On Thursday, an investor group led by Harry Lundin (Bromma Asset Management) and Rick Rule signed a binding agreement with the company for a $50 million debenture financing. The debentures will bear annual interest equal to the secured overnight financing rate (currently 5.3%) plus 4%, and are convertible into Lifezone’s common shares.

The nickel developer went public last July following a business combination between special purpose acquisition company – GoGreen Investments – and Lifezone Holdings Ltd. At the time, the combined entity was valued at $1 billion by the SPAC.

The New York-listed Lifezone pairs one of the world’s largest and highest-grade undeveloped nickel sulphide deposits in Kabanga with a proprietary processing technology, known as Hydromet, to produce cleaner metals in support of growing demand for batteries.

The company acquired the rights to the Kabanga project in early 2021, and in the same year, was awarded a mining licence by the Tanzanian government, a key partner on the project alongside BHP, which has committed financial backings of $100 million.

Kabanga’s previously owners include Barrick Gold and Glencore, which had spent $293 million on exploration prior to having their retention licence revoked in 2018.

Since taking over, Lifezone continued with drilling at Kabanga, leading to high-grade discoveries and a significant mineral resource update in late 2023. The deposit is now estimated to contain 881,000 tonnes of nickel metal within 43.6 million tonnes of measured and indicated resource grading 2.02% nickel. Another 391,000 tonnes (17.5 million tonnes at 2.23% nickel) are in the inferred resource category.

The company also made advancements in the metallurgical refining testwork using its Hydromet technology, which is said to have lower carbon footprint than the conventional pyrometallurgical smelting method. Test results showed nickel recoveries of over 98.5%.

Refinery licence

On the same day of the $50 million financing, Lifezone announced it has received a multi-metals processing licence from the government for its facility at Kahama, located approximately 340 km southwest of Kabanga.

The site, situated within a newly established special economic zone, stands to benefit from the legacy infrastructure of Barrick’s former Buzwagi gold mine nearby.

With the licence, the company will be able to produce finished metals in-country, potentially reducing capital and operating costs, as well as reducing costs associated with transport of concentrate or other intermediate products.

“With the receipt of our Kabanga special mining licence, and now the Kahama refinery licence, we have a clear path to delivering a direct-to-metal solution and enabling the production of nickel, copper and cobalt in Tanzania,” Lifezone CEO Chris Showalter said in a news release.

Shares of Lifezone Metals gained 3.2% to $8.19 by 10:00 a.m. Friday in New York, giving the company a market capitalization of $639.3 million.

In a media statement, the DOE said that this funding—made possible by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law—will support a variety of locally-driven projects that range from solar, microgrids, and pumped storage hydropower to geothermal and battery energy storage systems and that can be replicated in other mining communities across the country.

“President Biden believes that the communities that have powered our nation for the past 100 years should power our nation for the next 100 years,” Jennifer M. Granholm, the US Secretary of Energy, said in a statement.

“Thanks to the President’s Investing in America agenda, DOE is helping deploy clean energy solutions on current and former mine land across the country—supporting jobs and economic development in the areas hit hardest by our evolving energy landscape.” 

Three projects are on former Appalachian coal mines, thus supporting economic revitalization and workforce development on land that is no longer viable for industrial purposes. In the West, two projects seek to displace fossil-fuel use by ramping up net-zero mining operations and providing the critical materials needed for a domestic clean energy supply chain. These projects are also expected to create more than 3,000 construction and operations jobs.   

From geothermal to PV

In Graham and Greenlee Counties, Arizona, a project led by Freeport seeks to deploy direct-use, geothermal, clean heat combined with a battery energy storage system at two active copper mines, helping decrease the mines’ reliance on onsite thermal backup generators while supporting the annual extraction of 25 million pounds of copper.

In Bell County, Kentucky, Rye Development proposes converting former coal mine land to a closed-loop, pumped-storage hydroelectric facility with the potential to dispatch up to eight hours of power when needed, such as during times of peak demand or extreme weather events. This project will support the increase of local tax revenues that have decreased steadily since the 1970s and create approximately 1,500 construction and 30 operations jobs.

In Elko, Humboldt and Eureka Counties, Nevada, a project led by Nevada Gold Mines aims to develop a solar photovoltaic facility and accompanying battery energy storage system across three active gold mines.

“By shifting to clean energy, this project could demonstrate a replicable way for the mining industry to reach net-zero operations, while meeting growing demands for minerals across multiple sectors—including the clean energy supply chain,” the DOE’s release states.

In Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, Mineral Basin Solar Power, a subsidiary of Swift Current Energy, plans to repurpose nearly 2,700 acres of former coal mining land to support the largest solar project in Pennsylvania. At 402 MW, Mineral Basin will generate enough clean energy to power more than 70,000 homes. This project is expected to increase regional access to clean energy and fill a critical electricity generation gap following the closure of the Homer City coal plant.

The initiative is also expected to provide $1.1 million in annual tax revenue to Goshen and Girard townships, Clearfield County and the Clearfield County School District.

In Nicholas County, West Virginia, a project led by Savion, a company that’s part of Shell, plans to repurpose two former coal mines with a utility-scale, 250 MW solar PV system that would power approximately 39,000 West Virginia homes. These two inactive mine sites provide land and access to existing energy infrastructure that will transmit the clean, solar energy the project generates to the grid.

“The Clean Energy Demonstration Program on Current and Former Mine Land will help provide the mining industry with a range of ways to decarbonize their operations and minimize environmental impacts and air pollutants, abating greenhouse gas emissions and disturbances to fragile, surrounding ecosystems,” the brief reads.

“Simultaneously, replicating clean energy technologies like these on other current and former mines will help maximize local workforce development and community opportunities for generations.”   

During a two-week meeting of the ISA’s policymaking Council that kicked off on Monday, Brazil’s delegate — speaking on behalf of 29 Latin American and Caribbean member nations — announced the candidacy of Brazilian oceanographer Leticia Carvalho for the position of secretary-general of the organization’s administrative arm, known as the Secretariat. The ISA’s 168 member nations and the European Union will decide on the next secretary-general at what is expected to be a pivotal meeting in July.

“I do believe that this is the most important year for the Authority,” said Olav Myklebust of Norway upon his election Thursday as the president of the ISA Council for 2024.

If elected, Carvalho would likely represent a marked change from the administration of current Secretary-General Michael Lodge, whose second four-year term ends in December. A UK lawyer, Lodge has disparaged environmental opposition to mining deep ocean ecosystems for valuable minerals and drawn criticism for his closeness to mining contractors the ISA regulates.

The choice of the next secretary-general could have significant economic and environmental consequences for deep sea mining, if regulations are ultimately approved. The ISA’s charter gives the person in that role authority over the Secretariat’s operations and its dealings with mining companies. Since member states usually only meet twice a year, the secretary-general would handle day-to-day decisions about how to respond to a mining accident, for example. The secretary-general also personally negotiates the terms of confidential contracts with mining companies.

Pressure is mounting on the ISA to finish its decade-long effort to enact regulations amid growing opposition to mining fragile and biodiverse deep sea habitats for cobalt, nickel and other metals. Lodge, who has worked at the ISA since its establishment in 1994, has not yet indicated whether he’ll seek re-election.

Carvalho runs the marine and freshwater branch of the UN Environment Programme in Nairobi and previously served as a Brazilian federal environmental official.

Greenpeace and other accredited ISA observers haven’t taken a position on Carvalho’s candidacy. “As the regulator of deep sea mining, the head of the ISA — as well as all its members — need to focus on what is threatening the oceans and take action to stop these threats,” Louisa Casson, a Greenpeace deep sea mining campaigner, said from ISA headquarters in Kingston, Jamaica.

The 36-member-state Council is meeting this month amid a flurry of recent developments around seabed mining. On the first day of the gathering, Denmark became the 25th ISA member nation to call for a pause or moratorium on mining due to a lack of scientific knowledge about seafloor ecosystems.

While the US only attends ISA meetings as an observer — it declined to ratify the 1982 UN treaty that gives the ISA jurisdiction over the seabed in international waters — US interest in deep sea mining is growing. The Metals Company (TMC), an ISA mining contractor, has been lobbying US politicians, some of whom are in turn framing deep sea mining as necessary to reduce reliance on China for critical minerals. China controls five ISA exploration contracts that allow it to prospect for minerals, the most of any nation.

There are already signs that the US may be keen to follow in the footsteps of countries like Norway, which in January approved seabed mining exploration in its territorial waters to lessen dependence on China, contravening the advice of government scientists. In the US, Congress included a provision in its most recent defense budget that requires the Pentagon to issue a report on the nation’s capacity to process seabed minerals.

In November, seven Republican congressmen from Texas wrote a letter to Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Taylor-Kale expressing support for TMC’s proposal to build a seabed minerals facility in the state. A month later, 31 Republican representatives sent a letter urging Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “to develop a plan to address the national security ramifications of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) interest and investment in seabed mining.”

On March 11, more than 300 former political and military leaders, including Hillary Clinton and three former chairmen of the joint chiefs of staff, signed a letter to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations urging ratification of the UN treaty that established the ISA so that “American businesses can harvest the strategic critical minerals of the deep ocean floor.” A day after that, two Republican congresspeople introduced the Responsible Use of Seafloor Resources Act of 2024, which would require the federal government to support domestic seabed minerals processing.

At the ISA’s meeting this month, tensions may flare with another accredited observer: Greenpeace, whose activists last year boarded and occupied a ship conducting scientific research for a TMC subsidiary in the Pacific Ocean. After that subsidiary sued Greenpeace, a Dutch judge ultimately ordered the activists to leave the vessel, but preserved their right to protest alongside it.

The incident underscores the role of the secretary-general in handling disputes. Lodge responded to the protest by ordering Greenpeace to stay 500 meters (1,640 feet) from the TMC vessel, but the Dutch judge ruled that the ISA lacked jurisdiction over Greenpeace. Lodge nonetheless doubled down on his claim of authority over protesters in the Pacific in a report to the Council ahead of this month’s meeting.

