Fact check: Purported Barack Obama tweet about Russia and Donald Trump's birth certificate is satire

Ana Faguy, USA TODAY 

The claim: Barack Obama tweeted, "Has anyone checked to make sure Donald Trump doesn't have a Russian birth certificate?"

Long before he was a presidential candidate, Donald Trump gained headlines as a leading voice in the "birther" movement, amplifying the false claim that then-President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S.

A recent social media post purports to flip that accusation on its head.

A March 20 Facebook post presents what appears to be a screenshot of a March 16 tweet from former President Barack Obama.

Posts on Facebook can be seen ( here ) ( here ).

"I think most Americans would agree that I'm a level-headed individual, not a man who's prone to indulging in conspiracy theories," reads the purported Obama tweet. "I've certainly had a fair number directed at me. But has anyone checked to make sure Donald Trump doesn't have a Russian birth certificate?"

The post accrued more than 500 shares in less than three weeks, and comments showed many social media users believed it was authentic.

But the tweet is not real, Obama never made the comment on social media.

USA TODAY reached out to the user who shared the claim for comment.
The post originates from a satire site

The screenshot of Obama's supposed tweet was posted by the satire page Stop The Donald. According to their website, Stop The Donald uses "humor as a political weapon against Strongmen and Dictators."

The altered tweet is poking fun at Trump’s previous questioning of Obama’s birth certificate, which Trump began in 2011. Trump continued to question Obama's citizenship during the 2016 election.

The tweet also alludes to Trump's Russian connections and favorable comments toward Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The screenshot lists the tweet as being sent on March 16, but there is no evidence of any such tweet on Obama's account.

Fact check: Fictional Tucker Carlson quote about Ukraine spreads on social media

On March 16 Obama tweeted twice. The first was a three-part thread on the Ukrainian refugee crisis, and the other was a tweet about March Madness.

Our rating: Satire

Based on our research, we rate SATIRE the claim that Obama tweeted, "Has anyone checked to make sure Donald Trump doesn't have a Russian birth certificate?" There is no evidence that this tweet exists, and the screenshot originates from a satire site.

Our fact-check sources:

Stop The Donald, accessed April 8, Mission
Los Angeles Times, Sept. 16, 2016, What Donald Trump has said through the years about where President Obama was born
CNN, Nov. 29, 2017, Report: Trump continues to question Obama’s birth certificate
Politico, March/April 2017, All of Trump’s Russia Ties, in 7 Charts
NPR, Feb. 22, Trump praises Putin as 'savvy' amid new escalations on Russia-Ukraine border
PolitiFact, April 5, No, Obama didn’t tweet that Trump might have Russian birth certificate
Reuters, April 5, Fact Check-Fabricated Obama tweet about Trump and birth certificate was created as satire
USA TODAY, Oct. 13, 2021, Fact check: Image claiming to show Barack Obama's birth certificate is fake

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.

Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

WAR IS RAPE

Bolsonaro faces stiff questioning over Brazilian army’s Viagra purchase

Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro - 8h ago
The Guardian


Opponents of the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, are demanding answers after the revelation that the country’s armed forces had splashed out on tens of thousands of impotence pills.

“We must understand why the Bolsonaro administration is spending public money on buying such large quantities of Viagra,” the lawmaker Elias Vaz declared after Brazilian media reported the seemingly unorthodox acquisitions on Monday.

The navy and air force – which between them had reportedly bought more than 30,000 pills – offered an innocent explanation: the drug was supposedly being used to treat pulmonary hypertension.

However, many were unconvinced. A report in the O Globo newspaper suggested the dosages that had been bought were generally used to treat penises, not blood pressure.

“How do you feel knowing that we’re even paying for Viagra for the armed forces?” the Brazilian singer Zélia Duncan asked her hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers. “I feel impotent,” one replied.

Rio congressman Marcelo Freixo said he would ask the public prosecutor to investigate the erectile “outrage”. “The Bolsonaro administration dallied over buying Covid vaccines but approved the overpriced purchase of 35,000 Viagra pills for the armed forces,” Freixo complained on Twitter.

The president of the Worker’s party (PT), Gleisi Hoffman, slammed the “criminal spending spree” and accused Bolsonaro of destroying the military’s credibility.

Ciro Gomes, a centre-left politician who hopes to challenge Bolsonaro in October’s presidential election, said that while the armed forces deserved respect, their acquisition departments seemed bent on demoralizing the military.

“Unless they’re able to prove they’re developing some kind of secret weapon – capable of revolutionizing the international arms industry – it’ll be tough to justify the purchase of 35,000 units of a erectile dysfunction drug,” Gomes opined.

He added: “It’s no coincidence that these absurdities are taking place during the government of a president … who acts systematically to dishonor the troop.”

Bolsonaro, 67, is a former army captain and paratrooper who has packed his cabinet with military men and repeatedly hinted that he would be prepared to lead a military “intervention” against Brazil’s democratic institutions. Last year Bolsonaro ordered what critics called a “banana republic-style” military parade outside his presidential palace in an apparent attempt to project strength and intimidate foes.

Political observers called the military’s “Viagra binge” an embarrassment to a populist president who frequently boasts about his supposed virility, referring to himself as “imbrochável”. The word roughly translates into English as “unfloppable” or “flaccid-proof”.

Stripe teams up with major tech companies to commit $925 million toward carbon capture

Stripe, Alphabet, Meta, Shopify and McKinsey are trying to spur the market for carbon capture.

They're launching Frontier, which plans to purchase $925 million worth of permanent carbon removal from companies that are developing the technology over the next nine years.

The Frontier initiative suggests momentum is starting to build in carbon capture.


© Provided by CNBC

Pods, operated by Carbfix, containing technology for storing carbon dioxide underground, in Hellisheidi, Iceland, on Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2021. Startups Climeworks AG and Carbfix are working together to store carbon dioxide removed from the air deep underground to reverse some of the damage CO2 emissions are doing to the planet. Photographer: Arnaldur Halldorsson/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Catherine Clifford - CNBC

Online payments-technology provider Stripe is teaming up with several other companies, including Google parent Alphabet and Facebook parent Meta, to commit nearly $1 billion in spurring the carbon-capture market.

On Tuesday the companies announced the creation of Frontier, which plans to purchase $925 million worth of permanent carbon removal from companies that are developing the technology over the next nine years.

Frontier will be a wholly owned subsidiary of Stripe. Alphabet, Meta, e-commerce platform Shopify and consulting giant McKinsey are chipping in — and committing to purchase some of the carbon-capture solutions.

Stripe will also provide customers to Frontier through its Stripe Climate program, which allows online sellers using the company's platform to devote a portion of sales to carbon removal.

The goal of the investment is to turbocharge the nascent industry.

The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that to limit global warning to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, an average of 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide will have to be removed each year from the atmosphere by 2050. Fewer than 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide have been captured to date.

The Frontier initiative suggests momentum is starting to build in the space.

