The Secretary of State for Energy intends to attract “investors to an international public [lithium mining] tender, which will be launched soon,” covering areas in Portugal with lithium reserves.
It has long been looking for big investors, other big lithium companies will enter Portugal. The deals are being negotiated with the government. The company Novo Litio will probably be out of business and play no role in the future.
The Government of Portugal is currently working on an overarching solution.
Portugal seeks lithium investments in Canada
BY TPN/LUSA, IN BUSINESS · 08-03-2018 14:23:00 · 0 COMMENTS
Portugal sees lithium as a renewable energy as a raw material to help in the electrical storage of renewable energy and aims to attract foreign investors to “leverage battery production,” the Portuguese Energy Secretary said this week.
Jorge Seguro Sanches is in Toronto, where he took part on Monday in the International Mines Ministers Summit, which brings together more than 3,800 investors from 130 countries.
Lithium is an essential metal for the production of batteries, at a time when the world faces an unprecedented environmental and energy challenge.
“We are a country that has very considerable lithium reserves. (..)We are realising our potential, because lithium is increasingly in demand, precisely for batteries, for electric mobility, but also for other aspects, such as the glass industry,” said the Secretary of State for Industry.
Portugal is one of the world’s leading countries in the field of renewable energy in terms of power production, with lithium being “one of the raw materials that can boost the possibility of producing batteries,” said Seguro Sanches.
According to Seguro Sanches, the world is undergoing a period of energy transition, and transport will increasingly involve electric cars, batteries, and lithium batteries.
The Secretary of State for Energy intends to attract “investors to an international public [lithium mining] tender, which will be launched soon,” covering areas in Portugal with lithium reserves. “This is an opportunity for the development in Portugal of an industrial sector linked to exploration, initially, and afterwards to the extraction of the resource, that allows us to achieve industrial gains, in terms of what this sector may become in the future,” he said.
According to figures from the Directorate-General for Energy and Geology (DGEG) in 2016, 30 applications were submitted for rights and exploration with lithium as the main focus, with a proposed overall investment of around €3.8 million.
The lithium minerals currently extracted in Portugal are exclusively used by the ceramics industry, to make flux, but there are plans to use the mineral for other more valuable purposes.
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