In a video message shown Tuesday at an ISA side event organized by Greenpeace, UN Rapporteur for Environmental Defenders Michel Forst said international law protects the right to protest seabed mining. “The ISA Secretary General seeking to prevent Greenpeace activists from protesting at sea is yet again another example of the ongoing crackdown on environmental defenders,” he said. “But what is even more shocking is that this happens in an international organization.”

The March Council meeting is the last ISA gathering before the organization’s annual meeting in July, at which the next secretary-general will be elected. At that gathering, all eyes will be on TMC, which has aggressively pushed for the completion of regulations and mounted a global campaign to gain support for deep sea mining.

If regulations are greenlit, TMC would likely be the first company to mine the seabed. One of the company’s ISA contracts is sponsored by the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru, which in 2021 triggered a provision requiring the ISA to enact mining regulations by 2023. The ISA missed that deadline, and so must start accepting applications.

TMC has said it reserves the right to apply for a mining license after the July meeting, even in the absence of regulations. But any application will require analyzing enormous volumes of scientific data on potential environmental impacts. TMC only recently completed its latest scientific expedition to the area targeted for mining; processing all that data will take time.

“The real goal is to ensure that the mining code and final rules, regulations and procedures are in place before mining would begin,” Craig Shesky, TMC’s chief financial officer, said Tuesday during a company presentation.

(By Todd Woody)

The US is 100% dependent on imported gallium, which is critical for national defense, primarily from China. Gallium is used for semiconductors, 5G technology, smartphones, satellite systems, critical photonics technologies and military radar systems. The 2022 list of critical minerals identifies gallium as a US supply risk.

The Pentagon has already announced plans to issue a first-time contract to US or Canadian companies to recover gallium after China curbed exports last year.

In December 2023, US Critical Materials signed an agreement with Idaho National Laboratories to develop new rare earth processing methods, including gallium separation.

Last year, the Sheep Creek property reported grades that exceeded any other domestic rare earth resource. As part of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Mapping Resource Initiative, the USGS, in cooperation with the Montana Bureau of Mines, announced last April it is conducting an aeromagnetic and aero-radiometric survey at Sheep Creek.

The company said it believes the technologies developed under this cooperative research and development agreement could potentially provide environmentally responsible mining and processing  to mitigate environmental concerns.

US Critical Materials president James Hedrick is a 29-year former USGS and Bureau of Mines rare earth commodity specialist.

“Not only is our gallium high grade, but we are also confident that we will be able to create a separation process that will be environmentally respectful. US Critical Materials’ prime gallium claims average over 300 ppm and go as high as 1,370 ppm,” Hendrick said in a statement, adding that gallium can be separated profitably at 50 ppm.

“US Critical Materials looks forward to being the primary gallium producer in the United States,” he said.

After a 22% decline over six weeks, industry experts and analysts say that the uranium market has likely set a new floor thanks to a strong demand outlook.

“We have reached a bottom,” said Jonathan Hinze, president of UxC, a nuclear industry research firm. “The fundamentals are still strong, with increased demand and supply that hasn’t fully responded.”

Uranium futures are trading at $88.50 a pound in New York — down from the 16-year high reached in February, but still well above last year’s average price of $66.60 a pound.

There are indicators uranium’s new floor is at around current levels, Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Mike Kozak said in an interview, predicting that fundamental buyers will come back into the market and drive up prices again.

Bullish investors are betting on the long-term prospects of the radioactive metal due to a growing supply gap and increased demand as governments worldwide turn to nuclear power to counter climate change. Such demand comes as Canada’s Cameco Corp. and Kazakhstan’s Kazatomprom, which together account for half of global supply, warned of supply setbacks in the coming years.

Kazatomprom, the No. 1 producer, said during its March 15 earnings call that it is projecting a 21 million pound supply deficit in 2030 — a shortfall that would multiply to 147 million pounds by 2040.

Geopolitics may also affect the supply outlook. The US introduced a bill in December that would ban imports of enriched Russian uranium — the kind used to fuel nuclear reactors and weapons. The bill needs to be passed by the US Senate and signed by President Joe Biden to be enacted.

Still, with other uranium miners looking to dust off mothballed operations in response to higher prices, there are risks a rally could fizzle out quickly, much in the same way that a boom in battery metals markets turned to bust over the past couple years.

Treva Klingbiel, president of uranium price provider TradeTech, said she doesn’t see demand for nuclear fuel easing any time soon.

“We have a number of geopolitical factors that have a really significant influence on buyer behavior, even though fundamentally nothing has changed” she said. “Buyers can use the spot to tell them the sentiment of the day, but must look at the long-term market to see that it is marching steadily up, it hasn’t taken a hiccup at all.”

(By Maria Clara Cobo)

Spot gold set a new record of $2,222.39 during the early hours of trading, before retreating to $2,206.10 by 9:05 a.m. EDT for a 1.0% gain. US gold futures soared 2.4% to $2,208.20.

[Click here for an interactive chart of gold prices]

Gold’s latest rally, which started mid-February, is underpinned by longstanding tailwinds including heightened geopolitical risks and increased central bank buying. This month alone, the safe-haven metal hit new highs on five occasions.

Its rapid ascent, according to Bloomberg columnists, has surprised many seasoned market observers, as there hasn’t been a clear catalyst. What has been partially driving bullion are expectations for looser monetary policy in the US, and that has now been reaffirmed by the Fed.

On Wednesday, Fed chair Jerome Powell continued to highlight officials would like to see more evidence that prices are coming down, but “it’s still likely in most people’s view that we will achieve that confidence and there will be rate cuts,” he said.

“What we saw last night was the green light really for gold traders to come back in,” said Chris Weston, head of research for Pepperstone Group.

“The Fed have said that right now they’re tolerant of the inflation that we’ve seen, they’re tolerant that the labor market strength is not going to be the impediment,” Weston told Bloomberg.

Speculation around the timing of the Fed’s long-anticipated pivot may have provided the trigger for recent gains, with data showing that traders boosted their net long positions on gold in the week through March 5 by the most since 2019.

The metal stands to benefit even more when US interest rates actually do come down, as bullion-backed exchange traded funds look likely to increase their holdings, according to UBS Group.

On the geopolitical front, there are a number of risks boosting gold’s allure as a haven asset: Russia appears to be gaining the upper hand in its war in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas conflict continues unabated and has led to a re-routing of global shipping, while the US presidential election at later this year could prove massively consequential for markets.

Chinese buying has also underpinned prices. As well as the central bank, people have been stocking up on coins, gold bars and jewelry to safeguard their wealth from a years long property downturn and losses in the country’s stock market.

(With files from Bloomberg)

The push echoes calls from the mining industry for clarity on how permits can be obtained for mines that produce copper, lithium and other energy transition minerals. Executives have long complained the US process can be complex, expensive and opaque due in part to a federal mining law enacted in 1872.

“Our message to the Biden administration is, ‘Do everything you can to do everything here in America. Get your permitting processes streamlined,'” Dunleavy told Reuters on the sidelines of the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston.

It is “somewhat nonsensical,” the governor said, that Biden has pushed for greater adoption of electric vehicles – which require far more critical minerals to build than internal combustion engines – but has blocked Northern Dynasty’s Pebble copper and gold mining project.

“If we don’t get our permitting processes together, if we don’t start to use data and science again instead of emotion, this chaos is going to continue,” he said.

Dunleavy sued Biden last week for the president’s 2023 decision to block Pebble. The suit seeks more than $700 billion, an amount that the governor says the state will lose in economic development without the mine. Dunleavy tried unsuccessfully last year to have the US Supreme Court overturn Biden.

Vancouver-based Northern Dynasty itself sued Biden on Monday.

The proposed Pebble mine would have “unacceptable and adverse effects on certain salmon fishery areas” in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, the US Environmental Protection Agency said last year.

Dunleavy said he believes the mine and the state’s salmon fishers can co-exist.

“The science is there to be able to develop the mine responsibly,” he said. “We can put the safeguards in, and that’s why I’m a supporter.”

Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, Alaska’s two Republican US Senators, oppose Pebble, which Dunleavy acknowledged is a hindrance.

“However, my job as the governor is to advocate for our state, advocate for the development of our state lands or minerals, and advocate for the prosperity of our people,” he said.

Ambler road

Dunleavy, who has endorsed his fellow Republican Donald Trump against Democrat Biden in the 2024 US presidential election, is also pushing Biden to approve the construction of an access road to the prospective Ambler mining district in northern Alaska.

The Ambler project seeks to open a remote area rich in copper, zinc and lead and could yield deposits of rare earths used in weapons manufacturing. Trilogy Metals is one of the region’s potential developers.

“I hope it’s approved this year. But if it’s a post-election decision and there’s a new administration, I hope it’s approved immediately,” Dunleavy said.

(By Ernest Scheyder; Editing by David Gregorio)

Any increase in cobalt holdings would be aimed at reducing reliance on China, which dominates the processing of the material used to make missiles, aerospace parts, magnets for communication, and radar and guidance systems.

Cobalt is also used to make the batteries that power electric vehicles, a key plank of the energy transition.

The DLA’s stockpiling plans which run from October 2023 to September 2024 did not include, opens new tab cobalt, surprising the market, which had expected the 60% price drop to around $16 a lb since May 2022 to incentivise purchases.

DLA spokesperson Joe Yoswa said: “DLA … conducts critical material supply chain assessments biennially to determine NDS (National Defense Stockpiles) requirements. Cobalt is not currently presenting as a vulnerability requiring stockpiling.”

“Should that change in the future, DLA will reassess and make an appropriate recommendation on stockpiling to the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment.”

Yoswa added the NDS is “for defense purposes and is not an economic stockpile” and that “the current price of a commodity cannot be used as justification to acquire materials”.

The unfavourable price backdrop prompted cobalt and nickel supplier Jervois Global to suspend final construction of its Idaho cobalt operations in March last year, which would have been the only primary cobalt mine in the United States. It was expected to produce 2,000 metric tons a year.

Prices are likely to remain depressed due to slowing sales of electric vehicles which use cobalt-containing batteries, and new battery chemistries that don’t use it.

The sources said some of the impetus for the move to assess cobalt came from a letter sent by Congress in September 2022 to the Department of Defense (DoD) asking it “to direct” DLA “to prioritize the acquisition of domestically refined cobalt”.

