It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, November 01, 2023
African lithium project boosts US drive to close EV gap on China
Bloomberg News | October 31, 2023 | Atlantic Lithium has expanded reserves at its Ewoyaa project in Ghana. (Credit: Atlantic Lithium)
Africa’s first major lithium project without Chinese funding is set to bolster US ambitions of developing its own battery-making industry. Half of the output from Ghana’s Ewoyaa mine, being built by Australia’s Atlantic Lithium Ltd., is earmarked for a refinery that Piedmont Lithium Ltd. plans to construct in Tennessee. Piedmont is Atlantic Lithium’s second-largest shareholder and has agreed to provide most of the funds for the project.
“Our investment in Ewoyaa will help alleviate potential future US supply constraints and provide crucial resources to help reduce America’s dependence on foreign nations, like China,” Piedmont chief executive officer Keith Phillips said in an emailed response to questions.
China is pouring investment into lithium mines in Zimbabwe, Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo to secure the battery metals for its dominant electric-vehicle industry. The supply of critical battery materials — including lithium, nickel and cobalt — is gaining greater urgency amid wild swings in prices and the US administration’s push for companies to reduce their reliance on China.
While lithium prices have fallen back from last year’s peak, the race for the battery metal has lured mining heavyweights, automakers and even oil majors. A projected shortfall from 2025, as demand from EVs surges, is driving the search for new supplies.
Piedmont was prepared to accept an equal share in the Ghanaian project, whereas potential Chinese backers wanted a controlling stake, Atlantic Lithium CEO Keith Muller told Bloomberg in an interview last week.
The US firm, which supplies Tesla Inc. and LG Chem, exercised an option in August to acquire an initial 22.5% stake in Ewoyaa and committed to fund the first $70 million required to develop the asset. It will also provide half of the additional costs thereafter.
Ewoyaa, Africa’s third-biggest lithium project under development, will take advantage of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which offers tax credits to support the EV supply chain in the US.
“What the IRA does for me is it gives me certainty that 50% of my offtake is going into a hydroxide facility that’s destined for incentivized battery conversion,” Muller said. African supply
Mines across Africa are forecast to increase lithium output more than 70-fold by 2030, compared with last year’s volume, according to BloombergNEF. That would increase Africa’s share of global supply to 14% from 1%.
Atlantic Lithium, which is still awaiting an environmental permit, aims to produce its first concentrate at Ewoyaa in the second quarter of 2025. Industrial scale output will only start in 2026 with a projected production of 36,000 tons of lithium carbonate equivalent — enough to power about 800,000 Tesla Model 3s.
The company is considering processing feldspar — a byproduct of mining that’s used in ceramics and tiles — as well as producing higher-value lithium chemicals from the output not destined for Piedmont, Muller said.
(By Yinka Ibukun and William Clowes)
Zimbabwe lithium export earnings treble as projects take off
Reuters | November 1, 2023 | Zimbabwe is one of the top 10 lithium producers but currently produces only a fraction of the worldwide total.
Zimbabwe earned $209 million from lithium exports in the first nine months of 2023, nearly treble last year’s earnings, Mines Minister Zhemu Soda said on Wednesday, as Chinese-driven mining and processing projects take off. Africa’s top lithium producer, Zimbabwe hopes demand for the mineral, which is key for renewable energy storage, will help revive its ailing economy.
Lithium is set to become Zimbabwe’s third biggest mineral export after gold and platinum group metals, which registered $2.46 billion and $2.27 billion in export receipts last year. “The revenue generated from the export of lithium grew from $1.8 million in 2018 to $70 million in 2022. By September 2023, a total of $209 million had been realised from lithium exports,” Soda said at a mining conference in Bulawayo.
Chinese firms, including Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, Sinomine Resource Group, Chengxin Lithium Group, Yahua Group and Canmax Technologies, have spent more than $1 billion over the past two years to acquire and develop lithium projects in Zimbabwe.
Most of these companies have built processing plants commissioned this year and are shipping lithium concentrates to China for further processing.
Zimbabwe’s government banned raw lithium exports last year, as it seeks to get more value from the mineral.
Other major producers are expected to start operations in Zimbabwe in 2024 as the country seeks to expand output, Soda said.
Lithium prices in China, the top consumer of the battery metal, have been on a downtrend for much of this year.
