LPI - The Next Lithium Producer in Chile, page-2397

I think you're incorrect on a bunch of things here:

"In the last 10 years only one permit for the extraction of Lithium has been granted. That was Coldeco. A state owned enterprise."
You mean a CEOL? This is because on Atacama, Corfo is in the same position as MSB and owns pretty much all the land and leases it to SQM/Albemarle for a cut. Another reason for this is the same reason there are only a handful of mining companies producing lithium in the world. It was just not profitable or worth the capital until recently. How many producers in Argentina are there? The same two as Chile? GLN is years away. AGY makes enough to power 5 cars (jokes). LKE... wel...

"LPI have told shareholders that they will go down the DLE route for stage 2, a process I'd imagine LPI don't want to take but are forced to by the Ministry."

What I heard from the shareholder update from Christobal was that DLE was not in scope for phase 1, but they are looking into it for phase 2. I think this is a bit different to how you have interpreted it. That's the whole point of courting Mitsui - to utilise their DLE tech in the future but not at the expense of getting the project started.

"The seal of approval CCHEN comes from Chile's nuclear agency. As lithium was classed as a war product"
They have approval from CCHEN for phase 1. For phase 2 they need a CEOL, hence the partnership with codelco (that was slow and is on the backburner). Old concessions = cchen, new = ceol.


The is a huge discrepancy between regulators saying the red tape will be cut and that investors being scared is far from reality - to what is actually happening/has happened.

The complexities are that there is not one single way/rule for all lithium projects. Unless you own an old concession and are not corfo, this is new territory. There are a handful of projects like Simbo and SB that are pushing ahead with this model. On the new concessions, codelco, or those that are owned by corfo, this is where the government want to partner with private companies and take a cut. LPI is looking to do both. Make big bucks from it's phase 1, wholly owned concession, and then partner with the government/codelco to develop further stages. Stage 1 provides a huge lever for MSB - otherwise it would be bent over by SQM.