Environmentalists, native tribes, and local Nevada landowners have filed a notice of intent to seek an emergency stay of a federal district court ruling earlier this month giving a conditional green light to the Thacker Pass lithium mine in northern Nevada near the Oregon border. U.S. District Judge Miranda Du in Reno let the Lithium Americas Corp. (LAC) mine go forward, with a provision that the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management take a closer look at plans for disposing of mine wastes and tailings.
Mine opponents asked Du to put a hold on her order while they appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. She granted the motion and told BLM to respond to the petition or reach agreement with the mine opponents to hold off on construction while she considers the petition for an emergency injunction. She ruled in a brief order, “Based on the urgency implied by environmental plaintiffs’ representation that Lithium Nevada intends to start construction on February 27 … the court sets an expedited briefing schedule.”
The Associated Press reported, “The company said last week that construction at the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine was ‘imminent’ after Du ruled Feb. 6 the bureau had acted legally — with one possible exception — when it approved plans for the mine in January 2021.” A Lithium Americas spokesman told the AP in an email, “Since we began this project more than a decade ago, we have been committed to doing things right. The recent U.S. District Court ruling definitively supported BLM’s consultation process, and we are confident the ruling will be upheld.”
Seeking Alpha commented, “In a non-shocking move, a new lawsuit has been filed to stop Thacker Pass from advancing. In our opinion, the lawsuit is very unlikely to succeed; it may well delay construction or it might simply be thrown out of court. General Motors closes on LAC via tranche one, injecting $320 million into Lithium Americas with more capital to follow via tranche two financing. The new lawsuit might be a gift to the patient long-term investor if share prices are impacted in the short term.”
Way down south to the Lithium Triangle, where Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia dominate current world lithium reserves, things look rosy. The always eclectic OilPrice.com notes, “These three countries alone contain 52m, or 53%, of the 98m tonnes of global lithium reserves, according to the US Geological Survey.” The publication highlights the late January trip German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made to Argentina and Chile “to secure lithium supply for carmakers Mercedes-Benz Group and Volkswagen to produce electric vehicle (EV) batteries.”
The day before the Scholz trip, a trio of Chinese firms “signed a $1bn agreement with Bolivia’s state-owned mining company Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos to explore for lithium in the country, which has the largest identified lithium reserves in the world, at 21m tonnes.” Argentina’s reserves are 20m tonnes; Chile 11m tonnes.
Chile has been the dominant producer for 10 years, producing from brines in the Atacama Desert in the Andean foothills. The website says, “The country has two active mining companies but has not opened a new mine in 30 years, largely because private companies do not own their resources under the country’s laws, which discourages potential plays.” There is also local backlash to lithium mining in Chile, reflecting worries “about the environmentally damaging aspects of the practice and poor labour standards. Chile’s President Gabriel Boric has taken up the issue in his first year in office, which makes a partnership with Germany timely, as Chancellor Scholz underscored Germany’s own environmental and labour standards during his trip.”
Around the world, going either east or west, India looks like it could land a spot on the lithium trail. The BBC reports that India has discovered significant (5.9m tonnes) of lithium reserves in the troubled province of Jammu and Kashmir, in the north of the South Asian giant. The BBC commented, “Experts say that the discovery could aid India’s push to increase the number of private electric cars by 30% by 2030, as part of efforts to cut carbon emissions to tackle global warming.”
But there’s a problem, which the Beeb account does not mention. Jammu and Kashmir is the only Indian territory with a Moslem majority, and has been the locus of a dispute between India and Pakistan since India won independence from Great Britain in 1947, and a dispute between India and China since 1962. More recently, the Indian government of Narendra Modi has revoked the autonomy of the region, asserting his Hindu nationalist control. The New York Times wrote in 2019, “Mr. Modi’s government announced on Monday that it was eliminating the special status granted to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, which includes the restive Kashmir valley. The move ratcheted up tensions with Pakistan instantly.”
Practical problems could also make exploiting the Indian reserves costly and time-consuming. The SlashGear website commented, “Two additional rounds of rigorous geological surveys are needed to narrow down potential mining hotspots. Once that is done, the development of proper mining infrastructure could take years, and the same goes for lithium battery manufacturing lines. Plus, as the government harbors lithium-mining dreams, it would also need to make proper socio-economic arrangements for people settled in the area, which falls in one of the most socio-politically sensitive regions in the world. Finally, lithium mining comes with its own environmental pollution risks as it severely contaminates nearby water reservoirs.”
–Kennedy Maize
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