(Reporting by Nyasha Chingono — editing by Nelson Banya and Mark Potter)
China to invest $2.8 billion in Zimbabwe in lithium, energy
Bloomberg News | November 1, 2023 | China Mining Resources bought Bikita Minerals in 2022 and has spent $300 million to expand petalite, a lithium aluminum phyllosilicate mineral, and spodumene capacity. (Image courtesy of Sinomine Zimbabwe Bikita Mining.)
Chinese companies were awarded licenses in the third quarter that could see $2.79 billion of investment flow into Zimbabwe, mostly in mining and energy as the government pushes to develop some of Africa’s biggest lithium deposits and end power outages. The planned investment, a tenfold increase on the $271 million pledged in the same period last year, dwarfs that of its closest rival, the United Arab Emirates, which eon licenses to invest $498.5 million. The total value of investment licenses awarded was $3.41 billion.
Chinese applications “were the most by number and investment value with mining being their most preferred sector followed by the manufacturing sector,” the Zimbabwe Development Agency, the state-owned unit tasked with securing investment, said in a report on Wednesday. China accounted for more than two thirds of the 180 applications.
Chinese companies have been buying lithium mines, which supply a key component for the batteries used in electric vehicles. They are also involved in revamping and building power plants in the country. Of the planned investment $2.8 billion is slated for energy projects and $411 million for mining.
One China-backed project is a $2.3 billion planned energy and mining complex that will process minerals in Mapinga while another is 500 megawatt solar energy project
The mines ministry said Wednesday the country has earned $209 million in revenue from lithium exports in the nine months to September.
(By Ray Ndlovu and Godfrey Marawanyika)
3D scans will uncover the secrets of Iron Age gold treasure
Object from the gold treasure from Vindelev, which spent some time at DTU in an attempt to better understand its origin and importance. Credit: Conservation Centre Vejle
Photographers and journalists from the BBC, TV 2, and DR were ready when an armored car drove up to the front of DTU's 3D Imaging Center on 10 February 2022. All cameras were pointed directly at a brown shoebox, which an archaeologist from the Danish National Museum carefully took out of the armored car and carried through the revolving door to the 3D Imaging Center.
Inside the shoebox was the world's largest gold bracteate. The bracteate, which is a medallion-like necklace measuring 13.5cm, was found along with 15 other bracteates and four Roman medallions by an amateur archaeologist the year before in a field near the town of Vindelev in Denmark. Weighing 794 grams combined, the gold treasure is estimated to have been buried in the 6th century, and experts have compared the discovery to that of the Golden Horns of Gallehus.
The problem, however, is that many of the bracteates are folded to a point where the archaeologists are unable to see the motifs and runic inscriptions on them. It is too risky to unfold the gold by hand, as it may break, which is why the National Museum and the Vejle Museums have sought the help of modern technology at DTU.
"Sometimes technology can open doors that we can't. In this case, we want to get a better look at the inscriptions and images on the bracteates so we can learn more about the nobleman who owned the treasure. What was his position? What was his domain? If we succeed, we will gain a better understanding of the structure of society in the 5th and 6th century," says Mads Ravn, archaeologist and Head of Research at the Vejle Museums.
To unfold the gold bracteate, you must first fold the white "sheet" so that it follows the folds in the bracteate. The local surface pattern from the data of the gold bracteate scan is transferred to the sheet. Unfolding the sheet then reveals what is hidden on the surface of the bracteate. Credit: Technical University of Denmark
The technology Ravn is hoping can provide new answers is known as CT scanning in hospitals, where it is used to create detailed X-ray images of a patient's internal organs. In recent times, this technology has also been used by physicists to scan material objects and recreate them as digital 3D models. For example, DTU has used it to scan and reconstruct a 66-million-year-old T. rex skull.
However, the bracteates from the National Museum were not only brought to DTU's 3D Imaging Center in February 2022 to be scanned and reconstructed—they also needed to be digitally unfolded. After completing the scan, DTU's researchers were thus left with an ancient mystery and 9,600 CT images to unfold it.
Gold thickness causes problems
One of the challenges in solving the mystery was the varying thickness of the gold. Where the gold on the bracteates is thin due to stamp pressure and engravings, the scans have produced what is called CT artifacts, which are visual discrepancies between the real bracteate and the resulting CT image.
The entire gold treasure, which was found just 8 km from the Jelling monuments. Credit: Conservation Centre Vejle
"In hospitals, artifacts occur when, for example, you're performing a CT scan on a patient with surgical screws in their leg. The screws will create lines in the image, and the same thing has happened in this project. Our images are full of lines that wouldn't be there if the bracteates had had the same thickness everywhere," explains Carsten Gundlach, Senior Executive Research Officer at DTU Physics.