"Sentiment is changing about both carbon capture and carbon dioxide removal," said Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct, which invests in and advises companies on cFarbon-removal solutions.

"This is changing in part because we are not succeeding on climate at the speed and scale required," Friedmann said. "In short: We're failing and we need a bigger boat — one that includes all serious options for mitigation."

The IPCC's Sixth Assessment report, released April 4, specifically mentioned the importance of carbon capture, saying it is "necessary to achieve net zero CO2 and GHG emissions both globally and nationally, counterbalancing 'hard-to-abate' residual emissions," the report said.

The Frontier development is among other company and government initiatives that are sinking billions into the technology.

For example, the Swiss carbon sequestration company Climeworks raised a $650 million equity round of funding on April 5. And in the U.S., the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill included $3.5 billion in direct investment by the federal government in carbon-capture technologies, while both the U.K. and European Union have committed to capture 5 million tons per year of carbon dioxide.
Funding to get the flywheel turning

The advanced market commitment funding model was used to develop pneumococcal vaccines for low-income countries in 2009. A group of funders collaborated with Gavi, UNICEF and the World Bank to devote $1.5 billion in purchases to spur the development of the vaccines. That AMC helped vaccinate millions of children.

But this is the first time the model has been used to fund carbon-removal technologies at scale.

Frontier's job will be to collect financial commitments from companies and governments that want to purchase carbon-capture solutions to make good on their net-zero pledges, vet the suppliers of those solutions and then pay the suppliers once the solutions are delivered.

The group plans to announce more details about where it will spend the money later this year. Companies will be selected if their technologies can store carbon for more than 1,000 years, have a path to being affordable at scale — defined as less than $100 per ton by 2040 — and have a path to remove more than half a gigaton of carbon by 2040, among other factors.

The Frontier news was cheered by Facebook's former chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, who recently announced he will devote his time to fighting climate change.

"This is huge and I'm super proud Meta is a launch partner," Schroepfer said on Twitter. "Even the most conservative climate models say we need to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to avert the worst of the climate crisis. Many cool technologies exist but they don't have a market for their product."

Not everyone, however, sees the focus on carbon-removal technologies as a good thing.

"Honestly, I really wish these same companies were investing the same amount of money in clean energy solutions," Michael E. Mann, a professor of atmospheric science at Penn State, told CNBC. "As I discuss in 'The New Climate War,' there is no evidence that carbon removal can be implemented at the scale necessary to make a dent in global carbon emissions on the time frame necessary," said Mann, who is also the director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC).

Globally, carbon emissions need to be reduced by 50% this decade, Mann said.

Carbon capture "could play a role later down the road, but for the time being what is needed is a rapid and dramatic transition away from fossil fuel burning toward renewable energy," he said.

"The current Russian invasion of Ukraine, enabled by reliance of Europe on their gas and oil, is a reminder of the continued dangers of our dependence on fossil fuels," Mann told CNBC. "What we need is to solve this problem at its source, not apply Band-Aids at the edges."

THE REALITY IS THAT CCS IS NOT GREEN NOR CLEAN IT IS GOING TO BE USED TO FRACK OLD DRY WELLS SUCH AS IN THE BAKAN SHIELD IN SASKATCHEWAN
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-myth-of-carbon-capture-and-storage.html

ALSO SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=CCS

Opinion: US uses Cold War powers to secure battery metals supply

Reuters | April 11, 2022 | 

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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


US President Joe Biden has invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) to accelerate the build-out of a domestic battery materials supply chain.

A measure first used by President Truman to boost US steel production in the Korean War will now be tailored to future energy transition metals such as lithium, cobalt and nickel.

The White House’s March 31 announcement was light on details, specifically the amount of government funding available, and the initial impact is likely to be incremental rather than revolutionary.

Investment in greenfield capacity will be dependent on a planned overhaul of the country’s gold rush-era mining laws, the underlying cause of much of the environmental resistance to new mines.

But it’s still a clear statement of intent and one that reinforces industrial metals’ growing strategic importance in a fast-changing world.
Back to the future

“Our national security and our chances for peace depend on our defense production, (and) our defense production depends on steel,” President Truman told the American people in a radio address in 1952 at the height of the Korean War.

Metals such as steel and aluminum were critical to the war effort, and the Defense Production Act was passed in 1950 to allow the government to stimulate production.

The rise of the oil economy in the second half of the century shifted the strategic focus to energy security, but as energy transitions from fossil fuels to renewables, enabling metals are now back on governments’ priority lists.

“To promote the national defense, the United States must secure a reliable and sustainable supply of such strategic and critical materials,” said President Biden, citing specifically lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese and graphite.

All are used in batteries, and the United States relies on imports for all of them, often from what Biden termed “unreliable foreign sources”.

Demand for these minerals is set to increase exponentially in the coming years as automakers increase electric vehicle production and build out the required battery capacity.

“Unreliable foreign sources” is usually diplomatic code for China when it comes to strategic metals.

There is obvious concern about China’s dominant position in lithium processing and in the supply of graphite. The United States is totally import dependent for the latter, with around one third of annual imports coming from China.
New urgency

However, Russian metals supply has taken on a new urgency since the invasion of Ukraine.

The United States has limited direct exposure to the potential loss of Russian lithium, manganese or cobalt.


Nickel, however, is much more problematic. Battery production requires high-grade – so-called “Class I” – nickel, and Russia’s Norilsk Nickel accounts for around 17% of global supply, according to Fitch Ratings.

Neither Norilsk nor its oligarch owner Vladimir Potanin have yet been sanctioned, but self-sanctioning is making it ever harder to finance, insure and ship metal from the company’s Arctic base.

Russian metal has suddenly become high-risk supply after the country’s self-styled “special military operation” in Ukraine, tightening an already stretched market. It’s one of the reasons the nickel price turned so wild in March the London Metal Exchange had to suspend its contract.

Western critical metal supply chains were already starting to change in response to the strategic need to loosen dependence on Chinese supply.

Ukraine both opens up new potential mineral hostilities and underlines the need for greater self-sufficiency.

Federal accelerator

The Defense Production Act is intended as a federal government accelerator for a domestic battery metals supply chain that is still in its infancy.

Without presidential action, the United States “cannot reasonably be expected to provide the capability for these needed industrial resources, materials, or critical technology items in a timely manner,” Biden warned.

The initial focus will be on enhancing and expanding existing capacity through funding feasibility studies for by-product and co-product production, mine waste reclamation and value-added modernisation.

New projects will be given a helping hand, both in terms of capital expenditure and winning public acceptance.

Green environmental push-back against green transition metals remains a road-block on the path to a clean energy future, and the Biden Administration is keen to underline that domestic supply must come from “environmentally responsible domestic mining and processing”.

Key to this balancing act will be the planned rewrite of the 1872 General Mining Law, a legal framework that is wholly unfit for 21st century purpose, generating protracted court action and seemingly random outcomes for proposed new mines.

That particular battle lies ahead, which is why it makes sense to channel initial DPA funding into maximising what has already been built. Or, in the case of historic tailings, what has already been built and abandoned.

