Theres plenty of lithium in the world and plenty of people with lots of it.
If you want to make money from batteries, invest in nickel and graphite.
Remember lithium makes up less 2%. of a battery cell's mass.
Lithium is the bane of current battery chemistry, and batteries will use less and less of it as time goes on. Lithium is what makes batteries lucky to have 5K cycles, and require huge amounts of thermal management .
I have said repeatedly that there is nothing green about this CXO project. And that's just looking at their stated carbon emissions. The embedded and undocumented CO2 in this product makes this some of the most carbon intensive lithium concentrate in the world.
So I was not at all surprised to note recently that Greg English is also a director for Leigh Creek Energy Ltd.
Leigh Creek Energy is seeking to implement underground coal gasification, a 'mining' technique that is banned in many parts of the world.
After the financial and environmental disaster at Australia's last attempt at this immoral business (Linc Energy Ltd in Queensland) I would have thought you would have to be completely stupid to invest time or money in UCG mining.
Greg on the other hand thinks UCG is a good thing apparently. Maybe he doesn't have any grandchildren. Maybe he doesn't care about the future of everyone.
Leigh Creek Energy's current Executive Chairman Justyn Peters is a former executive general manager of Linc. So yeah Greg has his fingers in a pretty grubby enterprise right there.
And yet we are to think that this lithium project of his will somehow have great environmental management.
When he is actively involved in one of the most dangerous activities in a future world of catastrophic climate change?
Also directly involved with one bloke who was obviously highly responsible in a project that is the largest environmental disaster in Queensland's long history with coal? The Queensland government doesn't prosecute mining executives unless its very very serious.
If I was investing in any penny dreadful company in Australia I would be looking very carefully at the activities and history of all the directors of those companies.
Doesn't that strike you as a little strange? Contradiction at its best? Mining lithium while running highly questionable future UCG operations. Yeah right, that fills me with confidence. Its a special type of green, called CXO Green.
When CXO was worth 15c they were going to be Australia's next great uranium venture. A new Olympic Dam. But CXO Green version.
What happened with that? Whoever was selling CXO stock in October 2016 probably did well.
So please... don't try and throw the 'green', 'lithium' ,'solar' line at me.
As for the prawns, they will be your and my neighbours around the Bynoe Harbour area. They too will be relying on Bynoe not being polluted by mining accidents/and or negligence/and or maladministration/regulation.
I have no real problem with the prawns project, but I don't think the directors have really thought things through. I have noticed that failed aquaculture ventures (and there are a few around) don't leave the same long term environmental impact as failed low cost mining operations.
And as for solar, the directors of CXO state in the EIS (paraphrased) 'the short term nature of the project makes solar unrealistic'. Thats untrue, and in fact its idiotic in the current mining/energy/climate change environment.
Australian company 5B sells rapid deployment, removable, solar farms for ~ $1 a watt installed. These things are designed for Australian mining operations, are totally amazing, and I recommend checking their website.
https://5b.com.au
They get delivered by road train and then installed with a tele handler. 3 dudes can install/uninstall 280KW in a week or something like that. I m pretty sure CXO can run a tele handler and a few dudes backed up by a few sparkies.
So why are they not looking into this cutting edge mining technology? Energy use is the number one cost for mining.
This is the company that Mike Cannon-Brookes is using to install that $20 billion solar system at Tennant Creek. Unlike the directors of CXO Mike has a brain and cares about the future. Be like Mike.
CXO often bang on about how close they are to the grid and gas, two things they have no intention at all of using.
But if CXO connected to the grid, deployed significant amounts of solar/batteries, ran as much of their operation as possible on renewables, and even tried to be just a little bit green, instead of being CXO Green, then the rhetoric about the greenness of this lithium operation might sound almost worthy.
And by connecting to the gas powered grid, deploying substantial renewables, and then utilising state of the art electric mining equipment, they would be a world class operation. Truly world class.
If CXO re-invented themselves as a technology focused energy company, that also happens to mine lithium, they might do well I think. All they really seem to be is an ASX small cap of accountants, lawyers and mining engineers looking for quick returns from low cost (read possibly substandard) operations where their liability is extremely limited.
Elon Musk recently announced that Tesla would get into mining. Elon also owns a small company called The Boring Company. The Boring Company digs holes much like CXO would like to. Unlike CXO, Elon doesn't worry about moving the top billion bcm of rock, he just uses his tech to go down directly where needed. And he makes cars that can easily tow the ore/dirt/whatever from his excellent holes.
The Boring Company will get into mining. You guys rabbit on about drilling, but the Boring Company will drill straight down to your 350 metre long pegmatite and just cane it back to the surface. BC rigs are electrically powered and totally automated.
Everything Elon has got into, he has completely disrupted. Mining will be no different. He also plays the long game. They can wait for small caps like CXO to go broke during the coming economic apocalypse and pick up the resource for pennies in the dollar and send the robots in to process it.
By the way given the way long term bonds are looking, wars coming with Australia borrowing huge amounts to get involved, maybe investing in gold and gold stocks might be more worthwhile than lithium.
Gold is up 17% and CXO is down 26%. Gold went up 16.27% since the CXP SPP was finalised. CXO went down. You do the math on your 4c investments. $10K invested in gold on that day would be worth nearly $12K now.
Gold will be US$20K/oz before long. Probably just after Trump starts his first war. After his second war starts who knows what it will be.
At the end of the day, you can always eat prawns, always rely on solar for reducing climate change and just being there when the fossil fuel industry collapses, and... you can always sell your gold. You can't eat lithium, you can't sell it if you have some in your safe, and when the coming financial crisis to end all financial crises comes along, I hope your lithium investments do well.
CXO are selling a green dream, based on a myth or two. The myths are clear for all to see if you scratch under the surface a bit with your bullshit detector.
I am not the only person to cast doubt on this project within these pages. I just take time to write about it as best I can.
GLTAH
Australian Crawl wrote an excellent song called 'Beautiful People'. It's about shallow Australians, the lust for wealth, rubber politicians and garden furniture. It's on Youtube somewhere and worth a look.
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