He used the data from the hundreds of 360-degree scans of each bracteate for calculations for the spatial 3D images. Gundlach says that this method has resulted in fairly accurate 3D reconstructions of the bracteates in their folded condition. Nevertheless, the artifacts still caused trouble for Gundlach's DTU Compute colleague, Hans Martin Kjer, who tried to digitally unfold the bracteates.
"We've tried to unfold one of the smaller bracteates called X17, but it's difficult for us to define the edge of the bracteate and the exact line between two surfaces. When the gold has many tight folds, it makes it difficult for us to separate the surfaces from each other. Ultimately, it makes it very difficult to produce a perfect unfolding where you can see all the details," says Kjer.
However, the two researchers refused to give up. Through conversations with the archaeologists, they have gained an idea of which motifs are of special interest in a historical context. The focus of the project has therefore shifted from unfolding the entire bracteate to unfolding the individual parts that can give archaeologists new knowledge about Denmark in the 5th and 6th century.
Getting a bracteat ready to be CT scanned at the DTU Imaging Center in an attempt to solve the mystery of where the Vindelev treasure originates. Credit: Mikal Schlosser
Treasure may have changed owners
Ravn says that Denmark at the time of bracteates can best be described as what the Romans called "wild Germania." Here, autocratic clan leaders ruled marked territories according to the same rules now used by biker gangs or the Mafia.
"The more wars they won, the stronger clan leaders they became. And the more gold and riches they could get for their followers, the more followers they got," says Ravn.
Judging by the size of the treasure from Vindelev, he believes that its owner must have been a very powerful, but previously unknown, clan leader. This gives the site around Vindelev, located 8km east of Jelling, the cradle of Denmark, a new and significant status as a center of power.
At the same time, the treasure from Vindelev bears a close resemblance to other gold treasures found near the town of Gudme on Funen, which is considered to have been Denmark's most important center of power from the 3rd to the 6th century. This leads archaeologists to believe that some of the bracteates from Vindelev may have been made by a blacksmith in Gudme. If that is the case, the gold must have changed owners at some point.
A 3D visualization from the reconstruction of bracteate X19. The red surface shows the specific area the researchers have focused on unfolding. The holes illustrate the artifacts that have occurred due to the thickness of the gold. Credit: Technical University of Denmark
The theory is therefore that there was a close connection—perhaps an alliance—between the clan leaders of the two centers of power. "It's possible that the gold was handed over as a gift in connection with weddings between daughters and sons from each clan," says Ravn.
In order to confirm this theory, Ravn is particularly interested in seeing the motifs on the largest of the gold bracteates, which seems to have a folded twin motif in the middle. The stamps around the motif can also tell the researchers something about the origin of the bracteate and how old it is. If they turn out to bear the same stamps as the ones found in Gudme, then they were made by the same goldsmith, and the archaeologists can continue working with the theory of the close connection between Vindelev and Gudme.
"It's a bit like a court case where the more circumstantial evidence we find, the stronger the case will be. We can't exactly ask the witnesses who were there at the time. We rely on circumstantial evidence, and this is where DTU can help," explains Ravn.
Here you can see the surface unfolded. The unfolding reveals a motif of a man in the centre of the bracteate who may well have been a Roman emperor, according to archaeologists. Ancient Danes copied the portraits of Roman emperors on their jewellery and also added their own symbols to the portrait. Credit: Technical University of Denmark
Research never ends
In the digital treasure hunt for answers, DTU's researchers have come closer to finding the evidence than before. They have succeeded in unfolding a small area with fewer folds on one of the smaller bracteates called X19.
"It's a significantly better result than when we tried unfolding the entire bracteate. With this method, we can optimize the individual areas," says Gundlach. However, while he still believes that the results can be improved, he thinks that the method has potential worth pursuing.
"The method opens up the possibility of piecing together the individual parts after they've been unfolded," he says.
The Vejle Museums are very enthusiastic about the new results, not just because the method can provide new insight into the power dynasties of the Iron Age, but also because it may help archaeologists determine why some of the bracteates appear to have been folded by hand while others have probably been destroyed by a modern plow centuries after being buried.
"It would be interesting to see if DTU can distinguish between the randomly destroyed bracteates and the deliberately folded ones using the mathematical algorithms that they're already working with. We expect that the deliberately destroyed bracteates will be more symmetrically folded," says Ravn. He explains that if the clan leader himself has folded the bracteates, it indicates that the treasure was used as a sacrifice to the gods.