Critical metals

The real significance of invoking the DPA, however, is that it elevates battery metals to the top of the US critical materials supply list.

Until now the Biden Administration has only used the Act to secure vaccines and enhance testing in its battle to control the covid-19 pandemic.

Securing domestic or “friendly” supplies of lithium and nickel is now in the same top-priority category.

The Administration has already committed up to $3 billion to increase battery metals production thanks to last year’s infrastructure bill.

That was passed with bi-partisan support, and minerals security is one of the few areas of political agreement between Democrats and Republicans, which may open the door on further money being allocated to the sector.

Expect domestic investment to go hand in hand with mineral alliances, particularly with the European Union, Australia and Canada, which itself is preparing a major C$2 billion ($1.6 billion) investment drive into the battery supply chain.

Industrial metals moved out of the geopolitical limelight after the 1970s, when successive oil shocks rocked the global economy.

President Biden’s lithium echo of Truman’s steel warning tells you they’re rapidly returning to centre stage.

(Editing by Jan Harvey)

Glencore investors urged by Glass Lewis to reject climate plan

Bloomberg News | April 12, 2022 

Newlands coal mine, Queensland, Australia. (Image courtesy of Glencore.)

Glencore Plc shareholders have been urged to vote down the commodity trader’s climate progress report at an investor meeting later this month by an influential proxy advisory firm.


Glass Lewis & Co. said that the lack of board oversight for the company’s climate program and insufficient clarity on how Glencore may interpret support for its strategy-setting process meant investors should vote against the motion, the shareholder adviser said in a report seen by Bloomberg News.

As investors become ever more focused on climate, Glencore has laid a different strategy to many of its rivals. While its major peers have looked to quit mining thermal coal, the most polluting fuel, Glencore has instead sought to position itself as a responsible custodian to run its mines to closure by 2050, becoming carbon neutral in the process.

Glencore’s position received overwhelming shareholder support at last year’s investor meeting, with 94% voting in favor.

In a letter responding to Glass Lewis, seen by Bloomberg News, Glencore said it was at the forefront of climate shareholder engagement and reporting in the mining sector and asked the advisory firm to revisit its assessment.

“The board maintains the ultimate oversight of the strategy, as clearly expressed in our AGM Notice,” the company said in the letter. “Our reporting reflects the central importance of climate to our board. The directors receive reports, discuss and make decisions on climate matters at each set of our board and committee meetings.”

Glass Lewis didn’t respond to a call seeking comment.

Still, Glass Lewis said it was unclear how much board oversight there was for Glencore’s climate reporting.

“We believe that effective governance and board-level oversight of climate are arguably the most critical aspects of a company’s management of climate-related issues,” Glass Lewis said. “Given that there is no disclosure to this effect, we do not believe that support for this resolution is warranted.”

Glass Lewis follows the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility in saying Glencore’s climate progress report should be voted down.

Last month the ACCR said it opposed the resolution for reasons including continued coal expansion in Australia and Glencore’s coal emission targets not being consistent with the reduction needed to avert the worst impact of climate change.

(By Thomas Biesheuvel)

South African unions start wage talks with platinum miners

Bloomberg News | April 12, 2022 |

Dishaba platinum mine in Limpopo province, South Africa. (Image courtesy of Anglo American Platinum.)

South African labor unions have started wage negotiations with the country’s largest platinum miners as workers press for a share of the record profits generated by rallying metal prices.


Negotiations started with Anglo American Platinum Ltd. last week and more talks are planned tomorrow, William Mabapa, general-secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, said by phone. Amplats, a unit of Anglo American Plc, has extended its offer beyond the usual three-year period to five years, with annual increases in basic pay of 7%, according to Mabapa.


Amplats also offered to backdate the new wages from April 1, if the unions agree to sign the deal this month, he said. Mabapa declined to disclose what the union is asking for. Amplats didn’t immediately respond to emailed questions.

The NUM is holding the talks jointly with the rival Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, after presenting their wage demands to Amplats, Sibanye Stillwater Ltd. and Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd. While the South African miners announced record dividends after a rally in the price of palladium and rhodium, they have warned that wage settlements with about 163,000 workers must not risk the long-term viability of a key export industry.

The offer from Amplats, including other benefits, could result in the lowest-paid employee earning about 30,000 rand a month ($2,066) in the fifth year compared with the current 20,875 rand.

Sibanye spokesperson James Wellsted said the miner had received notice of wage demands from AMCU and said talks will start toward the middle of the year. Implats will also be engaging with the unions, said spokesman Johan Theron.

A strike that’s been underway for more than a month at Sibanye’s gold mines could be escalated to the company’s platinum operations, the unions said Tuesday.

(By Felix Njini)

Airbus defends Russian titanium use, urges against sanctions

Bloomberg News | April 12, 2022 | 

Credit: Pixabay

Airbus SE defended its decision to keep importing Russian titanium, contending sanctions would hurt aerospace manufacturers who depend on the lightweight metal and wouldn’t deter Vladimir Putin after his invasion of Ukraine.


The European planemaker has been stockpiling titanium for many years, Chief Executive Officer Guillaume Faury said at the company’s annual general meeting Tuesday. That’s given Airbus some breathing room in the short and medium term, even if an embargo does take effect.


“We don’t think sanctions on imports will be appropriate,” Faury said. “This will be a small impact on Russia, and would have large consequences on the rest of the countries and the industry. So we think the no-sanction policy actually is the most meaningful one.”

Airbus, a major customer of Russia’s VSMPO-AVISMA Corp., has so far been able to keep importing the material, which hasn’t been directly targeted by a growing list of European Union sanctions aimed at punishing President Putin. U.S. rival Boeing Co. has halted Russian purchases.

Russia provides about half of Airbus’s titanium needs, directly or through key suppliers. The company has been stockpiling the metal since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, Chief Financial Officer Dominik Asam said.

The Toulouse, France-based planemaker is working to bridge the gap in long-term supply by seeking out secondary sources, Faury said.

Titanium is prized in aerospace for its strength, low mass and corrosion resistance, making it ideal for components such as landing gear. It’s also used to attach the carbon-fiber outer shell of the A350 widebody because it doesn’t flex as much as other metals with temperature changes.

(By Charlotte Ryan)

South Africa sets $900 million annual mineral exploration target

Bloomberg News | April 12, 2022

Photo: Minerals Council South Africa

South Africa, home to the world’s biggest deposits of a number of minerals, has set an annual target of attracting $900 million of mining exploration expenditure annually by 2025.


The target, equivalent to 5% of the annual spend on exploration globally, is expected to kick start a mining industry, that while among the world’s biggest, has stagnated in recent years.

The exploration strategy made public Tuesday by the Department of Minerals and Energy, aims to take advantage of South Africa’s comparatively advanced infrastructure and mining expertise. It also plans to shrug off the country’s historical dependence on gold to focus instead on metals used in electric vehicles, battery storage and the production of hydrogen.

