The ministry of mining knows that lithium is a metal just like sodium, but you never find lithium or sodium in metal forms. You only ever find them as non-metallic salt form. which is what our original pre 1979 mining concessions are for the non-metallic resources.. Its an absurd argument imo. Also the all of lithium produced by corfo is on pre `979 concessions that also are for non-metallic resources, but the mininstry of mining says that metallic vs non-metallic controversy only exists in Maricunga. Supposedly and according to the ministry since corfo is already mining lithium using these pre-1979 concessions to do it in a different salar the controversy does not affect them... it hard for me to see the logic from the ministry about the metallic and non-metallic controversy. Seems like a shot in the dark.
Also there is another current court case that is in the supreme court right now that deals with this topic from a different angle. Also MSB is an active party of this case as a third party in opposition the the appeal. The case is Simco vs the Chile Treasury. Simco sued the government over competition rights of lithium and other resources found in its maricunga pre1979 concession that fell within the zone that makes up the Ceol that was given to codelco. The problem is that the Ceol given to codelco extends beyond codelco's properties and into part of Simco and part of MSB's properties.
It started in the lower courts where the courts ruled in favor of Simco, and part of the ruling was compensation and a mining easement that included sodium potassium and lithium for the part of its property that falls within the Ceol owned by codelco.
This rulling was appealed by the government to the court of appeals where the judge upheld the previous ruling made by the lower courts.
Last year this ruling was appealed by the government to the supreme court where the judge's have had the first hearing and are now studying the case for ~ 30 days which falls on febuary ~6th.
if anyone is interested in reading the court documents for this case you can
find the link here. (I need to use a chile VPN to use the site) then the case number for the supreme court case is 13228 and the year 2022.
I do not know if the government is using the metallic vs non-metallic controversy as part of their argument in this appeal case, but I suspect they might be. Ill have to dig some more in the documents to see if i can find out weather or not the government is making similar arguments in this supreme court case. But the thing about this supreme court case is if the previous ruling in favor of simco are upheld it does add value to MSB aswell, but even if the previous ruling for Simco is taken away then it doesnt really affect MSB because the planned project is not on the part of the property that falls under the ceol owned by codelco.