The next step is to unfold the twin motif and the stamps on the world's largest bracteate. The DTU researchers are hoping that the work with the treasure will open up a new string of collaborations with archaeologists and museum professionals. But when the goal has been reached and the researchers will be satisfied remains just as unanswered as many of the riddles that still surround the treasure from Vindelev.
"There are still many challenges to solve. Of course it's annoying that you can't just finish things up and move on. But you can always do more," says Kjer and adds, "Research never ends."
China’s fraying ties to Myanmar’s tin hub threaten key supply
Bloomberg News | October 30, 2023 | Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar (Stock Image)
Ties between China and a powerful Myanmar armed group that controls a key source of tin are fraying, threatening to prolong what have already been months of supply disruption for the key metal.
China has long had a warm relationship with the group that rules the self-proclaimed Wa state in the country’s north, an inaccessible corner known as a hub for illegal narcotics trade — but links have been tested by the Wa decision earlier this year to suspend mining, cutting off nearly a third of China’s total tin ore supply.
Tensions have now been exacerbated by Beijing’s efforts to shut down cyber-scam operations in the border region, a flourishing enterprise that funds organized crime and often targets Chinese nationals. Beijing’s crackdown has targeted United Wa State Army officials it says are ringleaders. Xinhua recently reported more than 2,300 suspects have been captured in Myanmar as part of a broader crackdown and escorted across the border.
“We anticipate that prices will edge higher in 2024 as the seaborne tin market starts to see a fall in supplies as the mining ban of Myanmar rolls on and export ban of Indonesia comes into effect,” BMI, a unit of Fitch Group, said in a note earlier this month.
The Chinese crackdown might delay moves by the Wa state and the ruling Pao family to review mining rules to allow operations to resume, according to five tin traders and industry executives, who declined to be identified as they aren’t allowed to speak to the media. They had anticipated mining would restart this year, but expectations have now been pushed out until the first quarter of 2024.
Semiconductor demand
Some Wa state ore processors — which turn the raw material into concentrate — have resumed working, the people said. But they are operating at low efficiency because of insufficient stockpiles.
That might create short-term supply disruption as demand from the semiconductor industry — which uses tin in electronic circuits — improves.
Tin is not yet in crisis: inventories are rising in London Metal Exchange warehouses. But supply has already faced repeated blows this year from protests in Peru and expectations that Indonesia, the world’s largest exporter, will ban overseas sales as part of its campaign to develop processing capacity for metals at home.
Since the discovery of large deposits in Wa State, Myanmar has become a crucial tin producer, and a driver of the benchmark price on the LME. That has handed considerable power to the UWSA. the largest ethnic armed group in a nation in the throes of civil war since the military seized power in a coup in 2021.
The tin ban earlier this year sent prices 12% higher to their strongest level in nine months. Prices jumped again in August when Wa began enforcing an exploration and extraction halt. At that point, almost two-thirds of China’s imports of tin-in-concentrate were coming from Myanmar, with Wa accounting for some 70% of that.
(By Alfred Cang and Philip J. Heijmans)
Hedge funds pile into uranium stocks set for ‘dramatic’ rise
Several hedge fund managers have started ratcheting up their exposure to uranium stocks, as they bet on significant price gains.
Terra Capital’s Matthew Langsford, Segra Capital’s Arthur Hyde, Argonaut Capital Partners’ Barry Norris and Anaconda Invest’s Renaud Saleur are among managers building bets on uranium companies such as Cameco Corp., Energy Fuels Inc., Ur-Energy Inc. and NexGen Energy Ltd.
Langsford, who runs a A$175 million ($110 million) natural resources fund at Sydney-based Terra Capital, says the outlook for uranium prices means “the equities could see dramatic upside, 50%, 100%, possibly more.”
More than a decade after the shock of Fukushima led a number of countries to review their reliance on nuclear power, it’s cemented itself as a vital plank in the transition toward a low-carbon future. That’s driven up uranium valuations, with prices having risen 125% since 2020.
The International Energy Agency estimates that global nuclear capacity needs to double by mid-century from 2020 levels, to help the world meet net zero commitments.
That target is underpinned by demand in Europe, Asia and Africa for nuclear reactors. Old facilities are getting their lifespans extended, while China is continuing to build out its nuclear fleet, all of which is fanning demand for the uranium needed to power those plants.