“With the declining gold resources, the appeal of the South African mining industry lies in the minerals of the future,” the department said in the document.

Gold dominance

While South Africa was the world’s biggest producer of gold for decades, production has slumped as its deposits get deeper and more expensive to access.

Still, the country has the world’s biggest deposits of platinum group metals, battery metal vanadium, chrome and manganese.

Challenges include poor policy implementation, poor geoscientific data, insufficient electricity generation, frequent strikes and community unrest, according to the document.

Among initiatives to boost exploration, the country aims to improve the data on its mineral deposits and give more technical support to small mining companies.

While the Department of Minerals and Energy didn’t say how much exploration is currently carried out in the country, News24, a South African news site, said it accounted for less than 1% of the annual expenditure on searching for minerals.

While the document was made public Tuesday, it’s dated August 2021.

Glencore Plc, Anglo American Plc and Rio Tinto Group operate in South Africa.

(By Antony Sguazzin)

Nickel drama spurs Chicago exchange bid to grab trading From LME

Bloomberg News | April 11, 2022 

Credit: CME Group

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange, trying to capitalize on the London Metal Exchange’s nickel-trading crisis, is offering incentives to traders to boost its less-popular aluminum futures contract, according to people familiar with the matter.


Representatives of the Chicago exchange have approached major physical and financial players in the aluminum market in recent weeks, offering them credits, said the people, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The CME is expanding the reach of an existing program, which is mostly limited to brokers, to other market participants like traders and banks, according to one of the people.

The Chicago exchange’s push comes about a month after an unprecedented squeeze in the nickel market sent the metal soaring by 250% in just two days, prompting the LME to halt trading and ultimately cancel trades. While the chaos was limited to the nickel market, it prompted base metals traders to question the LME’s ability to handle potential crisis situations in the higher volume markets of aluminum and copper.

“The crisis that surrounds the LME right now represents a golden opportunity for the CME,” said Jorge Vazquez, managing director at Harbor Intelligence, in a phone interview.

A spokeswoman for the LME declined to comment.

The CME’s existing incentive program began Feb. 1 and is scheduled to expire July 31.

Under that program, the CME offers a $125 credit per side to members and nonmembers on each side of an aluminum trade cleared through its Clearport system, according to a document seen by Bloomberg. It offers a $125 credit to members and a $75 credit to nonmembers via its Globex system. Credits are capped at $30,000 per month per participant.

Still small

It’s not the first time CME has tried to gain a foothold in the LME’s territory.

In 2014, buyers had to pay a significant premium to ship aluminum to the U.S. Midwest when banks and trading houses joined in so-called “merry-go-round deals” at LME warehouses to collect higher rents. Burned by bottlenecks, traders in 2016 turned to aluminum premium hedging contracts that the CME launched to help purchasers of the physical metal hedge against fluctuations in the cost to deliver it.

But even if the CME is able to make inroads after the nickel crisis, its much smaller aluminum contract is still unlikely to challenge the LME as the global exchange of choice for the metal any time soon. The CME’s intention is to build open interest in the May and June futures above 1,000 contracts to entice other players like funds that need a certain minimum liquidity to participate, according to one of the people.

The CME’s aluminum futures contract has been around for years and seen little pickup by physical players like trading houses, producers and end-users like beverage and packaging companies.

Aggregate open interest for London was at nearly 600,000 contracts, or 15 million tons, as of last week’s close. That compares with about 300 contracts, or 7,500 tons, of open interest on the CME. However, the market traded more than 9,000 contracts on the CME during the week that ended April 8, the most since August.

(By Joe Deaux, Jack Farchy and Archie Hunter, with assistance from Mark Burton)

Novo sells New Found Gold stake to Sprott for $100 million

Staff Writer | April 12, 2022 

Gander River, Newfoundland (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Western Australia-focused gold producer Novo Resources (TSX: NVO) has agreed to sell its entire stake in New Found Gold, consisting of 15 million shares or about 9% of NFG’s share capital, to a corporation controlled by Canadian mining investor Eric Sprott.


Pursuant to arm’s-length negotiations, Novo will receive total consideration of C$125.9 million (about $100m), representing a 9.3% premium to NFG’s stock price of C$7.68 as of market close on April 11, 2022.

The share sale will be conducted in two tranches. The first tranche will consist of 8.25 million NFG shares priced at C$8.35 for gross proceeds of C$68.9 million, and is scheduled for completion on April 27. The second tranche totals 6.75 million NFG shares priced at C$8.45 for gross proceeds of C$57 million, and is scheduled to settle on August 5.

Proceeds of the NFG share sale will be used by Novo to advance its exploration efforts across the Pilbara and Victoria, and to expedite a feasibility study on the Fresh component of its Beatons Creek project in Nullagine, Western Australia.

“Novo has always considered its sizeable investment portfolio as a means to fund growth expenditure,” Mike Spreadborough, executive co-chairman of Novo, said in a news release.

“The sale of our New Found holding at a premium of 9.3% to the closing price of C$7.68 is an excellent result and allows Novo to deleverage our balance sheet, continue to focus on optimizing operations at Beatons Creek, and aggressively accelerate growth and expansion plans across Western Australia and Victoria.”

The transaction will also free Novo of its debt with Sprott Private Resource Lending II, allowing it to repay its C$50.5 million ($40m) senior secured credit facility with Sprott upon completion.

For Sprott, his shareholding in NFG will expand to 51.6 million common shares, or 31.4% of the its outstanding shares, once the transaction is completed.

NFG’s flagship asset is the 100%-owned Queensway project located 15 kilometres west of Gander, Newfoundland, where it is currently conducting a 400,000-metre drilling campaign.

American, UK companies join forces to develop largest uranium prospect in Argentina

Staff Writer | April 12, 2022

Central Plateau Project area. (Image courtesy of UrAmerica).

Evolution Metals announced this week that it has acquired a significant position in UrAmerica, the owner of the largest prospective uranium deposit in Argentina.


UrAmerica controls 59 exploration permits and mining concessions, either wholly-owned or through JV agreements, covering over 221,000 hectares across the central plateau of Argentina’s province of Chubut. These assets include the Central Plateau Project (CPP), which encompasses 145,000 hectares and is the largest and highest grade sedimentary hosted uranium deposit in Argentina.

In a press release, Evolution and UrAmerica said that in-situ resources, including lithium and heavy rare earth elements, have been identified within multiple sites, including the CPP. The companies believe that such resources may be commercially viable and complement uranium operations.

“This is one major step in Evolution’s vertical integration plan for critical metals production,” David Wilcox, Evolution Metals’ chief executive officer, said in the media brief.

“America is mineral insecure and we are doing our part to change that reality. Industry leaders, including Elon Musk, have publicly remarked on the importance of this issue. Evolution and UrAmerica are positioned to have a positive impact on energy transformation materials’ dependencies.”

Wilcox pointed out that the recent transaction represents the first known American investment in Argentina’s nuclear power sector, which has traditionally been dominated by Russia and China.