The letter signed by lawmakers Byron Donalds, Don Bacon, Eric A. “Rick” Crawford, Kevin Hern and Markwayne Mullin cited “a heavy dependence on other countries’ refined cobalt, particularly China” as a reason to add to US stockpiles.

Spokespeople confirmed Mullin and Donalds signed the letter, while those for Crawford and Hern did not respond to requests for comment.

“As indicated in his 2022 letter to Under Secretary of Defense (William) La Plante, Congressman Bacon believes the Department should move aggressively to secure domestic sources of critical minerals including cobalt,” a spokesperson for Bacon said.

Most of the cobalt mined in Congo, amounting to 77% of global supplies or more than 170,000 tons last year, according to Darton Commodities, was exported to China for processing into metal or chemicals for batteries.

The NDS “lacks sufficient cobalt reserves, endangering America’s critical mineral supply chain”, the letter said, adding that: “From approximately 13,000 tons during the Cold War, cobalt in the Stockpile is now estimated at 333 tons”.

“In practical terms, the total cobalt stockpile is only 5 percent of annual US consumption.”

Yoswa declined to comment on how much cobalt DLA has in its stockpiles. “The National Defense Stockpile does hold 99.8% pure cobalt, but we won’t provide the amount that we hold for security purposes,” he said.

(By Pratima Desai and Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Veronica Brown and Mark Potter)

The first “bidding event” will be for 10,000 metric tons of spodumene ore and is scheduled for March 26.

The aim, according to Albemarle’s notice to customers, is to “explore price discovery while ensuring a fair and transparent process for all customers”.

The key word in that sentence is “transparent”. The entire lithium supply chain has been rocked by the collapse in prices over the last year.

But just how reliable an indicator are those prices? Albemarle’s decision to conduct a series of online auctions suggests it thinks the lithium industry could do better.

Fractured pricing

The explosive growth of the electric vehicle battery market has transformed lithium from a specialty niche product to mainstream industrial material in the space of just 10 years or so.

Lithium pricing hasn’t yet evolved to match the scale of that transformation.

Albemarle, like most established producers, has historically sold most of its lithium on fixed-term contracts directly negotiated with buyers.

That, however, only partly insulates it from the volatile spot price, which is primarily determined in China, the world’s largest converter of lithium raw materials into battery-grade material.

China’s first futures price came in the form of the Wuxi Stainless Steel Exchange, which launched a lithium carbonate contract in July 2021.

Wuxi immediately had an outsize influence on global pricing, although it was a problematic benchmark, based on spot physical trading of non-battery grade carbonate among a limited number of Chinese players. The relationship between Wuxi futures pricing and lithium reality was at best unclear.

Wuxi’s influence on Chinese and international prices has waned after the July 2023 launch of a lithium carbonate contract by the Guangzhou Futures Exchange (GFEX).

GFEX, though, has turned out to be just as wild a price indicator as Wuxi. A wave of speculative enthusiasm saw volumes on the new contract almost double between October and November with the exchange forced to hike margins, opens new tab and expand trading limits to cope with the volatility.

That hasn’t stopped GFEX from rapidly becoming the accepted reference point for lithium pricing, even though non-Chinese entities will struggle to access it.

Western companies looking for price management tools are currently limited to the CME’s lithium hydroxide contract, which has built up impressive momentum but remains small relative to its Chinese peer. CME open interest at the end of February was 22,275 metric tons, compared with 321,329 on the GFEX.

The London Metal Exchange’s lithium contract has failed to trade at all, while that listed with the Singapore Exchange traded just 18 lots last year and has notched up volumes of only 30 lots so far this year.

All Western futures contracts are settled against price assessments from Fastmarkets, which like fellow price reporting agency Benchmark Mineral Intelligence publishes an array of assessments intended to capture the complexity of the lithium supply chain.

A third way?

It’s not difficult to see why Albemarle is looking to find a third way between the wild eastern Chinese carbonate market and a Western hydroxide futures offering which rests on third-party price assessments.

Ironically, the only other hard pricing reference point looks set to disappear.

Pilbara Minerals has held regular auctions for its spodumene via the Battery Metals Exchange, generating a degree of price transparency at the upstream end of the production chain.

However, Australia’s largest independent miner has said it now has little uncommitted material left to sell, meaning future spot sales are “unlikely”.

Albemarle’s spodumene auction later this month will help fill the pricing gap, but it seems highly likely that more tenders of lithium in other forms will follow.

If there are enough of them, it may be possible for Metalshub to generate a price index based on the physical peer-to-peer transactions on its site.

Metalshub has built its trading platform around steel alloys such as manganese and chrome.

As with lithium, such metals tend not to come in standardised form and have historically not been exchange-traded but rather assessed by the likes of Fastmarkets.

Metalshub has changed that dynamic and is now working with the LME to open up a forum for the trading of low-carbon nickel with the ultimate goal of producing a transaction-based “green” nickel index, opens new tab to complement the LME’s standard Class I contract.

Such digitalization of markets “is becoming more relevant and Albemarle supports this development”, the company said in its alert to customers about the upcoming “bidding event”.

Desperately seeking stability

Global lithium mine production has mushroomed from 25,000 tons in 2010 to 180,000 tons last year, according to the United States Geological Survey.

The world needs a lot more of the stuff if it’s going to move away from the internal combustion engine to reduce global emissions.

But producers’ ability to finance and build new capacity has been undermined by a boom-bust pricing loop, with last year’s collapse being the latest downturn of the cycle.

To some extent this reflects the problems of aligning production with demand in a fast-evolving market. But the lack of a transparent benchmark price and limited ability to hedge price risk is not helping.

The lithium supply chain is maturing but the metal’s pricing seems trapped at the early development stage.

Albemarle should be credited for trying to change that problematic price paradox.

(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, Andy Home, a columnist for Reuters.)

(Editing by Paul Simao)

In a paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the UB scientists present a global atlas of unburnable oil. This map was designed with environmental and social criteria that warn which oil resources should not be exploited to meet the commitments of the Paris Agreement signed in 2015 to mitigate the effects of climate change.

The atlas reveals that to limit global warming to 1.5°C, it is essential to avoid the exploitation of oil resources in the most socio-environmentally sensitive areas of the planet, such as natural protected areas, priority areas for biodiversity conservation, areas of high endemic species richness, urban areas and the territories of Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation.

It also warns that not extracting oil/coal resources in these vulnerable places would not be enough to keep global warming below 1.5°C as indicated in the Paris Agreement.

New roadmap

In this context, the unburnable oil atlas provides a new roadmap to complement the demands of international climate policy—based primarily on demand for fossil fuels—and to enhance socio-environmental safeguards in the exploitation of energy resources.

“Our study reveals which oil resources should be kept underground and not commercially exploited, with special attention to those deposits that overlap with areas of high endemic richness or coincide with outstanding socio-environmental values in different regions of the planet,” lead researcher Martí Orta-Martínez said in a media statement. “The results show that the exploitation of the selected resources and reserves is totally incompatible with the achievement of the Paris Agreement commitments.”

Orta-Martínez pointed out that there is now a broad consensus among the scientific community to limit global warming to 1.5°C to avoid reaching the tipping points of the earth’s climate system, such as melting permafrost, loss of Arctic sea ice and the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, and forest fires in boreal forests.

“If these thresholds are exceeded, this could lead to an abrupt release of carbon into the atmosphere – climate feedback – and amplify the effects of climate change and trigger a cascade of effects that commit the world to large-scale, irreversible changes,” he said.

Carbon budget nearly exhausted

To limit average global warming to 1.5°C, the total amount of CO2 emissions that must not be exceeded is known as the remaining carbon budget. In January 2023, the remaining carbon budget for the 50% chance of keeping warming to 1.5°C was about 250 gigatonnes of CO2 (GtCO2).

“This budget is steadily decreasing at current rates of human-induced emissions—about 42 GtCO2 per year—and will be completely used up by 2028,” Lorenzo Pellegrini, first author of the article, said.

Pellegrini noted that the combustion of the world’s known fossil fuel resources would result in the emission of about 10,000 GtCO2, 40 times more than the carbon budget of 1.5°C.

“In addition, the combustion of developed fossil fuel reserves – that is, those reserves of oil and gas fields and coal mines currently in production or under construction – will emit 936 GtCO2, four times more than the remaining carbon budget for a global warming of 1.5°C,” co-author Gorka Muñoa said. “The goal of no more than 1.5°C global warming requires a complete halt to exploration for new fossil fuel deposits, a halt to the licensing of new fossil fuel extraction, and the premature closure of a very significant share (75%) of oil, gas and coal extraction projects currently in production or already developed.”

With this prospect, the authors call for urgent action by governments, corporations, citizens and large investors such as pension funds to immediately halt any investment in the fossil fuel industry and infrastructure if socio-environmental criteria are not applied.

”Massive investment in clean energy sources is needed to secure global energy demand, enact and support suspensions and bans on fossil fuel exploration and extraction, and adhere to the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty,” the team concluded.

“The US government needs to stop giving lip service to permitting,” Richard Adkerson told Reuters on the sidelines of the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston.

“The question is, given our political system that we have today and the dysfunctionality of it, how do you go from getting a project verbally accepted to getting actions done?”

Earlier, US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told the conference that she supported efforts in the US Congress to reform the country’s mining laws, some of which were first approved in the 19th Century.

Adkerson sat next to Granholm at the conference’s Monday lunch and said he had a productive conversation with the secretary about permitting reform.

Adkerson, who plans to step down as CEO this year after more than 20 years in his role, said he was asking Washington for more clarity on how permits are approved or rejected, not an easing in environmental regulations.

“We’re not talking about dropping standards,” he said. “We’re talking about processes here.”

Kathleen Quirk, Adkerson’s longtime lieutenant who will succeed him as CEO, said Freeport was focused on earning the support of people who live near its mine sites as part of its push to boost the copper industry’s social license to operate.

“We talk a lot about finding common ground. You got to find it. It’s going to take out of your economics, but otherwise you don’t have a viable business plan if you don’t come up with a sustainable solution,” said Quirk, currently the company’s president.