Such investments remain controversial. Germany famously wound down its nuclear energy program after 2011, as then Chancellor Angela Merkel responded to the global trauma caused by the Fukushima meltdown. That decision has since drawn criticism, with Germany subsequently finding itself deeply reliant on high-emitting fossil fuels supplied by Russia.
Uranium’s appeal has grown as Europe works to wean itself off Russian gas. However, with Russia sitting on roughly 8% of the world’s recoverable conventional uranium resources, the West has found itself needing to perform an even bigger energy-supply pivot.
“We’re most focused on uranium miners in public markets,” Hyde, a portfolio manager at Segra Capital, said in an interview. “For the supply and demand of this market to balance, we need new assets to come online.”
He added that, “if you’re going to insulate the US, Europe and Canada from the global fuel cycle, which is heavily dependent on Russia and China, the best way to do that is to build new mines, new conversion capacity, new enrichment capacity.”
Nuclear power doesn’t emit carbon dioxide, and has even been defined as green in the European Union’s taxonomy of sustainable assets. But it comes with a number of risks.
“There are two main barriers to it being considered a serious contender in the race to net zero: skepticism around the safety of reactors and radioactive waste disposal, and cost,” said Nilushi Karunaratne of BloombergNEF. That skepticism is part of the reason why “the number of reactors in operation today has changed little since the immediate fallout of the 2011 Fukushima accident, as retirements have outpaced new facilities coming online,” she said.
Uranium goes through several stages of processing before it’s ready to use as fuel in nuclear power stations. After it’s mined and milled, the uranium ore is converted into a fluorine gas, which is then enriched and made into fuel rods. These get loaded into reactors, after which the fission that releases energy occurs.
The whole process, called the nuclear fuel cycle, can take years and may rely on supply chains that stretch across several countries. Hyde says political sensitivity around those supply chains is set to drive the West to look for new ways to achieve independence.
Norris, who’s the founder and chief investment officer of Argonaut, says he bought shares in Cameco and Kazatomprom this year. “Once governments wake up to how useless weather-dependent power is, they will go next to nuclear,” said Norris, who has shorted solar, wind and hydrogen stocks.
Not all uranium stocks are equal, though, and a nearly 30% gain in the Global X Uranium ETF this year has some hedge fund managers looking for opportunities to short companies they think are less likely to do well. Saleur of Anaconda, for example, says he’s now looking into shorting Cameco Corp. as a hedge, after it gained more than 70% this year. But he’s long miners including Energy Fuels Inc. and Ur-Energy Inc., he said.
Segra’s Hyde says there’s some “relatively lazy capital investing in a compelling macro story without doing much company level work.” And as the number of buyers grows, some will target the wrong stocks, he said. “Many of the nuances of the nuclear fuel markets remain misunderstood,” Hyde said.
“Nuclear may become the key driving force in the decades-long energy transition. New demand in Europe, Asia and Africa for nuclear reactors and old reactor life-time extensions aligned to net-zero aspirations from governments — and the continued build-out of China’s nuclear fleet — have driven spot uranium prices 125% higher since 2020.”Mike Dennis, Bloomberg Intelligence
Langsford at Terra has been adding to positions in NexGen Energy Ltd. and Denison Mines Corp. NexGen is exploring a new uranium mine in Canada with the potential to produce 25% of global supply.
That would make it “very important for the nuclear industry in the 2030s, which could end up being the golden age of nuclear power,” Langsford said.
(By Sheryl Tian Tong Lee)
Ottawa outlines eligibility for companies seeking C$1.5bn in critical minerals infrastructure funding
Ottawa is finally getting ready to accept applications for a C$1.5-billion infrastructure fund to support critical minerals mines, with stakeholders in Ontario’s Ring of Fire hoping they will be among the recipients.
Natural Resources Canada announced Tuesday that projects eligible to apply for the new Critical Minerals Infrastructure Fund include clean energy and transportation projects that support critical minerals mines. Eligible recipients include the private sector, the provinces and territories, and Indigenous groups.
CMIF is being set up because the federal government committed to the funding over seven years to support critical minerals infrastructure as part of its April, 2022, budget.
Funds will be made available for early stage projects that are still in the planning and engineering stage, as well as “shovel ready” projects that are nearing construction and have already been permitted. The government said it expects to start taking proposals in the late fall for shovel-ready projects.
Companies can apply for up to C$50-million in funding, while provincial and territorial governments can request up to C$100-million for public projects.