“The announcement comes only months after a renewed commitment between the government of Argentina and Chinese state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation for the development of the Atucha 3 nuclear power plant in Lima, Argentina,” the release reads.

Western Australia is world’s new top mining destination

Cecilia Jamasmie | April 11, 2022 

Western Australia has some of the world’s largest iron ore mines and it also hosts gold and lithium assets. (Stock image of the Super Pit in Kalgoorlie.)

Resource-rich Western Australia has been picked the most attractive region for mining investment in 2021, replacing the US state of Nevada, which fell to the third place in the latest annual survey of mining companies released by think-tank the Fraser Institute.


Canada’s Saskatchewan is still on the podium, climbing from a third place overall in 2020 to a second position in the 2021 index, which takes both mineral and policy perception into consideration.

Nevada, which topped the 2020 ranking, ranked third last year, followed by Alaska, Arizona, Quebec, Idaho, Morocco, Yukon, and South Australia.

The US was the country with the most jurisdictions considered among the world’s 10 most attractive by mining investors — Nevada, Alaska, Arizona and Idaho. Canada followed closely with three provinces at the top of the index — Saskatchewan, Quebec and the Yukon. Australia only had two states among the best ten destinations — Western Australia and Southern Australia.

Source: Fraser Institute’s Annual Survey of Mining Companies 2021.

As in previous years, the best places to invest in mining are located in developed countries with long histories of success in the industry, which not necessarily is a good thing.

The main issue is that the number of available projects in the top jurisdictions are limited, while some of the world’s best deposits are in places where doing business is, or is perceived as, risky.

Zimbabwe, which has an abundance of resources including gold, platinum, diamonds, lithium, chrome, and coal, ranked as the least attractive jurisdiction in the world for investment followed by Spain, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Mali.

Also in the bottom ten, beginning with the worst, are Nicaragua, China, Panama, Argentina’s Mendoza, Venezuela and South Africa.

Permit times

The survey also included a sub-ranking of exploration jurisdictions, based on the length of their permitting process.

This year’s report went beyond Canada, gathering data from Australia, the US and Scandinavia, all regions where mining, environmental and other policies are broadly comparable.

In most Canadian provinces and territories, the majority respondents said they were able to acquire the necessary exploration permits within six months. There were some notable differences among regions, particularly when comparing Manitoba, where 42% of participants said it took them 24 months or more to obtain all necessary permits, versus British Columbia, where the majority said it took between three and six months.

“Overall, senior mining executives continue to cite the uncertainty around protected areas, disputed land claims, and environmental regulations as major areas of concern for Canadian provinces and territories,” said Elmira Aliakbari, director of the Fraser Institute’s Centre for Natural Resource Studies and co-author of the study.

“Policymakers in every province and territory should understand that mineral deposits alone are not enough to attract investment,” Aliakbari said.

Quebec performed the best, with 60% of respondents indicated that they received exploration permits in two months or less. When comparing the four regions included in the survey — Canada, the United States, Australia, and Scandinavia — Canadian jurisdictions have, on average, a higher percentage of respondents indicating that it took six months or less for them to receive their permits.

Newmont becomes sole owner of Yanacocha gold mine in Peru

Cecilia Jamasmie | April 12, 2022 

Yanacocha mine, in Peru’s northern Cajamarca region. (Image courtesy of Newmont.)

Newmont (NYSE: NEM) (TSX: NGT), the world’s no. 1 gold miner by output, is buying Sumitomo Corp’s 5% stake in the Yanacocha mine in Peru for $48 million.


The deal makes of the Denver, Colorado-based company the sole owner and operator of the vast gold mine, located in northern Peru’s Cajamarca region.

Newmont had announced in February that it was acquiring partner Buenaventura’s 43.65% interest in Yanacocha, in a transaction valued at $300 million.

Buying Buenaventura’s and Sumitomo’s stakes in the asset is consistent with Newmont’s district consolidation strategy, the company said.

Yanacocha is South America’s largest gold mine, producing about 350,000 ounces of the precious metal a year. The company is advancing a feasibility study for what it calls the “Yanacocha sulphides” project, which would extend the mine life beyond 2040.

As the oxide resources of the open pit Yanacocha mine are close to being depleted, the project is designed to continue mining sulfide material underground.

The first phase focuses on developing the Yanacocha Verde and Chaquicocha deposits to extend operations beyond 2040. The second and third phases, Palmer said, have the potential to extend the mine life for “multiple decades.”

One of Peru’s top mining projects

Newmont had said the sulfides project is one of the most important ones planned in Peru for the next five years.

“We’ve been in Peru for 30 years. The Yanacocha Sulphides project will ultimately position us to be in Peru for at least another 30 or 40 years,” chief executive Tom Palmer said in an investors update last year.

The company says Yanacocha has provided over $1 billion in environmental and social responsibility projects since it started operations in the 1990s.

About two-thirds of the mine’s revenue is ploughed back into the local economy in wages, taxes, goods and services, as the operation employs 1,400 workers directly and supports a further 40,000 Peruvian jobs. Two-thirds of workers at the mine are residents of Cajamarca.

Guinea junta turns up the heat on bauxite miners

Henry Lazenby | April 12, 2022 | 

Bauxite, aluminium hydroxide. (Photo by JJ Harrison, Wikimedia Commons).

The military junta that took control of Guinea in September is heaping pressure on multinational miners to refine raw bauxite, a raw material used to make aluminium, to more advanced materials before export.


In a recent research note released by CRU Group’s senior analyst, Anthony Everiss, the junta has asked the companies to present the mines ministry with proposals by the end of May with a precise timetable for constructing refineries. The junta appears to be doubling down, turning the nation’s mineral wealth into a means of economic development.

Bauxite miners in Guinea have reportedly previously committed to developing them.

According to CRU data, the announcement comes when Guinea bauxite shipments to China are at an all-time high, surpassing 6 million tonnes in a single month for the first time.

However, there is currently just one alumina refinery in operation, which was built several decades ago.

Everiss said the drive for value-added investment has been in place for some time and has always been a common theme when international mining companies, industry partners, and government officials gather at the annual Guinea Mining Symposium.

However, Everiss noted this recent announcement might have more significant rhetoric as it was the first time Guinea’s junta had shown its hand and was the strongest sign of intent yet that the new military regime was determined to pursue a policy of resource nationalism.

“The message to the international mining community in recent times is that Guinea is now much more aware of the value of their resources, has better control and understanding of the mining industry and exports, and would be ensuring a more equitable share of the revenue and profits from international mining endeavours. This was coupled with a focus on social inclusion, agriculture, infrastructure spending and sustainability,” said Everiss.

CRU currently does not expect a greenfield alumina refinery to be built in the country before 2026. “Technical limitations alongside higher capital costs versus China may lead to disappointment for the government’s expectations. Running costs also are likely higher than competing nations,” said Everiss.

According to CRU, six companies have planned 11 million tonnes per year of alumina refining capacity in Guinea. “However, unlike the significant progress in bauxite mining, the progress of the alumina refineries is very slow at present. Only SMB’s alumina project has made some progress,” said Everiss.