Elsewhere in the US, Freeport would be open to potentially expanding its Miami, Arizona, copper smelter, both Adkerson and Quirk said. But for the near term the company is focused on expanding its use of copper leaching, both added.

Of two US copper smelters, Freeport operates one and Rio Tinto the other.

Freeport has struggled to attract workers inside the US, and Adkerson said filling staffing needs was still a “work in progress”.

“We’re trying to advance technology to reduce worker requirements wherever we can, but it’s a US problem for us,” he said. “In Peru and Indonesia,” where the company also mines copper, “we have flood of applicants for all of our jobs.”

Adkerson, who will remain Freeport’s chairman, said he does not expect Quirk’s transition to CEO to bring major changes to the Phoenix-based company.

“This is a seamless management change,” Adkerson said.

(By Ernest Scheyder; Editing by David Gregorio)

The increase in cost was primarily due to the refinement of the methodology used for estimating the project budget, it said.

In October, Li-Cyle paused the construction of its flagship battery recycling facility in Rochester, New York, and later said it was evaluating financing and strategic alternatives.

It had also raised the cost of the project to between $850 million and $1 billion in November, from $560 million earlier.

Li-Cyle said on Monday it continues to complete its comprehensive review work, including re-engaging and re-bidding construction subcontracts.

Last week, the company secured an additional $75 million investment through a convertible note from Swiss miner and commodities trader Glencore, to help with the Hub’s financing.

(By Kabir Dweit; Editing by Devika Syamnath)

The developer on Friday filed a lawsuit in federal court in Anchorage challenging the EPA’s 2023 final determination prohibiting the discharge of mining waste in the state’s Bristol Bay over concerns the materials would degrade the watershed and harm important fishing ecosystems.

Northern Dynasty said the determination made under the Clean Water Act was arbitrary and capricious in violation of federal administrative law, because it failed to adequately consider the economic impact of the decision and used a “wild overestimate” of what protected waterways would be impacted by mining activity.

Northern Dynasty claims it has spent at least $1 billion over two decades in its efforts to develop the project, which was effectively killed by the decision, including $200 million on environmental studies.

“This is just another example of gross EPA overreach of the powers granted to it by Congress,” said Ron Thiessen, Northern Dynasty’s president and CEO, in a statement.

The EPA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

The Bristol Bay watershed in southwestern Alaska supports the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery and is known for its large mineral resources. The watershed also provides habitats for 29 species of fish, more than 190 birds and dozens of mammals, according to the EPA.

The proposed mine, which has languished in a lengthy approval and permitting process for decades but has not started construction, would tap one of the world’s largest copper and gold deposits.

The EPA claims it would permanently destroy over 2,000 acres of wetlands protected by the Clean Water Act.

The developer also filed a lawsuit against the US government on Thursday alleging the veto amounted to an unconstitutional taking of its property in violation of the US Constitution’s 5th Amendment, which says that private property can’t be taken for public use without compensation, in the US Court of Federal Claims in Washington, DC.

The state of Alaska also sued the US government in that court last week seeking $700 billion over the decision, arguing the EPA’s veto infringed on the state’s sovereignty and would deprive it of funds from taxes, licensing fees and royalties it would have received from the mine.

The state had already challenged the EPA’s decision last year directly with the Supreme Court, arguing it violated the state’s sovereign right to regulate its land and waters, as well as a 1976 land swap with the US government that gave the state ownership over the area in question.

The Supreme Court declined to take that case in January, but did not say why.

The developer’s new lawsuit in Alaska makes similar claims, arguing the Clean Water Act does not give the EPA authority to override the state’s preferences for using the lands for extracting valuable minerals.

The EPA had previously argued in a brief submitted to the Supreme Court that Alaska’s statehood and the land swap do not preclude the agency from evaluating projects to ensure they comply with environmental law.

The case is Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd v. US Environmental Protection Agency, US District Court for the District of Alaska, No. 3:24-cv-00059.

For Northern Dynasty Minerals: Keith Bradley and Jeffrey Walker of Squire Patton Boggs

For the EPA: Not yet available

(By Clark Mindock)

While earnings fell from 2022’s blockbuster records, profits across the sector still easily eclipsed prior highlights such as in 2008-2009, according to analysis from consultancy Oliver Wyman LLC.

“We saw pretty good margins overall and that is practically because things continue to be a little bit tight on the supply-demand side,” consultant Adam Perkins said in an interview.

Results for many players across the industry are not yet public, but profits at the biggest independent trading houses are expected to show an average drop of over 30% from 2022’s record levels, the report shows.

Still, disruptions and supply shortages of diesel and fuel oil offset lower Russia-related volatility in crude oil, while margins trading gas and power also remained relatively high.

The firms that buy, store and ship the world’s resources are coming out of what was the most profitable period in their history with a huge war chest to cement their role as strategic providers of energy, metals and food as the West continues a stuttering transition away from fossil fuels — demand for which continues to grow the world over.

They’ve already bought oil refineries, storage assets, power plants, and even other trading companies, while receiving large amounts of backing from countries like Italy, Germany, the US and Saudi Arabia to guarantee supplies of essential commodities like gas and copper.

“Traditionally this position in energy security wouldn’t have been held by an independent trader,” Perkins said, but they’re being “drawn into that role.”

Meanwhile, through share buybacks and dividend pay-outs, the executives who own shares or are partners in these mostly private companies, have also become multi-millionaires in the process. That’s helping accelerate a shift at the top of some of these firms’ as minted traders retire, passing management on to a new guard.

“I think it’s a great opportunity for those people who are coming in, it’s also a little bit nerve wracking – there’s an increased amount of scrutiny – everyone wants to continue the legacy,” said Perkins.

(By Archie Hunter)

The preliminary technical and economic study on the viability of the project is based on a scenario that includes developing an open pit mine, constructing a beneficiation facility onsite and a refinery offsite.

The report, compiled by independent firm Stantec Consulting Services, highlights a three million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) operating scenario. 

Net present value (NPV) is pegged at $673.9 million at an 8% discount rate and $505.1 million at a 10% discount rate (pre-tax), yielding an internal rate of return of 22.5%.

The payback period is estimated at 2.9 years, with total initial capital expenditures (capex) of $456.1 million, including a $76 million contingency.

Based on a mineral resource estimate updated in February, Halleck Creek holds 2.34 billion tonnes of material grading 3,196 parts per million (ppm) total rare earth oxides (TREO), including neodymium (Nd) and praseodymium (Pr) oxides, for 7.48 million tonnes of contained TREO. This includes 1.42 billion tonnes in the measured and indicated category.

The new figures represent a 128% increase over the 2023 estimate, at a grade of 3,295 ppm TREO.

Rare earths, a group of 17 minerals critical to the energy transition for their use in electric car batteries and wind turbines, are also crucial to national security for use in aerospace and defence applications.

Wyoming has become an exploration hotbed for these materials in hopes it could become America’s answer to China’s lock on the market. The Halleck Creek project was named by Mining Intelligence last year as one the world’s top 10 rare earth projects, measured in total rare earth oxides (TREO).

On top of the scoping study for Halleck Creek released Monday, the company will also need to acquire the necessary licences to explore on Wyoming state mineral leases in order to collect rocks for bulk material testing and pilot-scale metallurgical test-work.

After that, American Rare Earths will prepare and implement a detailed baseline environmental plan and will also start working on a permit application to mine on state mineral leases.

In a study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the authors demonstrated the diagnostic and therapeutic potential of the nanoparticles on the teeth and wounded skin of rats and mice, eliminating the biofilms in as little as one minute and outperforming common antimicrobials.

“With this platform, you can bust biofilms without surgically debriding infections, which can be necessary when using antibiotics,” Luisa Russell, a program director in the Division of Discovery Science & Technology at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), said in a media statement. “Plus, this method could treat patients if they are allergic to antibiotics or are infected by strains that are resistant to medication. The fact that this method is antibiotic-free is a huge strength.”

Oral biofilms, also known as plaques, formed by bacteria such as Streptococcus mutans can cause significant tooth decay. Wound infections, which are commonly caused by Staphylococcus bacteria, can greatly delay the healing process. In either case, the densely packed network of proteins and carbohydrates within biofilms can prevent antibiotics from reaching microbes throughout the affected area.

But that isn’t the extent of the issue posed by biofilms. Not only are they difficult to remove, but they are troublesome to discern in the first place.

Gold to the rescue

This new research identified a solution to knock out both problems with one stone: gold.

Gold is nontoxic and readily converts energy from light sources into heat, making it a prime candidate for photothermal therapy, a strategy that utilizes the heat from nanoparticles to kill nearby pathogens.

In addition to generating heat, the nanoparticles emit detectable ultrasound waves in response to light, meaning that gold particles can be visualized using a technique called photoacoustic imaging.

In the new study, the authors encapsulated gold spheres within larger golden cage-shaped nanoparticles to optimize their response to light for both therapeutic and imaging purposes. To make the particles appealing to bacteria, they coated them in dextran, a carbohydrate that is a common building block of biofilms.

The researchers assessed their strategy by applying the gold nanoparticles atop S. mutans-infected teeth from ex vivo rat jaws.

In a photoacoustic imaging test on the teeth, the nanoparticles emitted signals that came through loud and clear, allowing the team to see precisely where biofilms had taken up the dextran-coated particles on the teeth.

Then, to evaluate the particles’ therapeutic effect, they irradiated the teeth with a laser. For comparison, they treated other infected teeth samples with the topical antiseptic chlorhexidine.

One hundred per cent effective

The team observed that the photothermal therapy was nearly 100% effective at killing biofilms, while chlorhexidine did not significantly diminish the viability of bacteria.

“The treatment method is especially fast for the oral infection. We applied the laser for one minute, but really in about 30 seconds we’re killing basically all of the bacteria,” Maryam Hajfathalian, a professor of biomedical engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and the study’s first author, said.

Evaluations conducted on mice with open wounds in their skin, infected with Staphylococcus aureus, were similarly successful, as heat generated by nanoparticles greatly outperformed another antimicrobial agent called gentamicin. Here, the researchers also measured and noted a rise in temperature of 20°C localized to the biofilm, not causing any apparent damage to surrounding tissue.

