Lithium is not rareAnd with the new price level that was reached, mining seeds have been planted all over the world.
Other than the usual big players who are set to expand their production as demand calls for it. There is a multitude of new players, with huge reserves that can go online within 5 years.
I am not talking about the US or Canada, or Europe. But other countries in Africa and Argentina, ect...
For the longs here, we saw the spodumene price fall to below 500$ a ton when supply exceeded demand in the last cycle.
Our SP had reached 2 dollars and fell back to 35 cents.
Believing that something similar cannot happen again is very nave.
Our ace in the hole is our current advancement, but that is slowly fading away. Six years ago we turned away our partner claiming that they were not quite the right one. This might have been a sound decision, but what I am getting at is that we could be left wanting if a deal is not completed rapidly.
Here is a taste of what is going on worldwide in the China counter-offensive (for critical minerals)
The MSP initiative is a US-led collaboration of 13 global powers created in June of last year. In their first meeting last Thursday they decided to invite Argentina. “They could have invited a mining country like Chile, but they decided the Argentine government should participate,” said a government source as a way of stressing the importance of this meeting.
The MSP is formed by Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Finland, South Korea, Sweden, the UK, the US and the European Commission. During its creation at the world’s largest mining event, which was held last year in Canada, they stated that their goal was to achieve “supply chains for critical minerals”, as they project that demand will “significantly expand” in the next decades due to their essential use for clean energy.
The first meeting of the MSP was held online last Thursday. Jos Fernndez, the US State Department’s Undersecretary of Economy, Energy and Environment, described the meeting as “productive” and said there were conversations about Argentina’s “potential projects” related to critical minerals.
According to a statement published on the Treasury Department website, the invitation to Argentina was intended to “advance the goals of the MSP” and discuss Argentina’s projects.
“This meeting allowed MSP partners and the private sector to get to know Argentina’s critical minerals sector as well as projects that could garner potential interest for investment and support. Engagements like these help promote the clean energy transition, further mobilizing resources towards diversifying mineral supply chains and advancing the Biden Administration’s priority of regional collaboration on securing responsible and sustainable minerals,” said the official release.