting of restrictions and rising demand should incentivize the country’s smelters to turn back on the taps after what SMM estimates to have been a 2.0% slide in national output so far this year.

High treatment charges, currently around $270-290 per tonne in China, will help smelter margins both there and everywhere else.

That should in theory pave the wave for European smelters to reactivate capacity once the power crisis abates, most likely in the second quarter as the region emerges from winter.

But smelters of any metal have a history of staying closed after a prolonged period of inactivity, the costs of reopening sometimes not worth the return.

Moreover, while European power prices have fallen significantly in recent weeks, they remain well above levels that were regarded as normal before Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.

The longer-term question-mark over Europe’s power-hungry smelters hasn’t gone away, injecting a whole new twist in the zinc market narrative.

In the short term the zinc market is going to remain beholden to the European power market. Any more smelter suspensions or any shift to permanent closures could yet turn a bearish market on its head.

(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, Andy Home, a columnist for Reuters.)

(Editing by David Evans)

Foran’s $150m loan helps nearly cover McIlvenna Bay copper project cost in Saskatchewan

Staff Writer | December 21, 2022 | 

The camp at Foran Mining’s McIlvenna Bay polymetallic project in Saskatchewan. 

Credit: Foran Mining

Foran Mining (TSXV: FOM) says it will use a $150 million loan from Sprott Resource Lending to help construct its McIlvenna Bay copper project in Saskatchewan.


The funding from Toronto-based Sprott joins C$200 million proposed by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which was announced in August and should be approved “in due course,” Foran said in a news release on Wednesday.

The financing will almost cover the estimated C$368 million cost to build the project about 330 km northeast of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, according to a feasibility study released in February. It also forecast C$481 million in sustaining capital for the 18-year initial phase of the mine.

“We have been meticulously evaluating various financing proposals from numerous lenders to support the development,” Dan Myerson, Foran’s chief executive officer, said in the release. “This agreement maximizes risk-adjusted value per share for existing shareholders.”

The McIlvenna Bay project has probable reserves of 25.7 million tonnes grading 1.23% copper, 2.39% zinc, 0.47 gram gold per tonne and 15.3 grams silver, according to the feasibility study. It is aiming for an underground mine to produce 38.8 million lb. copper, 63.6 million lb. zinc, 20,000 oz. gold and 486,000 oz. silver annually for the first 15 years.

The study estimated the project will have an after-tax net present value of C$1.1 billion at a 7% discount rate, and an internal rate of return of 54%. It used base case prices of $3.50 per lb. copper, $1.20 per lb. lead and $1,600 per oz. gold.

Vancouver-based Foran said it has received an initial advance of $29.5 million from the Sprott loan. Principal repayments are to start in mid-2026 and the loan accrues annual interest of at least 8.95%, the company said.

Foran is developing the project in east-central Saskatchewan in a three-pronged strategy with its Bigstone copper-zinc project 25 km west of McIlvenna Bay and eight other targets the explorer is probing in the same area. Foran is planning to build a centralized mill and says the operation will be carbon neutral by using electric vehicles and hydro-electric power.

The project ticks off a few boxes with copper and zinc on the federal government’s list of critical minerals considered essential for economic development. The age of electric vehicles and modern technologies depends on copper wiring, and there’s the push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.

“We look forward to partnering with Foran on its destination to become a premier critical metals producer,” Narinder Nagra, managing partner of Sprott, said in the same release. “Our financing of Foran is consistent with our strategy to provide innovative and flexible capital to maximize the value of exceptional projects.”

BMO Capital Markets said last month Foran has so far kept costs for the project in line with the feasibility study while planning to expand drilling on neighbouring targets to 35,000 metres next year after exploration at the Tesla site returned positive results this year.

“Foran continues to consolidate claims in proximity to McIlvenna Bay, providing the company an extensive land package,” mining analyst Rene Cartier wrote in a Nov. 30 note. “The proximity of Tesla offers the strong potential of additional resource growth.”

At presstime in Toronto, shares in Foran were up 3% on the day, valuing the company at about C$763 million ($560m).

New model allows for balancing rare plant protection, mine development

Staff Writer | December 20, 2022 | 

Colorado Plateau. (Photo by Robert Fitts, Utah State University).