CRU notes, however, that significant hurdles remained when it came to building greenfields alumina refineries in the country, namely that inputs such as all the other raw material needs, such as energy and caustic soda, need to be imported.

“The key issue is whether the projects can control the other raw material costs. Compared to Indonesia, for example, the mining cost in Guinea is lower. But Guinea refineries also contend with a longer distance if opting to transport the alumina back to China,” said Everiss.

“Nevertheless, new permits for mining will need to be accompanied by a clear investment plan for a downstream plant, depending on the scale of the project. In bauxite, the ruling military regime had remained firmly committed to continuing resource mining and export, but now requires ‘partnership’ with industry for longevity.”

“The latest announcement shows that it will be increasingly important for mining companies to build on verbal commitments and set into motion the actions needed to construct alumina refineries, rail, roads, and port infrastructure, alongside community spending,” said Everiss.

Barrick bets big on Pakistan with $7 billion copper mine project

Bloomberg News | April 12, 2022 |

The Reko Diq deposit is located in the Balochistan province, whose landscape is pictured here. (Image by Michael Foley, Flickr)

Barrick Gold Corp.’s first crack at building a copper mine in Pakistan was thwarted when the government denied it permits. A decade later, the company is making another — much bolder — attempt.


The Toronto-based miner laid out revised plans Tuesday for developing the giant Reko Diq copper-gold deposit in a desert region close to the borders of Iran and Afghanistan. Barrick shares rose 0.7% to C$32.33 at 2:05 p.m. in Toronto.


The conceptual design calls for the $7 billion project to be built in two phases, with each able to process about 40 million metric tons of ore a year and production starting as soon as 2027, Barrick said in a presentation on its website. The latest plan is double the annual throughput capacity and more than twice the investment estimated in a 2010 feasibility study.

Barrick is increasing bets on Pakistan while its Chilean partner, Antofagasta Plc, exists the project in preference for safer and closer jurisdictions in the Americas.

Among Barrick’s reasons are juicy returns: annual production of about 200,000 tons of copper would start just as the world faces a shortfall of a commodity that’s key to the the clean-energy transition, given how much is used in electric vehicles and renewable energy.

In addition, mines are getting trickier and pricer to build throughout the world with political risk on the rise, even in traditionally safer nations like Chile and Peru. As a result, Pakistan looks relatively less risky, just as a new centrist prime minister takes office.

Pakistan is now a 50% partner in Reko Diq, a type of arrangement that Barrick also had to adopt in Papua New Guinea, and one that gives host nations a more direct interest in seeing projects succeed. Barrick plans a full update of the Reko Diq feasibility study following last month’s agreement with Pakistan.

Barrick’s two-phase approach in the conceptual design gives the company a way to speed up first production while minimizing risk. A $4 billion first phase would cover initial crush, milling and flotation circuit, with output set to start in 2027-2028. A $3 billion second phase would encompass a parallel circuit that would fire up in five-plus years after phase one starts.

The latest design shows a mine life of 40-plus years, compared to the 56 years identified in the 2010 study that pegged initial costs at $3.3 billion.

Barrick also sees the project in southwestern Balochistan as “a springboard for further exploration and other mineral discoveries along the highly prospective Tethyan Metallogenic Belt.”

The company expects to close a definitive agreement with Pakistan in the second half and complete the feasibility update in 2023-2024. In the meantime, Barrick and its partners are seeking to raise “limited” recourse financing for the first phase.

(By James Attwood)

New lithium technology can help the world go green — if it works

Reuters | April 7, 2022

(Image courtesy of Lilac Solutions).

Rio Tinto, General Motors and even the US Energy Department are investing heavily in a crop of newer technologies that could revolutionize the way lithium is produced for electric vehicle batteries.


Now those technologies just have to prove they work on a commercial scale.

If they do, miners will be able to boost global lithium production with a footprint far smaller than open-pit mines and evaporation ponds, which often are the size of multiple football fields and unpopular with local communities.

These so-called direct lithium extraction (DLE) technologies extract the white metal from brine using filters, membranes, ceramic beads or other equipment that can typically be housed in a small warehouse. But they often use lots of potable water and electricity, and none have worked at commercial scale.

Global automakers, mining companies and investors are pouring millions of dollars into DLE companies, betting they can supply the bulk of the lithium needed to power the electric vehicle revolution.

“It’s such a game changer. There’s huge opportunities,” US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told an energy conference last month about DLE.

Granholm’s department has given Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc a $15 million grant to test DLE technology at California’s Salton Sea, under which sit large geothermal lithium deposits, and is considering funding other DLE projects.

DLE technologies would challenge traditional miners such as Albemarle Corp, the world’s largest lithium producer, and prospective miners such as Lithium Americas Corp, ioneer Ltd and Piedmont Lithium Inc.

Albemarle is studying various DLE technologies but its executives have said DLE likely works best when engineered for a specific lithium deposit, which could curb enthusiasm.

Large water usage by several types of DLE technologies has raised eyebrows. The technology General Motors Co is relying on to supply a “sizeable amount” of its lithium from the Salton Sea region uses 10 tonnes of water for every tonne of lithium produced.

Privately held Lilac Solutions Inc, backed by BMW and Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, developed that technology and said it could use a desalination plant to filter brackish water to avoid using potable water.

“If needed, we’re willing to make those capital investments to ensure we’re not jeopardizing anyone’s freshwater,” said Lilac CEO Dave Snydacker. “New technology is absolutely essential for society to obtain the volumes of lithium that are necessary for electric vehicles.”

Prominent short seller Hindenburg Research issued a 59-page report in February questioning whether the DLE technology from Standard Lithium Ltd even works, despite backing for its Arkansas project from chemical giants Koch Industries Inc and Lanxess AG.

“DLE is one of those technologies that’s been a hope and a prayer, Hail Mary for most, so that’s fertile ground for stock promoters,” said Nathan Anderson of Hindenburg.

Standard disputed the allegations in the report, which erased more than $300 million in Standard’s market value in one day and stoked fears about the DLE movement. The stock has partially recovered.
‘I’m a skeptic’

There are dozens of DLE-focused companies worldwide, some with their own technologies, some with brine-rich acreage and some with both.

“Direct lithium extraction is becoming a hot subject,” said Olivier Le Peuch, chief executive of Schlumberger Inc, which is developing DLE technology with Panasonic Corp. It hopes to supply Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory, but has acknowledged it must find a way to produce the metal without potable water.

US and global ambitions to go green are at stake. At least 70% of the US lithium deposits are held in brine reserves, according to the Energy Department. Elsewhere, DLE offers a chance to produce lithium in areas where open-pit mines face strong opposition.

In Germany, Vulcan Energy Resources Ltd aims to use DLE the produce the metal for Renault SA and other automakers from Germany’s Black Forest.

“As the EV transition accelerates, we can grow with that market,” said Horst Kreuter, Vulcan’s CEO.

