USA News Group
Commentary
VANCOUVER, British Columbia,
April 22,
2024 /CNW/ -- USA News Group – Giants of the auto
industry have notably began sending senior executives to mingle
with mining experts at events such as the BMO Global Metals &
Mining Conference signalling an increasing importance to secure
materials to make their cars. The reality is that
there's a critical battery metals shortage looming,
causing executives from car producers such as Tesla Inc.
(NASDAQ:TSLA) (NEO:TSLA) and Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) to
take the matter very seriously. Despite Tesla reporting
record Q1 2023 deliveries, Benchmark Minerals projects will
require more than 300 new battery metal mines to meet future EV
demand. To get there, many battery metals projects continue to be
developed, including those from Lithium South Development
Corporation (TSXV:LIS) (OTC:LISMF), Albemarle
Corporation (NYSE:ALB), and even Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
(NYSE:BRK-A) (NYSE:BRK-B).
Lithium South Development Corporation (TSXV:LIS)
(OTC:LISMF) recently completed the final drill hole of its resource
expansion program at the Hombre Muerto North Lithium Project (HMN
Li Project) in Salta Province,
Argentina. As its flagship asset,
Lithium South's project already has a solid
foundation, with a maiden resource of 0.57 MT
Li2CO3 equivalent (M+I) from 2019.
"We are pleased to have completed the 2022-2023 resource
expansion program at the HMN Li Project," said Lithium
South's President and CEO, Adrian F. C.
Hobkirk. "We look forward to full results and
the delineation of a new lithium resource."
To date, Lithium South has made significant progress
on the HMN Li Project, including completing a Preliminary Economic
Assessment (PEA) in April 2019.
However, the original PEA assessment was based on only the Tramo
claim, which covered 383 hectares of the project's initial claims.
Since then, the company has significantly expanded its land
position, which now comprises 5,687 hectares spread across 9 mining
concessions. The monitoring wells will provide a preliminary
indication of whether the claim block will support one or more
shallow pumping wells for potential future lithium production.
The goal of the expansion program is to increase the resource
size while moving towards a full Feasibility Study for the HMN Li
Project. The property is surrounded by two leading lithium
producers, Livent and POSCO, which acquired the
property from Galaxy Resources (now Allkem) for US$280 million.
So far throughout this 2023 resource program, Lithium
South has received excellent lithium values from all holes
completed to date. These included an average of samples of 663 mg/L
Li, with a range of 320-752 mg/L Li, and ranging from 569 mg/L Li
to 708 mg/L Li in another drill hole. The latest results also
include nine packer samples collected between 24 and 189 meters,
with a density range of 1.215 to 1.218 g/mL and a conductivity
range of 196.3 to 209.5 mS/cm. The goal of the monitoring wells are
to provide a preliminary indication of whether the claim block will
support one or more shallow pumping wells for potential future
lithium production.
To increase the potential of the HMN Li Project, Lithium
South has taken steps to investigate the potential for Direct
Lithium Extraction (DLE) by providing three 2,000-liter bulk
samples of high-quality HMN Li brine for testing. The tests were
conducted by three strategic partners: China's Chemphys Chengdu,
Argentina's Eon
Minerals, and California-based
Lilac Solutions.
A similar DLE process has also drawn the interest of billionaire
Warren Buffett's Berkshire
Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK-A) (NYSE:BRK-B), but in California's Salton
Sea instead of South
America's Lithium Triangle. Through its subsidiary
Berkshire Hathaway Energy Renewables ('BHE Renewables'), the
company is planning for 2026 as its goal for producing lithium
as a byproduct of existing geothermal energy production in the
region.
BHE Renewables already runs a fleet of 10 geothermal
plants in the Imperial Valley. After constructing a DLE
demonstration plant to assess the viability of lithium extraction,
the company plans to go on to potentially build a commercial-scale
facility with a projected annual capacity of 90,000 metric tons of
lithium.
It's worth noting, however, that an initial $15M grant from the US Department of Energy was
initially awarded to BHE, only to be quietly
rescinded just weeks later. After 13 months of negotiations
between the company and the government, talks stalled as
Berkshire sought control over patents, changes to
technology, and whether it could one day sell the lithium business,
even after the government helped build it, as reported by
Reuters.
Down in Australia, lithium
giant Albemarle Corporation (NYSE:ALB) threw its weight into
a serious bidding war that's heating up for Australia-based Liontown Resources,
with a US$3.4 billion bid to
takeout the potential competitor in advance of its completion of
the Kathleen Valley project, which is expected to go into
production in Q2 2024.
Albemarle believes the addition of Liontown
and its team would advance its strategy to produce a sustainable,
high-quality supply of battery grade materials to support the clean
energy transition. The offer comes at a 63% premium to
Liontown's closing share price on March 27, 2023. The lithium giant has also
announced a new lithium hydroxide Mega-Flex facility in
South Carolina, where it plans to
invest at least $1.3 billion.
"This facility will help increase the production of U.S.-based
lithium resources to fuel the clean energy revolution while
bringing us closer to our customers as the supply chain is built
out in North America," said
Albemarle CEO Kent Masters. "This investment
supports our long-term commitment to providing innovative products
and solutions that enable a more resilient world."
Having domestic supplies for its battery materials is crucial to
US-based EV manufacturers such as Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA)
(NEO:TLSLA) and Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F).
So much so that Tesla has been rumored to be
interested in investing in its own lithium mining company. However,
CEO Elon Musk has recently tamped
down that speculation stating instead that he sees iron-based
batteries becoming more important to the future of EVs. According
to Musk, the "limiting factor" is in refining lithium,
not actually mining it. Thus Tesla has already broken ground
on its own proposed lithium refinery in Corpus Christi, TX, with the goal of starting
output within a year.
Despite losing $2.1 billion
selling EVs in 2022, Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) is doing
its part to bring its costs down, starting with opening a
lithium-iron-phosphate battery plant in Michigan that could bring the high costs of
EVs down. Using a second battery type lets Ford boost
production of EVs quicker, and lowers the cost of batteries thus
making EVs more affordable to more buyers, according to
Lisa Drake, VP of EV
industrialization for Ford Model E, its EV unit.
It was in July 2022 that
Ford announced it was going to buy lithium from
ioneer for its US EV battery plant. The deal was one of the
first binding agreements between a U.S. lithium company and U.S.
automaker, after Washington pushed
more incentives to domestically source metals for the green energy
transition and curb reliance on China.
"Helping unlock lithium in the U.S. will help us support
localized production of battery cells going forward," said
Drake.
Under the terms of the deal, ioneer will supply 7,000
tonnes of lithium carbonate annually for five years to BlueOvalSK,
Ford's battery joint venture with SK
Innovation, which has a Kentucky factory.
Source:
https://usanewsgroup.com/2023/04/11/quite-possibly-the-best-lithium-resource-in-argentina-perhaps-the-world/
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SOURCE USA News Group