Canada currently has 31 minerals that it has deemed critical, but the federal government has identified six that are a priority: lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt, copper and rare earth elements. While the country has made huge strides in building out its electric battery manufacturing infrastructure, there are few Canadian companies who mine or refine the critical minerals needed for these factories.
Photinie Koutsavlis, vice-president, economic affairs and climate change with the Mining Association of Canada, said that while the broad strokes of the government’s plan for spending on critical minerals infrastructure appears to be promising, the execution will be crucial. So far, she said, the government has moved slowly on this initiative, as more than 18 months have passed since it was announced.
Moreover, given the narrative the government espouses about how “we need to capture this generational opportunity in critical minerals” and better compete with the United States, which is spending hundreds of billions through the Inflation Reduction Act, the ability to follow through is key, Ms. Koutsavlis said.
“Through the last two budgets, the mining sector has done very well with respect to government announcements, but the execution and the implementation of these programs have been lagging,” she said.
The undeveloped Ring of Fire region in Northern Ontario is one of Canada’s highest profile critical minerals projects with massive infrastructure challenges, and one of many projects that will look for funding from Ottawa as part of CMIF. The Ontario government has already committed to funding $1-billion, or about half of the costs for roads into the Ring of Fire.
Qasim Saddique, principal consultant at Suslop, has been working with Marten Falls of Northern Ontario, which is leading federal environmental impact assessments into proposed roads into the Ring of Fire and co-leading another assessment alongside Webequie First Nation. The roads would connect both the two Indigenous communities and the isolated Ring of Fire mining camp to the provincial highway network some 300 kilometres to the south. The road project was last estimated to cost C$2-billion.
Mr. Saddique said that the two First Nations will be making an application for funding as part of the CMIF, as he concedes that its funding needs are immense.
“This one project would definitely eat up that entire pot,” he said. “Having said that, I do think it’s the largest project of its kind in the country.“
Located 550 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay, the undeveloped Ring of Fire region has no access to the grid, or road connectivity, meaning that any metals that may eventually be mined there have no way of getting to market.
Glencore Cuts 2023 Nickel Production Guidance By Reuters Oct. 30, 2023,
LONDON (Reuters) -Commodity trader and miner Glencore on Monday cut its nickel production guidance for this year due to maintenance and strikes but reiterated its expectation that profits from its trading division would be $3.5-$4.0 billion, above its long-term guidance range.
Glencore maintained its overall 2023 guidance for copper, zinc, coal and cobalt output.
Its trading division includes coal, oil, liquefied natural gas and related products, as well as metals, whose profit hit a record $6.4 billion in 2022, up 73% from the previous year.
The London-listed miner's long-term yearly trading guidance earnings is for a number between $2.2 billion and $3.2 billion. Glencore, which in June offered to buy Teck's steelmaking coal business as a standalone unit, having been rebuffed twice in its $22.5 billon bid to combine the two companies, lowered its guidance for full-year nickel production by 9% to around 102,000 metric tons.
"Nickel has been reduced to reflect ... maintenance outages at the Sudbury smelter and a longer than expected recovery from 2022 strike action, together with a lower full-year revision for Koniambo," Glencore said in a statement.
Glencore's own sourced nickel output was down 16% at 68,400 tons in the first three quarters of the year, while its own sourced copper production of 735,800 metric tons fell 5%.
Copper, nickel and cobalt are key materials for electric vehicles, a key plank of the energy transition.
Glencore's own sourced cobalt production year to date was 32,500 tons down 2% from the same period last year, zinc output at 672,100 tons fell 4% and ferrochrome output at 873,000 tons dropped 21%.
"Ferrochrome production has also been marked lower, due to additional smelter off-line days on account of electricity pricing and load curtailments in South Africa," Glencore said.
(Reporting by Pratima Desai; editing by Jason Neely and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
Macron lands in Putin’s backyard seeking new friends and uranium
Bloomberg News | October 31, 2023 | French President Emmanuel Macron. (Stock image)
After finding itself suddenly unwelcome in its traditional sphere of influence, France is casting further afield. That’s why president Emmanuel Macron will travel to energy-rich Central Asia this week to visit Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, two suppliers of the uranium that powers the country’s nuclear reactors.
The trip aims to boost France’s energy security, according to two people familiar with the French president’s thinking, who declined to be named when discussing matters of diplomacy. These efforts are in keeping with a wider European effort to diversify away from the Russian fossil fuels on which the bloc was formerly so reliant.