Privately held Luna Lithium Ltd plans to use DLE in Nevada, CEO Emily Hersh said. In Utah’s Great Salt Lake, Compass Minerals International Inc has been trying to chose a DLE technology for more than a year and hopes to make a decision this summer.

Galvanic Energy LLC aims to sell to sell the 100,000 brine-rich acres it controls in Arkansas if it finds a DLE technology that works.

“These companies promote and talk about what they can do, but I’m a skeptic until proven otherwise,” said Brent Wilson, a former Chesapeake Energy Corp geologist who formed Galvanic in 2018.

Rio Tinto Ltd paid $825 million last December for an Argentina DLE project, which it said “has the potential to significantly increase lithium recoveries as compared to solar evaporation ponds.”

Privately held Energy Exploration Technologies Inc, known as EnergyX, has developed a DLE technology that uses membranes to filter lithium, but in some cases, EnergyX’s DLE membrane technology may have to be paired with another DLE technology, said CEO Teague Egan.

“Our DLE membrane technology is very good, but DLE doesn’t have to mean one technology or another. I think that’s what people fail to see,” said Egan, who aims to take EnergyX public by mid-2023.

EnergyX recently sent a pilot version of its technology to Bolivia in the hopes of convincing La Paz to chose it to develop the Uyuni salt flat, one of the world’s largest lithium deposits.

Lilac, as well as several Chinese and Russian companies, are also competing for the Bolivian project, pointing to the rising global attention paid to the industry.

“DLE is not a magic wand, but it is a very valuable tool in the toolkit,” said Luna Lithium’s Hersh.

(By Ernest Scheyder and Victoria Waldersee; Editing by David Gregorio)

Direct lithium extraction technique for greener batteries gains traction

Special method for production gets cash injection from govt, vendors

Dan Robinson®

Fri 8 Apr 2022 


New techniques for producing lithium could play a vital part in making batteries for applications ranging from smartphones to electric vehicles that are more environmentally friendly than current methods of extraction.

According to a Reuters report, car makers, mining companies and investors including the US Energy Department are pouring money into direct lithium extraction (DLE) technologies that hold out the promise of boosting global lithium production, which is mostly sourced from just a handful of countries today.

There are a number of DLE technologies which all revolve around extracting the metal from brine in various ways, such as using filters, membranes, or ceramic beads. These are touted as more sustainable solutions than existing ways of obtaining lithium, such as pumping lithium-containing saltwater from underground lakes to the surface in desert areas of Chile or Argentina, and extracting it through evaporation in large basins.

However, while DLE techniques do not require the use of enormous evaporation basins, some critics have argued that they still consume large volumes of water and electricity to produce the lithium.

For example, General Motors is aiming to use a DLE technique to supply a considerable amount of the lithium it needs from the Salton Sea region in southern California, which reportedly uses 10 tons of water for every ton of lithium produced.

But one company in Cornwall, UK, believes it has found a more environmentally responsible method of getting lithium from brine. Cornish Lithium said it aims to extract lithium from geothermal waters, and also power the extraction process with geothermal energy from the same source.

Cornish Lithium said it is planning to directly extract the lithium from the fluids in a processing unit that is expected to have a footprint the size of a supermarket or medium sized industrial unit.

The company said it has already received £9m ($11.7m) of a package of up to £18m ($23.5 million) from metals-focused investment company TechMet Limited to develop its technology, and has recently begun drilling a research borehole at Twelveheads, near Redruth.

Elsewhere, an Australian firm, Ekosolve Lithium Limited, announced this week that its DLE pilot plant has processed lithium brines from the Incahuasi Salar, a salt basin in the Catamarca region of north-western Argentina, and achieved a recovery of greater than 90 percent of the lithium present.

It claimed that 200 liters of brine was processed, with high-grade lithium chloride produced. This can then be converted to battery-grade lithium carbonate or used as feeder stock for other lithium compounds, according to the firm.

In Canada, E3 Metals recently announced it had received $1.1m of a $1.8m grant from the Alberta Innovates research agency following completion of its lab-based pilot DLE prototype that uses a proprietary ion-exchange process to extract lithium.

It now aims to build and operate a field pilot plant that will operate continuously within the Clearwater area to extract lithium directly from the brine produced from the Leduc Aquifer, in order to demonstrate that it can scale up to a projected commercial scale of 20,000 tons per year of lithium hydroxide monohydrate.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the US is also researching DLE methods, and said they could potentially deliver 10 times the current US lithium demand from the Salton Sea.

"Lithium-rich geothermal brines represent a vast, untapped resource that can potentially be developed into a robust domestic supply while adding to a well-paying workforce," said NREL senior geoscientist Ian Warren, in an announcement last year about its research into DLE.

"The increasing global demand and the need for a secure supply of lithium has created a deep interest - and urgency - in fully developing DLE that is considered environmentally safe," he added. ®

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Ford inks Argentina lithium supply deal with Lake Resources
Reuters | April 11, 2022 | 

Kachi lithium brine project. Photo by Lake Resources.

Ford Motor Co said on Monday it has signed a preliminary deal to buy lithium from a Lake Resources NL facility in Argentina, marking the first time the automaker has publicly announced where it will procure the electric vehicle battery metal.


The deal is a major bet by Ford on direct lithium extraction (DLE), a relatively new breed of technologies that filter the metal from brines and use far less acreage than open-pit mines and evaporation ponds.

General Motors Co, BMW, Stellantis and other Ford rivals have inked supply deals of their own with companies planning to use DLE technology.

Ford aims to buy 25,000 tonnes annually of the white metal from Lake’s Kachi project in northern Argentina, which is being developed with privately held extraction startup Lilac Solutions Inc.

Lilac’s technology, like all DLE technologies, has yet to work commercially, though it has the support of Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures and other high-profile investors.

The agreement between Lake and Ford is nonbinding and would need to be finalized to include a specific delivery timetable.

Ford Chief Executive Jim Farley said in February that his company was working on deals to secure supply of key raw materials for batteries such as lithium, nickel, rare earths and copper.

“This is one of several agreements we’re exploring to help Ford secure raw materials to support our aggressive EV acceleration plan,” said Ford spokesperson Jennifer Flake.

Sydney-based Lake Resources is listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, which requires supply deals to be publicly disclosed.

The Kachi project, in northern Argentina near the Chilean border, is expected to cost about $540 million and open by 2024.

Lilac’s technology uses 10 tonnes of water for every tonne of lithium produced. Lilac has said it could use a desalination plant to filter brackish water to avoid using potable water.

(By Ernest Scheyder and Ben Klayman; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

LITHIUM 

EV AND BATTERY BIG TALK MUST NOW SWITCH TO MINING AS SUPPLY CHAIN BITES
8th April 2022 

By Simon Moores and Morgan Bazilian

The lithium ion battery is in the midst of its transition from niche industry to mainstream platform technology for the 21st century.

