Mining Intelligence

On a whim I wrote this article late in 2021 and submitted to Seeking Alpha, which they promptly rejected three times. So fuck them, but I'm posting it here because - what do you know - its now relevant with Ganfeng's purchase of Pluspetrol's Pozuelos-Pastos project for a whopping $962M. Some of the info and maybe even my own opinions may be outdated, but I'm not going to rewrite it. - - - - - Primary tickers: $LAC $MLNLF $AMRZF Secondary tickers: $ALB $SQM $GNENF $LTHM Lithium Americas ($LAC) has been raising capital, making investments, and generating excitement about the company’s position for growth. They are carving out footholds in the Lithium Triangle while inching closer to revenue from their premiere Argentinian lithium operation at Cauchari-Olaroz in 2022. Months ago the focus was on Lithium Americas’ Thacker Pass mine in Nevada and the legal triumphs and tribulations there. In the lull leading up to the expected court ruling there, early this year, the spotlig...

Primary tickers: $LAC $ALB $LTHM $SQM $RIO $AKE:ASX     Evaporation ponds aren't the only factor to consider when looking at lithium brine operations, but they typically represent a large component of capital investment and can be a limiting factor toward production capacity. The following is as apples-to-apples as you can reasonably get with a simple visualization. We're not talking about evap rate, brine grade, or many other controlling factors here. If nothing else its a look at how much brine can be staged at the surface, concentrated, treated, and ready for whatever processing ensues. Current pond areas shown at the same scale in an equal-area map projection You'll notice how the legacy operations are are kinda ad-hoc, the newcomers are much more compact/coherently designed, and the DLE players are small. Tianqi hasn't built their ponds yet, so that is the design from Neo Lithium's 3Q DFS. RIO's Rincon is still pilot stage. ALB's Clayton Valley ponds...