But there is a second motive, the people said, and it involves tempting the former Soviet republics to look beyond their own dependence on Russia. French officials suggest the war in Ukraine has unsettled long-established relationships in the region, and that creates an opportunity.
Central Asia’s vast reserves of oil, gas and minerals put it at the center of a contest for influence in the region that has habitually been Russia’s stomping ground.
China is extending its reach through President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road infrastructure project, the US is seeking to bolster its political presence, while the European Union is striving to bind the region into a trade and energy corridor that would run through the Caucasus and on to Europe, bypassing Russia.
France already boasts some large investments in the region; for instance French nuclear company Orano SA — formerly known as Areva — exploits uranium deposits in Kazakhstan via a joint venture with state-owned Kazatomprom. Deepening Orano’s presence will be on the menu of discussions, according to one delegation insider, who declined to be named discussing details of the trip.
Yet France’s pursuit of uranium is freighted with a greater urgency in the wake of a coup this July in Niger, which last year was second only to Kazakhstan as the EU’s biggest source of the raw material. Orano had to stop processing uranium ore at one of its facilities in the Saharan republic because international sanctions against the military junta were hampering logistics, it said last month.
“Kazakhstan is key to France’s energy security,” said Michael Levystone, a Paris-based researcher at the French Institute of International Relations. “Macron’s visit will act as a reminder that Paris is ready to step up cooperation.”
In addition to being the biggest supplier of uranium to France, last year Kazakhstan was also its second-biggest source of crude oil, down from first place in 2021, according to figures from the French economy ministry.
Sparked by the invasion of Ukraine and powered by deeper concerns about the advance of China, Kazakhstan is one of a few countries where earlier this year G7 nations jointly resolved to deepen their partnerships, according to a diplomat familiar with the Group-of-Seven leaders’ internal deliberations.
That means that in courting the land-locked republics wedged between China and Russia, Macron finds himself part of a broader trend.
Last week the foreign ministers of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan met with the 27 EU Member States’ foreign ministers for the first time, according to an EU statement about that meeting, while in September President Joe Biden met their leaders on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. That same month, Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz hosted them in Berlin.
In France’s case, the overtures take place as it contends with increasingly limited room for maneuver in its usual sphere of influence. Since 2020, coups in nine sub-Saharan countries have variously spooked or sent home French diplomats, and in some cases the threat to French interests has been powered by Russia, in the shape of the mercenary Wagner Group.
Macron’s search for allies in Russia’s own backyard is helped by the Central Asian countries’ ambivalence toward the war in Ukraine. As they adhere faithfully to the west’s sanctions on Russia, at least on paper, his Nov. 1 to Nov. 2 trip arrives just as these nations’ commercial relationships are themselves in flux.
The French president will travel with a delegation of 15 business leaders from the energy, agrifood and mining sectors, according to an Elysee official, including utility Electricite de France SA and engineering company Assystem SA, which provides expertise to build nuclear reactors.
They will have noticed Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s plans for a referendum on a nuclear power plant that would reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels.
Kazakhstan also has plans to start extracting rare-earth metals next year, at a time when Macron has called for France to be less dependent on Chinese raw materials crucial to Europe’s electric-car industry.
Even so, earlier this year the French president made a state visit to China, underscoring a strategy of distancing himself from the US’s more hawkish stance on Beijing, and in line with his attempts to expand France’s influence in Asia.
Macron recently became the first French president to visit Mongolia, later signing a deal to source more uranium, while least year he was the first French leader to attend an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit with the countries of the Pacific Rim.
(By Ania Nussbaum and Samy Adghirni)
Teck parts ways with president and COO Harry Conger after massive cost overruns at QB2
Teck Resources Ltd. is parting ways with Harry “Red” Conger, one of the executives who oversaw the company’s cost overruns at its QB2 copper mine.
The Vancouver-based miner announced on Monday that Mr. Conger, who is chief operating officer (COO) and president, is retiring effective Wednesday.
Teck chief executive Jonathan Price is taking over as president, while the company searches for a permanent COO replacement for Mr. Conger.
Just last week, Teck announced that the capital cost estimate at QB2, its flagship copper mine, had spiraled to roughly $8.7-billion, or 85% higher than a $4.7-billion estimate in 2019.
Mr. Conger started as COO of Teck in 2020 and was named president last year.
QB2 was sanctioned in 2018, started production earlier this year and is in the early stages of ramping up to full output. The mine is located high up in the mountains of northern Chile.