The coming of age of electric vehicles has seen demand for these batteries surge from 59 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in 2015 to 400 GWh in 2021. This is forecast to grow by a significant 50% to 600 GWh in 2022, according to analysis by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

This sheer scale of battery output has been made possible through the rise of so called gigafactories, battery plants an order of magnitude bigger than their predecessors.

Sparked by Elon Musk’s first Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada in 2017, the rest of the world has now followed in building super-sized battery plants.

From 3 such plants in 2015, we now have 285 gigafactories globally at various stages of planning and construction.

This has allowed output to increase exponentially and costs to fall significantly from $280/kWh in 2015 to $115/kWh.

However, for the last few years these cell costs have been flatlining and last year experienced their first increase in this giga-era.

Why? Because the critical raw material inputs have been neglected.
NEGLECT AT YOUR PERIL

In 2015, 40% of the cost of a lithium ion battery was raw materials, the critical minerals that get transformed into chemicals to make a battery’s main components, the cathodes and anodes.

At less than half of the cost of the whole battery, cathode and anode raw materials were deemed not worthy of priority attention.

In 2022, the dynamics have shifted: raw materials now account for upwards of 80% of the cost of a lithium ion battery.

Therefore, if EVs mean lithium ion batteries, EVs must now mean critical minerals and mining.

As a result of surging EV battery demand and a lack of new supply, pressure on the critical minerals that fuel lithium ion battery production have been increasing.

Since January 2020, Benchmark’s lithium prices have increased by over 700%, nickel by 250%, cobalt and manganese by 100%, and graphite by over 25%.

And right now, there is not enough of these raw materials in the pipeline to take the majority of EV makers beyond 2030.

While upwards of $500bn has flowed into building the 285 gigafactories around the world – and $150bn last year alone – critical mineral mines and mid stream processing plants have not seen anywhere like this type of investment.
THE GREAT RAW MATERIAL DISCONNECT

This great EV raw material disconnect has OEMs, the ultimate end users of these battery cells, concerned.

An industry that is used to dominating a supply chain is suddenly coming to the realisation that it has to build these new energy supply chains from scratch after the capital markets failure to step up.

It’s a similar realisation that automakers had around 2018 when they were forced to get involved in battery cell making.

A handful of EV makers are taking the supply chain strategy a few steps further but the examples are isolated.

Tesla wants to build its own cathode, nickel chemical and lithium hydroxide plants in Austin, Texas, feeding its new 4680 battery cell factory.

VW announced only a few weeks ago that it wants to begin nickel and cobalt refining in China.

General Motors has committed $400m to build cathode material in Canada.

But to have the ultimate sway of industrial power you need to own the mines, in part or in full.

This is the only way to guarantee the raw material to make your batteries and EVs.
ECHOES OF HENRY FORD

OEMs are right to be fearful and hesitant to want to “become miners”.

Echoes of an ill-fated venture by Henry Ford to build rubber plantations in Brazil in the 1920s after the industry ran out of rubber tyres loom large.

One hundred years on the industry faces an eerily similar problem.

The reality is that this global EV blueprint is yet to be built out to a scale needed to reach surging consumer demand and increasing aggressive OEM and government targets… We are nowhere close.

Critical mineral mines will need to be built, existing mines expanded, stockpiles and waste heaps revisited, and battery recycling needed.

The significance of the situation is not lost on global leaders.

Only last week, The White House enacted the Defense Production Act Title III to zero in on domestic battery minerals production of lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite and manganese.

The most recent DPA determination focused on the covid pandemic and it had previously been used for metals during times of war.

This clearly shows the US government becoming actively involved in investing in its domestic battery raw materials production both via co-production and to help fund bankable feasibility studies for exploration stage miners – a major bottleneck for institutional money.

This is a major step forward for US production of critical battery minerals and a move that it hopes will drag the finance community into 21st century mining.

Big talk on EVs must now mean equally as big statements on mining.

After all, a gigafactory without secure raw materials is as useful to an OEM as a grain silo.

Simon Moores is CEO of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence and Morgan Bazilian is Director of the Payne Institute and Professor of Public Policy at Colorado School of Mines.

Second staff rotation at Chernobyl

11 April 2022

The first staff rotation at Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant in three weeks and only the second since late February when Russian forces seized the site has been carried out. The workers were transported by boat as the plant remains inaccessible by road.

The Pripyat River (Image: Energoatom)

Nuclear power plant operator Energoatom announced on 9 April that it provided its boat for the change of staff at the Chernobyl plant. It said 49 employees were taken by the boat along the Pripyat River to the plant from the city of Slavutych, which lies outside the 30-kilometre exclusion zone. 51 workers were then taken from the plant back to Slavutych. "There are currently no other ways of delivering people to the station from Slavutych," the company noted.

Most of the workers at Chernobyl, including 46 volunteers, had been there since 20 March. However, 13 workers had been on site since 24 February.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi welcomed the second staff rotation as a much-needed positive step for the well-being of the plant's personnel and their families. He said the shift change was also important for the safe and secure operation of the Chernobyl plant, which was controlled by the Russian military for five weeks until they withdrew on 31 March.

However, he said the fact that those taking part in the latest staff rotation had to be transported to and from the site by boat underlined that the situation at the plant and the exclusion zone around it remained far from normal.

"While it is very positive that Ukrainian authorities are gradually restoring regulatory control of the Chernobyl site, it is clear that a lot of work remains to return the site to normality," Grossi said. "As soon as it is possible, I will head an IAEA mission to Chernobyl to conduct a radiological assessment there, resume remote safeguards monitoring of the facility and its nuclear material and deliver equipment, including spare parts and components, for the plant's safe and secure operation. I'm in close consultations with Ukraine on setting a date and organising a programme of work for the visit, which is expected to take place soon."

The IAEA said on 8 April that it will be the "single point of contact" for international technical assistance to Ukraine and it is in discussions with the many countries that have expressed interest in backing its efforts to help ensure the safety and security of Ukraine's nuclear facilities.

In a 10 April update, the IAEA said it had been informed by Ukraine that the site's analytical laboratories for radiation monitoring were destroyed and the analytical instruments stolen, broken or otherwise disabled. In addition, an associated Information and Communication Centre had been looted, parts of its communication lines destroyed, and the automated transmission of radiation monitoring data disabled.

Ukraine said that following the departure of Russian troops last week, despite "the increase in the level of radioactive contamination ... due to non-conformity with requirements of radiation safety and strict access procedures", the radiation situation is "within the limits" for the site.

In a 9 April IAEA update, Grossi said its experts can only conduct a radiological assessment at the site and deliver required safety-related equipment to the plant when they go there.

Whilst the IAEA has not been receiving remote data transmission from its monitoring systems installed at Chernobyl, it said such data was being received from Ukraine's other nuclear power plant sites.

Regarding the country's 15 operational reactors at four sites, eight are currently connected to the grid, including two at the Russian-controlled Zaporozhe plant, three at Rivne, two at the South Ukraine plant and one at Khmelnitsky. The seven other reactors are shut down for regular maintenance or held in reserve.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News