The authors indicate that with further tests they aim to show whether the strategy can prevent cavities or speed up healing.

“I think it’s important to see how inexpensive, straightforward, and fast this process is. Since we are limited in using antibiotics, we need novel treatments like this as a replacement,” Hajfathalian said.

According to the study, confidence in the world’s ability to achieve net zero by 2050 seems to be eroding as it becomes more difficult to ensure adequate investment returns and progress diverges in a fragmenting world. This view is consistent across most regions and is most strongly held among people working in the oil and gas sector.

Bain & Company surveyed over 600 industry executives in mining, oil and gas, utilities, chemicals and agribusinesses across the globe to better understand their views on the energy transition, new technologies, and investment opportunities, and where they see the greatest challenges for decarbonization.

“This year’s survey found that energy and natural resource companies have not dampened ambitions for their transition-oriented growth businesses. However, customers’ willingness to pay is a growing issue, as is the ability to generate adequate return on investment (ROI) in energy transition-oriented projects. As a result, companies are focusing on projects with a viable ROI path,” said Joe Scalise, head of Bain & Company’s energy and natural resource practice. “The longer the executives are at the front lines of the energy transition, the more sober they are getting about the transition’s practical realities.”

The survey points out that executives in the Middle East (61%), Asia-Pacific (55%), and Latin America (51%) are feeling more optimistic about the prospects of their transition-oriented growth such as renewables, hydrogen, bio-based products, and lithium and other transition commodities that will contribute to their company’s valuation and profits by 2030. Hence, they are maintaining or increasing green investments. Only 4%, 12% and 10%, respectively, of executives from the three regions expressed less optimism, while the remainder showed no significant change.

The survey revealed a more balanced picture in Europe where 30% of executives revealed more optimism vs. 27% who were less optimistic about their new energy growth business areas contributing to the bottom line.

In North America, 29% of executives were more positive compared to 17% who were less positive on their transition-related growth areas.

Returns to scale-up

“Like last year, executives say the greatest obstacle to scaling up their transition-oriented businesses is finding enough customers willing to pay higher prices (or having equivalent policy support) to create sufficient return on investment,” the report states. “In fact, the share of executives identifying this as a very significant roadblock jumped 14 percentage points from 2023 to 2024, to 70% of executives.”

The experts behind the study note that the direct impact of higher interest rates on the cost of transition projects is likely shaping executives’ perspective on the challenges associated with customer willingness to pay. 

Bain has found that higher rates put upward pressure on the effective cost of low-carbon projects and a 500-basis-point increase in the cost of capital can increase the total annual revenue required to finance a project by as much as 50%.

Trendy North America

The survey presents North America as an emerging leader for green investments as 79% of all executives view it as an attractive region for energy transition investments. The next most attractive region is Europe at 65%. 

Australia and New Zealand come in as second runner-ups at 43%. 

Even as increasing government subsidies make some regions, such as North America, more attractive for investment, executives have growing concerns about policy stability.

The US Inflation Reduction Act is a major factor in North America’s investment attractiveness, but factors such as the availability of relatively low-cost natural gas feedstock also influenced the result. 

“However, while almost two-thirds of US executives surveyed agree that the IRA’s subsidies target the right areas, less than one-quarter believe that the policy regime will remain stable over the next five to 10 years,” the dossier states. “Furthermore, 42% of US executives think the IRA’s subsidies are unclear and that the rules are not easy to follow.”

About 70% of executives worldwide say that reducing policy uncertainty would very significantly improve their ability to scale up transition-oriented businesses.

Graphjet’s warrants will also be delisted from the Nasdaq and begin trading on the OTC as GTIWW. The transaction, the company says, creates the only pure-play publicly traded direct biomass-to-graphite company, establishing Graphjet as the leading source of graphite and graphene for the US market.

Graphjet raised $5.8 million through the transaction, and it anticipates that additional fundraising will be necessary to accelerate its growth strategy and expand its manufacturing capacity.

Graphjet’s technology uses eco-sensitive methods in a circular solution using waste and its processes eliminate emissions and pollutions, it said. The company has a $30 million offtake agreement with Toyoda Gosei and has accelerated the timeline for its planned manufacturing plant in Malaysia.

“We are thrilled to list Graphjet on the Nasdaq, particularly at this crucial moment of critical material demand and limited availability for the US market,” CEO Aiden Lee said in a press release.

“With China dominating more than 97% of all graphite production, we look forward to becoming the leading supplier to the US market to support its burgeoning battery storage and EV industries,” Lee said.

“Our patented technologies are capable of producing graphite and graphene directly from agricultural waste, which fills a critical supply need for these highly strategic materials, as demand is expected to continue to accelerate over the next several years.”

Graphjet said its commercial and patented vertically integrated technologies and process cuts the carbon footprint by 83% while reducing costs by 80%.

Graphjet’s stock advanced on the Nasdaq on Friday during a generally down day in the US market, affording the company a $1.76 billion market capitalization.

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a ban on imports of Russian uranium. The bill must pass the Senate before becoming law.

In this graphic, we visualize how much the U.S. relies on Russian uranium, based on data from the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA).

US suppliers of enriched uranium

After Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russian-produced oil and gas—yet Russian-enriched uranium is still being imported.

Currently, Russia is the largest foreign supplier of nuclear power fuel to the United States. In 2022, Russia supplied almost a quarter of the enriched uranium used to fuel America’s fleet of more than 90 commercial reactors.

Most of the remaining uranium is imported from European countries, while another portion is produced by a British-Dutch-German consortium operating in the United States called Urenco.

Similarly, nearly a dozen countries around the world depend on Russia for more than half of their enriched uranium—and many of them are NATO-allied members and allies of Ukraine.

In 2023 alone, the U.S. nuclear industry paid over $800 million to Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy corporation, Rosatom, and its fuel subsidiaries.

It is important to note that 19% of electricity in the U.S. is powered by nuclear plants.

The dependency on Russian fuels dates back to the 1990s when the United States turned away from its own enrichment capabilities in favor of using down-blended stocks of Soviet-era weapons-grade uranium.

As part of the new uranium-ban bill, the Biden administration plans to allocate $2.2 billion for the expansion of uranium enrichment facilities in the United States.

(This was originally posted on Visual Capitalist Elements)

Economy Minister Nicolas Grau, who expects talks with the Biden administration to conclude this year, said a positive decision would allow locally-manufactured lithium cathode to be built into electric vehicles that receive US subsidies.

“We’re very optimistic that it will happen,” Grau said in an interview from his office in downtown Santiago. “The way the law is framed creates the opportunity.”

As a major producer of key electric vehicle ingredients such as lithium and copper, Chile is at the forefront of the global transition to clean energy. President Gabriel Boric’s leftist administration introduced last year a national lithium policy that, while giving the state a bigger role in the sector, aims to open up new areas to mining as well as encourage more investments in plants to turn semi-processed metal into battery components.

If extended to value-added Chilean lithium, the subsidies will make it more attractive for US companies to invest in the country, said Grau, who holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

While raw materials like lithium produced in US trading allies clearly qualify for the subsidies, there is less clarity on value-added products such as cathode used in rechargeable batteries.

The US State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Inflation Reduction Act is intended to encourage carmakers to produce more electric vehicles in North America and secure the key minerals from friendly nations with free-trade agreements, like Chile and Australia, while ensuring independence from economic rival China.

Tesla and LG

After visiting an Albemarle Corp. lithium processing facility during a trip to Chile this month, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the US is likely to increase its imports of the metal from the country.

Companies that have held meetings with the Chilean government on lithium in recent months include Tesla Inc., which started local operations this year, and LG Energy Solution Ltd.

In 2023, roughly 65% of Chile’s lithium exports went to China, while 25% went to South Korea, according to government statistics. Producers have been hit by a slump in prices last year, though Grau said analyst forecasts indicate the medium-term outlook remains bright.

The new US-Chile tax treaty, which is designed to prevent companies from being taxed twice on the same income, will facilitate investment between both nations, Grau said.

(By Matthew Malinowski and James Attwood)

The first, and main focus of Northern Dynasty’s legal actions, was filed with Alaska’s federal district court, seeking to vacate the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) veto of a development at Pebble.

The proposed mine would have become the largest copper, gold and molybdenum extraction site in North America. However, for the better part of two decades, the project was met with strong resistance due to its potential environmental impact. The Bristol Bay area, where the mine would be located, is home to the world’s largest sockeye salmon fisheries.

In January 2023, the EPA made its decision to block Northern Dynasty’s US-based subsidiary from storing mine waste in the Bristol Bay watershed, essentially killing the project.

In its complaint, the company alleges that the EPA veto was issued in violation of various federal statutes regarding Alaska’s statehood rights and a land exchange approved by Congress.

Specifically, it claims that the veto decision was based on an “overly broad legal interpretation” of EPA’s jurisdiction, which has since been overruled by the Supreme Court, its geographic scope exceeds that allowed by the statute, and it was based on information previously developed by EPA in what it calls “an illegal pre-emptive veto process” that was designed to reach a predetermined result.

The company also says the factual basis stated to support the veto is directly contradicted by the July 2020 environmental impact statement published by the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), which is an important part of the administrative record.

“The EPA has not demonstrated that either the development of the Pebble deposit will have unacceptable adverse effects under Section 404(c), or that there are any impacts to Bristol Bay fisheries that would justify the extreme measures in the final determination (veto),” Northern Dynasty said in a news release.

“Whatever authority the EPA may have under section 404(c), the general provision in the Clean Water Act cannot authorize the EPA to take action to block the specific economic activity that was Congress’s express purpose for granting these lands to the State of Alaska under the Cook Inlet Land Exchange,” Northern Dynasty CEO Ron Thiessen said.

The other legal action was filed with the US Court of Federal Claims in Washington, DC, claiming that the actions by the EPA represent an unconstitutional “taking” of Northern Dynasty’s property. To that extent, the company is asking the court to defer considering this action until the above-mentioned EPA veto case is resolved.

“Our permitting strategy is focused entirely on winning the EPA veto case and permitting the Pebble project. We have filed a takings case against the federal government to preserve our ability to seek compensation for a violation of our rights in line with the protections under the Fifth Amendment,” the company said.