Researchers at Utah State University are mapping out strategies that allow balancing the emerging demand for mining and energy development projects on the Colorado Plateau and the survival of the area’s rare plant populations.


In a paper published in the journal Land, the scientists explain that the vast stretches of desert in southeastern Utah and southwestern Colorado are home to rare plants like milkvetch, beardtongue penstemon and sclerocactus, which manage to survive under the harshest of environmental conditions and, thus, are something of an ecologically niched miracle.

To ensure that at least 30% of these plant species can be protected so their respective communities can hold on to the potential for long-term survival, the research team developed a new method to model how rare plants are distributed across the Colorado Plateau, one that includes strategies for structuring energy projects to optimize the use of space to minimize their impact.

The model doesn’t work in an ecological vacuum—it considers factors like land ownership, the potential for energy extraction at a site, and biodiversity.

“The key to finding workable solutions in these kinds of circumstances is to think both like an ecologist and an energy developer, and to work within that space,” Thomas Edwards, co-author of the study, said in a media statement. “Conservation planning frameworks don’t always incorporate real-world limiting factors such as financial considerations, business risk and land ownership. But those considerations are essential for finding workable solutions. Reality-based strategies require the consideration of all these things.”

In his view and that of his colleagues, it is important to use space wisely and understand that no solution can completely meet objectives for both plant conservation and energy extraction. However, where there is direct conflict, their model can help land managers accommodate a level of balance.

The team identified and mapped specific locations where conservation actions to protect plant communities would get the most bang for their buck. They found the minimum number of sites required to cover 30% of each species at the lowest financial cost to developers. By optimizing and minimizing the number of land units slated for conservation, they were able to allow more areas to open for energy development and exploration.

This approach might require developers to move planned roads, build around certain protected areas, or drill horizontally in some places to protect a high-priority location, at some additional cost. But the model acknowledges that energy development in the area is headed toward the inevitable, and accommodates that.

“It’s not a perfect scenario,” Edwards said, “but this approach provides opportunities for a best-case scenario given the reality of circumstances.”

Ioneer’s lithium-boron project in Nevada moves into final permitting stage

Cecilia Jamasmie | December 19, 2022 | 

Rhyolite Ridge is the only known lithium-boron deposit in North America. 

(Image courtesy of ioneer.)

Australia-based ioneer (ASX: INR)(Nasdaq: IONR) said on Monday its flagship Rhyolite Ridge lithium-boron project in Nevada has advanced into the final stage of federal permitting.


The company said the decision by the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to publish a Notice of Intent (NOI) in the Federal Register, was a major milestone towards completing the permitting for the proposed mine.

“This marks a major milestone toward the completion of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process and approval of the project’s plan of operations,” it said in the statement.

The plan of operations is the foundational permitting document for the project and will become the basis for compliance during operations and closure, the company said.

ioneer has faced some setbacks when trying to obtain federal permits because public lands near its Rhyolite Ridge asset are home to the endangered wildflower Tiehm’s buckwheat.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service recently designated the pale yellow flower as an endangered species, which the company welcomed as, it said, the decision provided “further clarity for the path forward for the development of the Rhyolite Ridge project.”

The company had submitted in July a revised plan of operations for the project that will protect the wildflower while the mine is being built.

Tiehm’s buckwheat (Eriogonum tiehmii)

Photo by Patrick Donnelly, Center for Biological Diversity.

“We understand the Rhyolite Ridge project is the first lithium project to be issued a Notice of Intent under the Biden administration,” executive Chairman James Calaway said.

“We see this as a significant step toward ensuring a strong domestic supply of critical minerals and strategic materials necessary for development of a domestic battery supply chain essential to the electrification of transportation in the US,” he noted.

ioneer inked a supply deal in July with Prime Planet Energy & Solutions, a battery joint venture between Toyota and Panasonic, to provide 4,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate per year in the first five years of production.

It also signed a deal with Ford for 7,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate annually for five years. ioneer aims to produce about 21,000 tonnes of lithium a year in Nevada starting in 2025.

Rhyolite Ridge is the only known lithium-boron deposit in North America and one of only two known such deposits in the world.