Not at all. The timing is a bit annoying though, as a lot of dead wood was looking vulnerable to exit the exploration sector. There are just too many flocking into it, for no good reasons.
And as for the new oil - yep - if we innovated a use where everyone on the planet started burning several kilos of lithium a day and through some sort of alchemy it converted to another element, it would be something like oil.
The reality is that Li is common, the mining is just a minor downstream component of the chemical manufacture. There is no spot market for it. It is recyclable and global demand is about the same as for cobalt, which is sourced as a mere by-product from the mining of other base metals.
