Seeking to push greater market penetration of electric vehicles, the Biden administration’s Department of Energy has offered a conditional loan of up to $700 million for a new lithium and boron mine in western Nevada, hoping to produce enough lithium to supply batteries for around 370,000 EVs annually. The Rhyolite Ridge project in Esmeralda County, proposed by Australian firm Ioneer, is the latest high-profile competitor in the great lithium rush, described in a November issue of The Quad Report.
According to DOE’s Loan Project Office (LPO), “Ioneer entered into a purchase agreement in September 2021 with Sibanye Stillwater Limited (Sibanye-Stillwater), a mining and metals processing company, to establish, subject to certain conditions, a joint venture related to the Rhyolite Ridge project.” DOE anticipates that South Africa-based Sibanye-Stillwater, a multinational hard-rock mining and minerals processing group, will be a full partner in the Nevada project.
DOE said, “The conditional commitment comes on the heels of two critical materials loans closed by LPO — Syrah Vidalia, which will process active anode material, and Ultium Cells, which will manufacture battery cells. These projects marked LPO’s first-ever loans in the critical materials sector and the most recent loans under Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) Loan Program within the last decade.”
The Nevada project has contracts, according to the LPO, to purchase its lithium from “Ford, Prime Planet Energy & Solutions (a joint venture battery company between Toyota Motor Corporation and Panasonic Corporation), and EcoPro Innovation (the world’s second largest lithium nickel-cobalt-aluminum oxide cathode materials manufacturer and a major cathode supplier for global battery manufacturers), with contracts ranging from three to five years.”
According to Ioneer, “Rhyolite Ridge is one of only two major lithium-boron deposits globally and the only known deposit associated with the boron mineral searlesite. This mineralization style is different to the brine and pegmatite deposits that are the source of nearly all the lithium produced today and is also unlike lithium-claystone deposits found in the region.” Ioneer says the ore it will mine is a 65-foot-thick deposit “characterized by very fine boron-rich searlesite crystals (up to 30,000 parts per million (ppm) boron) and lithium in illite-smectite layers (about 1,500-2,500 ppm lithium).” The developers hope to begin production from the new mine in 2026.
The Biden award quickly produced pushback from some environmentalists. The Center for Biological Diversity is challenging the project under the Endangered Species Act at the Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service. The site is the only habitat for the Tiehm’s buckwheat wildflower, which the agency recently designated as endangered. In a press release, the group said, “On Dec. 26, Center staff conducting routine monitoring of Tiehm’s buckwheat habitat discovered a staging area for drilling operations with a truck, water tanks, materials and explosives storage. The staging area was within the newly protected critical habitat for Tiehm’s buckwheat.” Ioneer says it will take measures needed to protect the plant.
Nevada, where the Silver Peak mine is currently the only operating U.S. lithium mining operation, and California, where the Mojave Desert has become a major focus of lithium, have produced quickly developing environmental disputes. The Nevada Independent reported, “A similar dynamic is playing out only a few hundred miles southwest at the edge of Death Valley National Park, where environmentalists are pushing back on drilling requests for a potential lithium project.”
In Reno earlier this month in federal court, a Nevada rancher, conservationists, and Indian tribes challenged Interior’s Bureau of Land Management for approving a lithium mine on public land proposed by Lithium Nevada Corp. near the Nevada-Oregon line. The Associated Press reported, “Dozens of tribe members and other protesters rallied outside the downtown courthouse during the hearing, beating drums and waving signs at passing motorists.” The tribes have unsuccessfully sought temporary injunctions for over two years, because, they charged, “the mine site is on sacred land where their ancestors were massacred by the U.S. Cavalry in 1865.”
After a three-hour hearing in Reno, U.S. District Judge Miranda Du said she hoped to make a decision “in the next couple months.” The AP noted that the “hearing marked the first on the actual merits of the lawsuit filed in February 2021. It will set the legal landscape going forward after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling in Arizona that voided federal approval of a copper mine, adding that the appeals court “ruling raises questions about the reach of the Mining Law of 1872.”
–Kennedy Maize
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