New technologies call for new resources

Lithium - The Bolivian Gold

Bolivia holds the largest deposits of lithium in the world, around 5.4 million tons, more than half the world's supply, a US geological report estimates. It is followed by Chile holding 3m and China with 1.1m tons. Towards the end of 2009, The First International Forum on Science and Technology for the Industrialization of Lithium and Other Resources was held in La Paz


By NEMANJA STEFANOVIĆ
Cooperation with the magazine of Association of Hispanists "REFLEJO"
Translation: MILICA MARAVIĆ


The shift towards hybrid and electric vehicles could make some poor countries very rich. As the world slowly abandons fossil fuels, a soft metal - lithium, is becoming more and more sought after as the main component of the "green" cars' batteries. The country which particularly looks forward to the future is - Bolivia. However, the extraction of this ore poses a great challenge. The goal of the Bolivian Government is to build a plant producing 30,000 tons of lithium per year - around 30 percent of the current global production!

Bolivia holds the largest deposits of lithium in the world, around 5.4 million tons, more than half the world's supply, an American geological report estimates. It is followed by Chile holding 3m and China with 1.1m tons. Towards the end of 2009, The First International Forum on Science and Technology for the Industrialization of Lithium and Other Resources was held in La Paz. It was confirmed that the world's greatest lithium deposit is located under the largest salt lake - Salar de Uyuni. During the Forum, the Bolivian Government showed it is very much aware of the country's capacity to profit on the lithium.

- We know there are certain obstacles, however, we remain optimistic. We are thinking about building a large lithium plant by the year 2014 - Bolivian Minister for Mining pointed out.

Unlike other countries with already confirmed lithium reserves, such as Argentina, Chile, China and Canada, Bolivia is still not producing lithium. However, the Bolivian Government, empowered by the reelection of Evo Morales as president, has pointed out that it plans to invest half a billion dollars into building the lithium plant, and another half a billion for the accompanying infrastructure. Morales laid the corner stone of the pilot plant high up in the Andes (at 3,700m above sea level), worth 6 million dollars. The Government hopes it will lead to a construction of a lithium plant worth as much as 250 million dollars.

Although many companies, such as the Japanese Mitsubishi Group and Sumitomo Corp, the French Bollore Group and the South Korean LG Chem Ltd, showed interest in extracting the lithium, none of these expressed willingness to meet Bolivian demands, such as, among others, to agree to produce the lithium-ion batteries precisely in Bolivia. Upon this, the president Evo Morales stated that the lithium industry is 100% state-owned.

- Because of the rejection of foreign investments, the project will suffer, because of the lack of developed countries' expertise and experience, including the process of extracting the lithium from salts - Keith Evans, a US geologist and expert for the mining industry, believes. He says that Uyuni is not the ideal place for producing lithium since "although the reserves are unarguably large, the concentration of lithium is small in comparison to the competitive resources. The ore also contains a high amount of magnesium, which makes the process considerably costlier."

The Japanese Mitsubishi, on the other hand, anticipates that without substantial produce of lithium in Bolivia, by the year 2015, there will be a global lack of this metal, as the production of "green cars" increases. The others say that Bolivian production of lithium will not affect the advanced battery production, and accordingly, General Motors believes there is enough lithium with or without Bolivia. However, it is highly probable that, in the long run, lithium prices will go up as the demand for this metal increases.



(Published: 10.05.2010.)