[rmm]

This is my wheelhouse (mining engineer) and sorry to say this is bunk from what i can see.

Its not 15M Tonnes of Lithium. Its 15M Tonnes of lithium containing ore, with an average grade of 0.4% (which i also question without seening core results).

Also terms such as "resource" and "reserve" have very specific meaning in mining (to do with economic viability of deposity/ level of confidence) and this is by no way a "reserve".

Most likely overzealous government minister/media hyper. (sorry to rain on parade!)

[bboygravity]

The real info is always in the comments.

[omginternets]

Can you elaborate on the specific meanings of “resource” and “reserve”? This has piqued my interest.

[defrost]

The largest resource market on the globe is the Toronto TSX which uses the Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results ( JORC ) and other damn near equivilent definitions.

https://www.jorc.org/

Pages 8 & 9: https://www.jorc.org/docs/JORC_code_2012.pdf

Essentially: (Inferred | Indicated) Resources is weak guesswork

whereas: (Measured | Proved) Reserves is (almost) bankable.

If you're in a certtain type of geology that looks a lot like other geology that's been mined, and you have some surface geochemstry results you can claim to have (say) a 10 square mile area of indicated copper resources which correlates with (say) 500 million tonnes of extractable resources.

This will then appear in a resource map .. and it's fantasy footbal stuff.

The real money gravitates towards increasing proven resources - this is a volume of the earths crust that has been

* surface tested,

* geophysically tested,

* sparsely drill tested,

* densely drill tested,

* modelled as a 3D volumetric dispersal of elements and compounds,

* modelled for economic feasibility of extraction (will it cost less to extract than the value of the material extracted).

This is the evolution of potential mining ground from a prospect through to something that gets listed on a minerals exchange as a capital investment to build processing equipment and dig holes | shafts | leach mining | etc.

[defrost]

Apologies for so many typos ...

s/fantasy footbal /fantasy football /

> The real money gravitates towards increasing proven reserves etc.

Like a Reserve Bank - a mineral Reserve is a known entity - at least as known as anything can be to the limits of modern technology prior to actually digging it up.

There's been enough drilling to know the volumetric extents and grades of the materials of interest (most deposits have multiple minerals of interest), and quite often there's been an independant third party engineering and economic Technical Report commissioned on the feasibility of extraction, costs, methods, lifetime, and expected profit margins.

[borissk]

How would you interpret this news about phosphate in Norway: https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/gre... ?

[manvillej]

so like 6 million KG of lithium. or enough lithium for 750,000 EV cars

[mkl]

15,000,000t×0.004 = 60,000,000kg. 60,000,000kg/63kg per car [1] ≈ 952,000 cars, about 55% of Tesla's production last year.

[1] https://electrek.co/2016/11/01/breakdown-raw-materials-tesla...

[uoaei]

Yikes, looks like EVs are gonna be resource-constrained real soon unless new battery tech emerges.

[prawn]

Swear I read an article recently about cuts to a lithium project in Australia due to dwindling demand.

Here's an article about it:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-18/kemerton-lithium-proj...

Including: "Demand for lithium has dropped by more than 80 per cent in the past year and nearly 11 per cent in the past month alone."

[fooker]

Lithium is one of the most abundant solids in the universe. The earth has plenty, it's just going to become more and more economically feasible to extract it. You can even get reasonably large amounts from seawater if you have cheap energy.

[uoaei]

Citations very sorely needed on every single one of your wild speculations.

[abenga]

These are not "wild speculations", they are all widely know facts. It is more common in the earth's crust than lead, tin, uranium, etc which we mine magnitudes more per year [1], and there are significantly more reserves in seawater [2], where extraction is mostly limited by how much energy we need to use to extract it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth... [2] https://www.science.org/content/article/seawater-could-provi...

[MattRix]

More lithium deposits will be found now that it is more desirable. The earth has plenty.

[lebean]

And if we run out, we can finally make Teslas useful by recycling them!

[deanishe]

I don't see how EVs are any more viable than ICEs if they continue to be as crassly oversized and overpowered.

A 20 KG e-bike can get a person around with 0.3 BHP, so 200 KG and 30 BHP is already pushing the boat out.

But people want another order of magnitude on top of that.

[averageRoyalty]

It's difficult to move a family and groceries around on an ebike, as it is to transit multiple people (many underaged), move the elderly, disabled, obese, or pretty much anyone who doesn't fit into the image you appear to have of people transiting.

[defrost]

Somebody's not travelled to Asia then ...

From India to the Philippines and out to Indonesia rides a population on petrol engine scooters and motorcycles that exceeds the US population ans is currently transitioning to EV bikes.

Many are elderly, disabled, ride with multiple passengers, few are obese to US standards.

[Throwawayh89]

Or new lithium sources