Still, according to Thiessen, the company’s priority is to advance the district federal court complaint, because “overturning the illegal veto removes a major impediment from the path of getting the permit to build the proposed mine.”

Over an estimated 20-year mine life, Pebble is expected to churn out 6.4 billion lb. of copper; 7.4 million oz. of gold and 300 million lb. of molybdenum, plus 37 million oz. of silver and 200,000 kg of rhenium.

Northern Dynasty’s shares rose by 1.1% to C$0.44 by 10:45 a.m. ET, trading between a 52-week range of C$0.28-C$0.58. The company has a market capitalization of C$239.6 million ($177.3m).

According to the Oslo-based business intelligence company, exploration efforts are underway in Australia, the US, Spain, France, Albania, Colombia, South Korea and Canada.

In its report, Rystad points out that one of the most promising elements of natural hydrogen – also called white or gold hydrogen – is its cost advantage over other forms of hydrogen due to its natural occurrence. 

Grey hydrogen, produced from fossil fuels, costs less than $2 per kilogram of hydrogen on average, while green hydrogen, produced using renewable electricity, is currently more than three times pricier. The cost of renewable hydrogen is expected to come down as electrolyzer pricing falls in the coming years, and yet, white hydrogen is still expected to be cheaper.

At present, Canada-based producer Hydroma extracts white hydrogen at an estimated cost of $0.5 per kg. Depending on the deposit’s depth and purity, projects in Spain and Australia aim for a cost of about $1 per kg, solidifying white hydrogen’s price competitiveness.

In addition to the cost advantage, white hydrogen can also have a low carbon intensity. At a hydrogen content of 85% and minimal methane contamination, the carbon intensity is around 0.4 kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per kg hydrogen gas (H2) – including embodied emissions and hydrogen emissions. At 75% hydrogen and 22% methane, the intensity rises to 1.5 kg CO2e per kg H2.

“Although still in its infancy with lots of uncertainty, white hydrogen has the potential to be a game-changer for the clean hydrogen sector as an affordable, clean natural resource, thereby shifting the role of hydrogen from an energy carrier to part of the primary energy supply. However, the actual size of the reserves is still unclear, and the transportation and distribution challenges of hydrogen remain”, Minh Khoi Le, head of hydrogen research at Rystad, said in a media statement.

Through the US Inflation Reduction Act, companies are eligible to receive production tax credits (PTC) when the lifecycle carbon intensity is below 4 kg CO2e per kg H2. The highest PTC tier grants $3 per kg if hydrogen production meets the carbon intensity threshold of 0.45 kg CO2e per kg H2. As such, low-carbon white hydrogen production in the US could be eligible for the highest PTC, making it appealing for producers.

Not a new thing

Le explained that despite being accidentally discovered in Mali approximately 37 years ago, the accumulation of hydrogen underground was previously thought to be unlikely due to hydrogen’s ability to seep through rock layers. However, new equipment, such as hydrogen-sensing gas probes, are now available to detect dissolved hydrogen in rock formations at depths of up to 1,500 metres. These probes use spectrometers to measure and analyze dissolved gases in deep boreholes. Researchers are currently developing probes that can reach deeper depths, up to 3,000 meters underground.

White hydrogen is mainly produced through natural reactions, such as serpentinization, where water reacts with iron-rich minerals at elevated temperatures. Enhanced serpentinization using catalysts such as magnetite, could help to accelerate natural hydrogen-producing reactions.

Radiolysis of water is another source of natural hydrogen. This process involves radioactive elements within the earth’s crust splitting water due to ionizing radiation.

The word is spreading

Rystad Energy’s report notes that the South Australian government added hydrogen to its list of regulated substances in 2021. This led to many companies applying for exploration permits in the region, with Gold Hydrogen securing a five-year license to develop its Ramsay project. The company found high hydrogen concentrations of up to 86% during drilling in late 2023. Gold Hydrogen plans to conduct further drilling in 2024 and launch a pilot feasibility study.

The dossier also highlights the fact that governments in countries like France and the US have promised financial support to expedite the exploration and extraction of naturally occurring hydrogen projects. Currently, there is only one operational white hydrogen project in Bourakebougou, Mali, producing around 5 tonnes of hydrogen annually. This small-scale project has been in operation for a decade, providing power to a village. Other projects in various parts of the world are still at an early exploration stage, with the first European natural hydrogen production expected to start in 2029.

That potential bid, though, is dependent on the current Nippon-US Steel tie-up falling apart, Goncalves said in a phone interview. If he were to make an offer, the Cliffs CEO said he’d have the backing of the influential steelworkers union that’s also blasted Nippon’s takeover approach.

The Cliffs CEO, known in the industry for his colorful and combative approach, touted his closeness and support from the influential steel union — and then proved his point by dialing USW President David McCall into the call with Bloomberg News. In the call, McCall reiterated the union’s support for a potential Cliffs bid.

Goncalves also said he’s talking regularly to the White House.

The White House declined to comment.

A recent share plunge for US Steel shows that investors are increasingly concerned about the future of the Nippon deal. President Joe Biden on Thursday said the iconic Pennsylvania company should retain American ownership. Biden’s move against a takeover by a the Japanese company came despite the risk of upsetting a key ally.

US Steel plunged as much as 11% on Thursday to $36.38. The stock is down about 20% in two days, on pace for the biggest such loss since 2020.

Nippon’s proposal is to buy the company for $55 per share in cash.

If given the opportunity, Goncalves would consider a bid “in the $30s,” he said in the interview Thursday.

Nippon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. On Wednesday, Nippon Steel and US Steel in a joint statement said the companies will continue to advocate for the deal, and “we are confident that fair and thoughtful evaluation will result in its approval.”

Biden’s Intervention

Biden’s statement marks a rare presidential intervention in a transaction that outside an election year would have drawn less public scrutiny. Despite its storied history, US Steel’s role in the economy has diminished over several decades, a period during which producers in Asia have risen to dominate the global steel market. And while Nippon Steel’s proposed $14.1 billion acquisition targets a historic business name, a takeover in the US commodities industry by a company based in a friendly country is hardly unusual.

Still, the announcement of a Japanese company’s acquisition triggered opposition from Republican and Democratic lawmakers as well as the influential United Steelworkers union. Biden’s allies have urged the administration to kill the deal over national security concerns and the threat to unionized steel jobs.

Goncalves said he thinks it’s a “foregone conclusion” the Nippon deal will fall apart.

“There is no more lobbying, there’s no more negotiation. It’s over. It’s over,” Goncalves said, referring to Nippon Steel’s deal to buy US Steel. “And the only other buyer that the union would accept is Cleveland-Cliffs.”

Union support

After dialing McCall into the phone interview, Goncalves said to the union leader: “I would like you to, if you can, express to him — to confirm or negate — if you disagree with me, that Cliffs is the only company the union would endorse to acquire.”

“Yes, because you still have our right to bid,” McCall responded to Goncalves. He was referring to a legal right the union had to launch a counteroffer for US Steel, which it transferred to Cliffs last year.

The Nippon bid remains on the table and it’s not clear what implications Biden’s remarks might actually have for an ongoing federal review.

Still, the reiteration of support from the union for Cliffs will be a blow to the Japanese company, which has been seeking to win over McCall and his labor group in order to reduce the political pressure against the deal.

(By Joe Deaux)

Coronavirus pandemic fallout and Moscow’s war in Ukraine have sent Western governments scrambling to reduce their reliance on Chinese supply chains and disentangle their economies from Russia.

But as Washington plots a course for its energy transition it is lagging behind China, which has spent the past decade securing access to minerals needed for the production of products like electric vehicle batteries and solar panels.

“We don’t want to be overly reliant on any one country or any one company for global supply chains for critical minerals,” Adeyemo told Reuters during a visit to a platinum mine in Marikana, South Africa, owned by Sibanye-Stillwater.

While the US government has launched a raft of measures to incentivize increased production of strategic and critical minerals at home, notably under the Inflation Reduction Act, Adeyemo acknowledged that overseas resources were also vital.

“Africa is going to play a huge role,” he said. “A lot of critical minerals are located here.”

Chinese assets in Africa already include massive copper and cobalt projects in Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia as well as lithium in Zimbabwe, where companies are assisted by heavy Chinese state investment in accompanying infrastructure.

Adeyemo said the United States was working with G7 allies to close that infrastructure gap.

The US International Development Finance Corporation is, meanwhile, aiming to de-risk private investment in Africa. And the deputy secretary said Washington was incentivizing US manufacturing to boost demand for those minerals and create favourable market conditions for miners.

But he added that the White House also stood ready to ensure a level playing field.

“We are talking to our European allies … about some of the actions we can take using trade tools to make sure that a country like China can’t flood the market with things like electric vehicles and solar panels,” he said.

Hold accountable

Regarding Russia, Adeyemo said countries like South Africa also had a role to play.

In the wake of Moscow’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the US government slapped sanctions on a number of Russian miners and mineral exports. But it left Russian platinum group metals (PGM) largely untouched.

The United States is a major consumer of palladium, a PGM used in catalytic converters, with 32% of its imports of the metal coming from Russia between 2019 and 2022, according to the US Geological Survey.

“South Africa has a real opportunity to help supply the global economy,” Adeyemo said. “And it gives us the ability to take other actions to hold Russia accountable.”

South Africa is a major palladium producer, and Sibanye-Stillwater mines the metal both in Marikana and at a US project in Montana.

“Between what comes out of South Africa and what’s produced in the US, the US does not need to be dependent on sources from any other country,” CEO Neal Froneman told Reuters.

However, he said companies like his needed US government support.

“You can provide loans or introduce tariffs or whatever it might be,” he said. “That is a role that they need to think very differently about and help companies that are trying to source and provide these critical metals into those ecosystems.”

(By Joe Bavier; Editing by Mark Potter)

The project will be adjacent to Lithium Americas’ $2.2 billion Thacker Pass mine, which aims to produce an initial 40,000 tonnes per year of battery-grade lithium carbonate. The mine is also expected to create approximately 1,800 direct jobs during its three-year construction period and around 360 jobs in operations for its 40-year mine life.