Teck has revised the construction costs of the mine upward multiple times over the past few years, blaming engineering problems, challenges in building its associated port and the inflationary impact of the covid-19 pandemic among many other issues.
Teck is increasing its exposure to copper as the metal trades at a significantly higher valuation to coal, owing to its usage in lower carbon energy sources, and its designation in Canada as a critical mineral. At the same time, the company wants to divest its coal business because of the fossil fuel’s poor environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials.
Since the spring, Vancouver-based Teck has been in talks with companies interested in buying its core metallurgical coal business, after it failed in an earlier attempt to spin it off to shareholders. Among the parties interested in the unit are Glencore PLC of Switzerland, Japan’s Nippon Steel, Indian conglomerate JSW Steel and a consortium led by Canadian mining veteran Pierre Lassonde.
Column: Mining faces gulf between ambition and reality on energy transition, China
Reuters | November 1, 2023 | Wind turbines. (Reference image by moonjazz, Flickr).
Mining companies in the West are facing two overarching challenges in trying to produce enough metals to enable the energy transition, and at the same time build alternative supply chains to lessen their dependence on China.
The problem is that there is a vast gulf between the scale of the ambition and the reality of what’s actually happening, and what’s likely to happen in the next few years.
This gap was the hidden theme at this week’s International Mining and Resources Conference (IMARC) in Sydney, that brings together miners, investors and government policymakers.
There is little doubt that Australia is a country well-placed to play a major role in supplying many of the metals vital to the energy transition.
It is already the world’s largest producer of lithium and iron ore, the key raw material for steel.
It is also a top supplier of copper, nickel and zinc and has proven reserves of other critical minerals such as cobalt and rare earths.
The challenge is developing the resources, building new mines and perhaps developing downstream processing, rather than merely exporting ores as has happened in the past.
The previous models for developing mines appear no longer effective, and even if some projects do progress, they are nowhere near enough to provide enough material for the energy transition.
In the past, junior miners raised equity capital, conducted exploration and proved up a resource. At this point they could try and raise more capital, seek big-pocketed partners or hope that a large mining company would buy them out.
While this happens to some extent, the story at IMARC is largely one of dozens of small mining companies seeking financing, and most ending up with little to show for it.
Raising equity capital is hard given the absence of deep pools of retail investor funds and the reluctance of institutional investors to fund risky, long-term projects.
The major miners have pulled back on acquisitions in recent years, preferring to run operations leanly and return cash to shareholders, and if they do invest it’s largely been brownfield expansions of existing operations. Limiting China
The irony is that in seeking cash to try and reduce reliance on China’s dominant role in the energy transition supply chains, the mining industry in the West has been exposed as lacking capital and motivation to invest.
Michael Willoughby, global head of metals, mining and transition materials at HSBC, told a forum at IMARC that there is capital available for mining, but it’s located in developing countries such as China, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.
These countries also tend to have governments that are prepared to offer deeper support, such as 1% loans and tax holidays for mining and processing investments, Willoughby said.
Australia’s federal government last week doubled its funding for critical minerals to A$4 billion ($2.52 billion), but this is largely viewed as a small amount by the industry.
To put the funding in perspective, a junior mining company seeking to develop a cobalt mine in New South Wales will need about A$1 billion to build and commission a mine.
If the government were to fund that project, it would take a quarter of the total money available and deliver a relatively small volume of just one of the metals deemed vital to the energy transition.
Even the US Inflation Reduction Act, which offers around $369 billion in support to decarbonize the economy, is unlikely to be enough to build an entire supply chain for critical minerals that lessens dependence on China.
It’s likely that Western governments will have to increase support to develop new mines and processing industries, as well as reform policies so that private capital is encouraged to invest.
In addition governments will have to improve on the time taken to approve new mines, while juggling the need to ensure that they are as environmentally friendly as possible.
But if Western countries and companies are serious about building new mines and processing facilities and reducing their reliance on China, the total bill is likely to be measured in trillions of dollars, rather than the billions currently being committed.
At the same time, Western countries are attempting to move from fossil fuels in electricity generation and transportation to renewable alternatives such as hydrogen, solar, wind and battery storage.
Once again, these supply chains are dominated by China, and once again reducing dependence is possible, but costly.
What’s not being talked about is how all the new mines, mineral processing and renewable energy equipment is going to be funded.
(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, Clyde Russell, a columnist for Reuters.)
