Mining Tycoons Battle Over Lithium's 'Corridor of Power' in Australia (ft.com) 6
A modern-day rush prospecting frenzy for lithium, a crucial battery metal, is unfolding across remote Western Australian deserts. The arid outback that previously supplied gold, nickel and iron now hosts fierce competition between miners racing to stake claims on lithium resources needed for the global green energy transition. Lithium giants U.S.'s Albemarle and Chile's SQM have sparred with Australian billionaires Gina Rinehart and Chris Ellison over contested acquisitions of unproven explorers there. With demand surging, the harsh outback has become the modern El Dorado as pioneers and corporations scramble to tap into lithium, the "white gold," before rivals beat them to the punch. The deal frenzy has also come at a time when the lithium price has crashed as much as 70% compared with highs seen last year, as expectations of electric vehicle demand in key markets such as China have been lowered, Financial Times adds. The report adds: Western Australia already supplies about half of the world's raw lithium and is seen as a stable place to invest compared with parts of Africa, where there has been political instability, and Chile, where the state has moved to take control of lithium projects. Local expectations are high. A report by Australia's chief economist said lithium product exports should exceed A$20bn in the year to June 2023, up from A$5bn in the previous year. The report added that by 2028, the value of lithium exports should exceed those of coal, a staple of Australia's economy for decades. Australia has ambitions to step up its efforts to refine spodumene to keep more of the value onshore rather than shipping all of its resources to China, which has a commanding share of the refining process.
El Dorado???? (Score:2)
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But I thought those searching in the western Australian outback KNOW (TFA states: "Western Australia already supplies about half of the world’s raw lithium ") there are deposits from which to get lithium, the battle is over securing mineral rights by various companies and rich folk. So all parties are trying to secure mineral rights, get their equipment in
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El Dorado is an obsolete standard for creating CD-ROMs. When a game was ready to ship, it would be placed on a gold CD. This was known an "going gold". The CD was often made of solid gold, which allowed better quality copies to be made because the data could be transferred coherently over oxygen free cables. Once you had gone gold, you could sell millions of copies. Of course, since we were all still on the gold standard back then, you could actually also swap the dollars you received for physical ingots. S
Lies, damned lies, and statistics. (Score:2)
The chart in the fine article showing a lithium price crash starts at 20k and goes up to 80k, not starting at zero as people would expect. This can be misleading if the reader isn't paying close attention. Not only is this misleading but unnecessary to make the point, a 4x increase in prices only to come back down about a year later is still quite a roller coaster ride.