This funding represents the largest-ever loan to a mining company from the DOE’s Loan Programs Office, amid increasing efforts to bolster domestic supplies of critical minerals. General Motors, which has invested $650 million in Lithium Americas, has an exclusive offtake agreement for 100% of the lithium production from the mine for up to 15 years after expected production begins in 2027.

The proposed mine has the potential to become North America’s largest source of lithium for electric vehicle batteries and would support US President Joe Biden’s efforts to reduce dependence on Chinese supplies of the metal.

Currently, about 65% of the critical mineral is processed in China, although US lithium production is projected to increase 13-fold thanks to tax credits and other subsidies provided in 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said Wednesday at a conference held by SAFE.

Measured and indicated mineral resources at Thacker Pass are estimated at 385 million tonnes averaging 2,917 parts per million (ppm) lithium for 6 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE). Inferred resources are 147 million tonnes averaging 2,932 ppm for 2.3 million tonnes of LCE.

Shares of Lithium Americas surged 28% in New York trading and 18% in Toronto on Thursday morning. The Vancouver-based miner has a market capitalization of C$1.18 billion ($870m).

(With files from Bloomberg)

Lithium has historically been sold on long-term contracts by Albemarle and other producers, making it difficult for automakers and other customers to determine a benchmark price.

The slowing pace of EV adoption globally, combined with lithium overproduction in China, has dragged down lithium prices and seen job cuts by producers. A basket of lithium prices compiled by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence has dropped 80% in the past year.

While the CME Group has in recent years started to trade lithium, volumes on those contracts are dwarfed by contracts for copper and other critical minerals.

Working with London Metal Exchange partner Metalshub, Albemarle said it plans to hold several auctions for lithium supplies to allow potential customers “to state what they consider the appropriate price.”

The first auction is planned for March 26.

“Our emphasis is on promoting price transparency,” said an Albemarle spokesperson.

“We see this as a responsible approach to price discovery that can lead to fair product valuation – for both buyers and sellers – and drive towards a more robust, sustainable market.”

As part of the first auction, Albemarle plans to offer 10,000 metric tons of chemical-grade spodumene concentrate, which is made from the company’s hard rock mines in Australia.

The March 26 auction will be in English and Mandarin and will use the Chinese Yuan as currency. The bids will be confidential.

The Charlotte, North Carolina-based company had moved to cut costs in January amid falling prices for lithium.

(By Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Michael Perry)

The Responsible Use of Seafloor Resources Act calls for federal resources to be allocated towards refining polymetallic nodule materials and advises several analyses across benefit sharing, technology development, trade, and environmental and human health.

The Act calls for the government to coordinate and expedite the development of infrastructure to process and refine seafloor nodules within the United States.

It also asks the Office of Science and Technology Policy to annually submit to the President and Congress a report including quantitative and qualitative analysis of the benefits to the US of importing seafloor nodules and processing and refining nodules domestically.

“The strength of US national security and energy independence will be determined by how we choose to respond amid increasing reliance on China. This legislation is common sense and encourages the needed strategic decoupling from China that is long overdue,” said Congresswoman Miller.

China controls roughly 60% of the global critical mineral production and over 85% of the world’s refining capacity.

“Over the last two decades, the Chinese Communist Party has strategically invested in putting a stranglehold on global critical mineral supply chains. It’s vital to our security and economic interests that the CCP controlled monopoly on these materials is broken,” said Congressman Joyce.

Following the introduction of the Bill, shares of the deep-sea mining pioneer rose as much as 15%. The Metals Company has a $588 million market capitalization.

“With commercial deep-sea nodule operations expected to begin soon, Congressional action to lay the foundation for processing and refining this remarkable resource is a game-changer,” CEO Gerard Barron said in a news release.

Minerals and metals such as cobalt, nickel, copper, and manganese can be found in potato-sized nodules on the ocean floor. Reserves are estimated to be worth anywhere from $8 trillion to more than $16 trillion, and they are in areas where companies, including The Metals Company, plan to target.

Many NGOs and environmental groups, however, argue that mining the seafloor could have a devastating impact on the planet.

A recent report by the non-profit Planet Tracker says mining the seafloor for key minerals and metals could negatively impact the mining industry, resulting in $500 billion of lost value and causing damages to the world’s biodiversity estimated to be up to 25 times greater than land-based mining.

For seven years, Ashley Shade and Samuel Barnett have been studying soil microbial communities in Centralia, Pennsylvania. The town is the site of an underground coal mine fire that has been burning since 1962 at depths of up to 90 metres over a 13-kilometre stretch of 15 square kilometres. Estimations state that, at its current rate, it could continue to burn for over 250 years.

The Centralia fire started accidentally when efforts to clean a landfill ignited the adjacent mine, and it has been burning continuously since then. As the fire burns, it moves through the abandoned underground mine shaft, heating the soil above it as it travels. It is considered a ‘press disturbance,’ meaning, a long-term, continuous, human-caused disturbance as the heat from the fire changes the structure of the microbial communities.

From 2015 to 2021, the researchers selected sampling sites along the fire’s path and examined the soil before, during, and after being heated. The team also sampled nearby sites that were completely unaffected by the fire.

“We go out every October and we take soil cores,” Barnett explained. “We have a big PVC pipe that we sterilize and drive into the soil and pull out about 20 centimetres or 8 inches of soil. Then we sieve the soil to get rid of roots and rocks and the stuff we don’t want and then freeze it in liquid nitrogen and bring it to the lab.”

The next step was to extract bacterial DNA and RNA. They sequenced the DNA to determine which types of bacteria were present. They then looked at the ratio of RNA to DNA to determine which bacteria are biologically active and which are dormant.

“Dormant is a word for a reversible state of activity that many life forms assume at some point. It’s a really important strategy to help organisms withstand stress in their environment,” Shade said.

“An incredible number of soil microbes are simply not active and functioning at any given time. This is an important point because the active microbes are the ones that contribute to ecosystem functions. I think this is special about this study because most research does not consider this question of who’s active and who’s not.”

The researchers infused this perspective into the recovery of microbial communities.

“If we can understand what wakes up the dormant microbes, we can try to manage the microbiome, for example, to wake up when we need it to wake up, to go to sleep potentially when we need it to go to sleep,” Shade said.

The scientists pointed out that microbes – tens of thousands of which live in soil – are vital to maintaining healthy, fertile soil, which, in turn, is vital to the overall health of ecosystems. Thus, they hope their findings spur additional research into the development of strategies for microbiome restoration for ecosystems impacted by climate change and other press disturbances.

Syrah’s largest shareholder and the country’s top pension fund AustralianSuper have agreed to the conversion of a 5-year unsecured convertible note issued in June 2019 and December 2023 into fresh shares in the miner, it said in a statement.

AustralianSuper had committed to subscribing for all shares under the placement and taking up its full pro-rata entitlement in the institutional entitlement offer, the company said.

The placement would be at a fixed price of A$0.55 per new share, which represented a discount of 19.1% to stock’s last closing price on March 12.

The company said it had agreed with AustralianSuper to the conversion of series 1 and 3 notes into new shares at a revised conversion price of A$0.6688 per share.

The company added that AustralianSuper’s shareholding would increase to no more than 31.9% post the completion of funding round, from around 17.8% earlier.

Around 178.2 million new shares would be issued under the placement and entitlement offer, Syrah said.

($1 = 1.5140 Australian dollars)

(By Roshan Thomas; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Rashmi Aich)

Spot bullion whipsawed as traders digested the data print, before trading down 1% at $2,161.14 an ounce as of 9:54 a.m. in New York. Gold hit an all-time high of $2,195.15 on Friday.

“The February CPI came in hotter than expected,” said Bart Melek, global head of commodity strategy at TD Securities. “The implication is that the Fed may not be ready to cut rates just yet.”

The Fed’s long-anticipated pivot to looser monetary policy is widely expected to boost gold’s appeal compared with yield-bearing assets like bonds. Policymakers have said they needed to see more evidence that inflation is headed toward its 2% target before lowering borrowing costs.

Swap markets now showed a 63% chance of a rate reduction in June, a tad higher than 61.8% the day prior to the February CPI readings.

“Mild inflation is still supportive as the market believes the Fed will still cut in June as this print is not bad enough to derail that view,” said Nicky Shiels, head of metals strategy at Geneva-based MKS PAMP SA.

The precious metal has jumped sharply this month, setting a series of new record highs. However, the scale and speed of gold’s ascent have surprised many seasoned market observers, without a clear justification for the sudden rally.

Still, bullion has been underpinned by long-standing supports, including massive purchases by central banks in emerging markets, led by China. Heightened geopolitical risks, with Middle East tensions from Gaza to the Red Sea and Russia’s war in Ukraine, have also underlined gold’s appeal as a haven asset.

Copper and most other base metals also declined after the CPI data. Copper was down 0.3% at $8,628 a ton on the London Metal Exchange as of 1:55 p.m. local time.

(By Yvonne Yue Li)

Glencore last year said it planned to develop a recycling hub in Europe with Li-Cycle to produce materials including lithium carbonate in response to a global shortage of key raw materials for the fast-growing electric vehicle (EV) market.

This not the first investment Glencore made in Li-Cycle. In June 2022, it invested $200 million in the Canadian-based battery recycling firm. Li-Cycle’s CEO Ajay Kochhar said at the time that the agreement would “further secure and diversify” the company’s lithium-ion battery supply and feedstock sources and help improve its position in North America and Europe.

The demand for lithium-ion batteries used in EVs has been on the rise as the world looks to meet its goal of transitioning away from fossil fuels by 2050. The recycling of lithium-ion batteries, however, is not expected to take off before 2030 due to obstacles such as the lack of recyclable feedstock and the long life of EVs, according to Wood Mackenzie.

“This financing enhances Li-Cycle and Glencore’s existing long-term, strategic partnership and represents an interim step in our funding strategy to support Li-Cycle’s future plans,” Kochhar said in a news release. “We also continue to work closely with the US Department of Energy on the conditional commitment for a loan of up to $375 million.”

Li-Cycle said it is continuing to review its global recycling network and its go-forward strategy for the paused Rochester Hub in the US, including analyzing potential end-product mix options and construction strategy.

“Glencore is committed to bringing scalable and sustainable circularity into the supply chain of battery materials,” Kunal Sinha, Glencore’s global head of recycling and non-executive director of Li-Cycle’s board, said in the statement.

“Our original investment in Li-Cycle, alongside key commercial agreements, formed part of this strategy. Today, we are pleased to further support Li-Cycle through this additional $75 million investment so both Li-Cycle and Glencore can continue to build the battery circularity platform of choice for our customers.”

Li-Cycle’s stock surged over 38% in Tuesday’s afternoon trading in New York. By 2 p.m. EDT, the shares had traded at a volume of 51.6 million, compared to an average daily volume of 3.3 million. The company has a $97.8 million market capitalization.

Shares of Alumina rose as much as 10.4% after Alcoa announced the deal on Monday, hitting their highest since August 2023. Alcoa shares gained 2.1% to $30.5 apiece.

Alcoa’s push for acquiring its joint venture partner can be seen as a gamble for metals which will be an important part of the transition to cleaner sources of energy.

Buying Alumina gives Alcoa full control of their joint venture, which is one of the world’s largest producers of the semi-processed form of aluminum. Aluminum is used to produce renewable infrastructure and electric vehicles.

The global mining sector has seen a recent slew of merger and acquisitions despite rising concerns around the economic outlook of one of the world’s largest metals buyer, China, and slowing EV sales in the United States.

“It could be a win-win for both companies,” Tim Waterer, chief market analyst at trading firm KCM Trade, said.

“The takeover offer could be viewed as a vote of confidence in the resources space despite a cloudy growth outlook for the sector.”

The buyout follows United States Steel’s $14.9 billion deal to buy Japan’s Nippon Steel and Newmont’s $15 billion acquisition of Aussie gold miner Newcrest.

Post the deal, Alumina shareholders will own about 31.6% of the merged entity, while Alcoa shareholders will hold 68.4%.

Alumina’s board, including managing director and CEO, recommended shareholders vote for the deal, in the absence of a superior proposal.

The deal comes months after Alcoa faced operational and permit-realted problems for its bauxite business in Australia. It also disclosed in January plans to halt production at the Kwinana alumina plant in Western Australia in a move to control costs.

($1 = 1.5126 Australian dollars)

(By Roushni Nair and Rishav Chatterjee; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri and Mrigank Dhaniwala)

A research panel will look for ways to reduce contamination from coal mines in BC’s Elk Valley flowing into Lake Koocanusa, a reservoir straddling the border and into US rivers. Due to pollution concerns in this watershed, the US and Canada asked International Joint Commission (IJC) to establish a board of experts and knowledge holders by June that will study the issue over two years and devise options for action.

Indigenous groups in British Columbia, Montana and Idaho had lobbied for intervention by both federal governments to stop the flow of coal pollution, the Associated Press reported.

Elevated levels of selenium have reportedly been found in fish and fish eggs from Montana’s Kootenai River, downstream from coal mines in the Elk River Valley. A legal action filed in May 2023 in Montana named Teck Coal Ltd. as one of three defendants in a request for judicial review by environmental groups in Montana and Idaho over levels of contamination from its British Columbia mines in US waters.

“Our two countries are committed to a collaborative, science, and Indigenous knowledge based, action-oriented path forward,” US Ambassador to Canada David L. Cohen and the Canada’s Ambassador to the United States, Kirsten Hillman said in a joint statement.

The two nations will work in partnership with Tribal Nations and Indigenous Peoples, consistent with the principles outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. They’ve asked the IJC to assist federal and Indigenous governments, British Columbia, Idaho, and Montana, to establish a formal governance structure for the study board by the end of June.

Teck closed the sale of a minority interest in its coal business to Nippon in January. The remaining sale of 77% of the business to Glencore (LSE: GLEN) is expected to close in the third quarter.

Bullion for immediate delivery traded in a narrow range on Monday after rallying almost 5% last week, setting a nominal high on four successive days. Gains on Friday were supported by US data showing the jobless rate at a two-year high, which helped push the dollar and 10-year Treasury yields lower.

Gold has spiked in March, with the move taking some investors by surprise given there’s been no major change in the outlook for when the Fed would start cutting. In congressional testimony last week, Chair Jerome Powell emphasized the central bank needs “just a bit more evidence” inflation is headed toward its 2% target before lowering borrowing costs. Fellow policymakers have made similar remarks.

A test of gold bulls’ optimism will come this week with fresh US inflation data due for release on Tuesday. A hotter-than-expected reading — as happened last month — would be a setback for further gains in the precious metal, which doesn’t offer a yield and benefits from a lower-rate environment.

Spot gold was up 0.1% to $2,182.05 a ounce at 11:16 a.m. in New York after a high last week of $2,195.15. Silver, platinum and palladium all advanced.

(By Jake Lloyd-Smith and Jack Ryan)

As a wholly owned subsidiary of the Navajo Nation, NTEC will oversee permitting requirements, conduct additional exploration drilling, design mining operations, carry out environmental assessments, and manage the development of the lithium project.

A very shallow, flat-lying mineralized sedimentary lithium resource, Big Sandy has indicated and inferred (JORC compliant) resources of 32.5 million tonnes grading 1,850 parts per million lithium for 320,800 tonnes of Li2CO3 (lithium carbonate), as estimated after a 2019 drill program.

“Big Sandy represents a substantial development opportunity holding 320,800 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE), with only 4% of the project drilling, providing significant exploration upside once permitted,” Arizona Lithium managing director Paul Lloyd said in a news release.

As part of the latest agreement, NTEC chief executive officer Vern Lund, with more than 25 years in the mining industry, will become a member of the Arizona Lithium board.

Shares of Arizona Lithium rose 4.1% in Monday trading on the ASX. The company has a market capitalization of A$114 million ($75 million).

It’s still small relative to the London Metal Exchange (LME), which isn’t going to lose its status as benchmark price-setter any time soon. Nor will the Shanghai Futures Exchange (ShFE) stop being the dominant futures price reference for China’s giant aluminum sector.

Rather, the significance of CME’s fast-growing aluminum contract is what it says about aluminum’s shifting dynamics.

The global market is becoming less globalized and the US is starting to drift away from everyone else thanks to the combination of import tariffs and penal duties on Russian metal and Chinese products.

The emergence of a North American pricing point is a logical evolution in this tectonic realignment of the market landscape.

Physical drift

The CME’s first aluminum contract was delisted in 2009 after the US exchange failed to lure users away from the dominant London market.

It was ironically the LME itself that opened the door again for its US rival a few years later.

Long load-out queues at LME warehouses in Detroit caused US physical premiums to surge. The LME price stayed low but buyers were paying ever more for their metal and were unable to hedge the pricing gap.

The CME launched a US Midwest premium contract in 2013 followed a couple of years later by European and Japanese premium contracts. Volume last year across the four contracts totalled almost four million tonnes.

The LME’s premium contracts, launched much later, notched up volumes of just 202,000 tonnes last year.

The Midwest premium briefly converged with the rest of the world before ballooning wider again when the Trump Administration imposed 10% import duties in 2018.

The Biden Administration’s policy of de-risking supply by closing the door on Russian imports has cemented the structural divergence with other regions.

US physical buyers are currently paying around $387 per metric ton over the futures price for metal. Those in Europe are paying around $250 and Japanese buyers just $120.

That futures price has until now been set on the LME. But maybe for not much longer.

Growth spurt

The CME tried again in 2014 with a futures contract to match its premium products but it lapsed into disuse late 2017 and didn’t trade at all until July 2019.

The trigger for the renewed interest was the CME’s decision to expand its delivery network from US locations to international ports, particularly those with physical arbitrage opportunities with the LME warehousing network.

Registered stocks were zero prior to June 2019. Today they stand at 45,905 tons, most of it in heavily-used LME locations such as Malaysia’s Port Klang and Gwangyang in South Korea.

With inventory has come trading volume. Activity in the aluminum contract nearly tripled last year to 30.6 million tons. That’s dwarfed by the 1.4 billion tons transacted on the LME, although the difference is accentuated by the LME’s unique trading system.

A more useful comparison is with the ShFE, which like the CME, offers a vanilla cash-settled futures contract.

CME volumes in the first two months of this year came to 9.3 million tonnes, compared with 44.0 million in Shanghai. And the US product is still growing fast.

So too are the number of users, over 600 last year compared with 357 in 2022, according to the exchange.

CME has also launched aluminum options, which just recorded their best volume month in February.

CME all-in aluminum

Although the CME’s rising aluminum fortunes have until now been linked via arbitrage with those of its competitor across the Atlantic, there are signs that the contract’s success is generating domestic traction.

A key development came in April last year, when price reporting agency Platts, part of S&P Global Commodity Insights, began publishing a CME-basis all-in price.

Whereas physical buyers would previously hedge their basis risk on the LME and their premium risk on the CME, the new pricing tool allows both components to be executed on the CME.

Domestic players such as PerenniAL Aluminum are now offering buyers a CME all-in price reference in this year’s term supply contracts, according to CEO Brian Hesse, quoted in a CME update on the contract.

Industrial users are being joined by investors.

United States Commodity Fund (USCF) announced the launch of the USCF Aluminum Strategy Fund in October. It will trade basis the CME contract, hoping to attract investors looking for exposure to aluminum as a critical energy transition metal.

Although included in all the major commodity indices, aluminum has to date failed to attract much retail speculative interest. CME, which offers investor friendly micro products in both precious metals and copper, would seem a good fit for smaller players unable to access the wholesale market in London.

CME is assembling the building blocks to become an aluminum price-setter for the North American market.

Regional splits

This is not necessarily bad news for either London or Shanghai. Three regional futures exchanges can be mutually beneficial thanks to increased arbitrage possibilities.

Copper, which has traded on US exchanges since the nineteenth century, is a good example of profitable co-existence.

But for aluminum, shifting from London dominance to regional price formation is a completely new development.

It is, though, no more than a reflection of geopolitical reality as what was a highly globalized supply chain drifts apart into trading blocs.

(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, Andy Home, a columnist for Reuters.)

(Editing by David Evans)