Joe's point was that Frankel is trying to put lithium in the same basket with artisanal mining of cobalt in the Congo. Frankel wrote
this piece earlier in the year and then
this just yesterday. There is a world of difference between the subjects at a moral and ethical level.
As for facts, they were relatively sparse and the individuals may well held the views reported. The two main thrusts of the article appeared to be money and water. The money story is probably best summed up in a couple of quotes. Firstly, this one sets the tone early
According to previously undisclosed contracts reviewed by The Washington Post, one lithium company, a joint Canadian-Chilean venture named Minera Exar, struck deals with six aboriginal communities for a new mine here. The operation is expected to generate about $250 million a year in sales while each community will receive an annual payment — ranging from $9,000 to about $60,000 — for extensive surface and water rights.
At this point, nrc could rightfully jump in and say "show me the money" and he would be right - the investors have yet to see a cent whereas the locals have been seeing benefits for some time.
We could equally well point out that there is a world of difference between sales and profits, and that a fair portion of that 250m is left behind as operating costs - it takes a lot of effort to turn that brine in to lithium carbonate. Payroll and locally contracted goods and services expenditures will circulate within these local villages and have a large impact.
And then there is all the non monetary support that is going in to the local community. I can't comment on the activities of the other players but ORE's activity is well documented in the annual report -
The Company has commenced a program to report against Social Responsibility guide ISO 26000 and will expand this to report against key indicators commonly required by institutions such as the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors. The review will also be guided by the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI). Orocobre aims to sustainably develop the Company’s assets in a responsible and committed manner, compatible with the local communities in which we operate. In order to achieve our goals of sustainability, the Company abides by a number of policy measures which promote mutual benefits for our Company and the local communities. Additionally, the local operating companies in Argentina run regular programs in the areas of education, health, employment, business development and environmental conservation which promote community engagement and participation.
The full gamut of activities is then reported over pages 9, 10 and 11 of
the report
If this article was a report on foreign investors building a car assembly plant in Jujuy, there would be no story. Investment, jobs, taxes - everyone is a hero. But no, it as an extractive industry, and so suddenly there is an angle - the foreigners are stealing their birthright... Simple facts with respect to Olaroz - it wouldn't have been developed if it was not competitive with WA hard rock (there is a limit to the largesse). It would probably never have been developed with local money. It has created jobs during construction and operation. It pays taxes. It pays royalties. It has brought in the provincial government (JEMSE) as an 8.5% shareholder. One might well ask what the local villages see from the royalties, taxes and JEMSE participation...
But none of this is enough to stop the last money part of the article finishing with this -
Now Luzco said he felt betrayed.
“It’s like they are making fools of us,” he said.
Ask the right questions and you will get the right sound bites
Then the article turns to water.
A ton of lithium generally requires as much as 500,000 gallons of water.
Sensational line, but it is not true....
Olaroz ph 1 pumps (steady state) around 180 l/s of brine - equivalent to 4.1m USGPD for nameplate of around 48 t/d lithium carbonate. So around 85,000 gallons of brine for "a ton of lithium". And that is brine - ten times saltier than the sea and not something that your average llama would drink, assuming they could get their head more than 100m down the well, nor would you sprinkle it on crops. Useless for everything except the use to which it is now being put. For fresh water, we know that consumption is less than 20 l/s - about 9,500 gallons per ton of lithium.
We're not off to a good start on water...
There is perhaps some truth to
On the Chile side, where lithium-brine mining has been going on since the 1980s, there are at least some signs that portions of the salt lakes have been declining in size.
According to a recent paper by David F. Boutt, a geoscience professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his colleagues, remote sensing shows that the surface area of the two saltwater lagoons at Salar de Atacama declined slowly between 2003 and 2015.
This is of course different to the Olaroz situation where the brine is in deep aquifers, as ORE often state -
Brine is extracted from wells with minimum impact on freshwater resources outside the salar. Because the lithium is in sedimentary aquifers with relatively low permeability, drawdowns are limited to the salar itself. This is different from halite hosted deposits such as Salar de Atacama, Salar de Hombre Muerto and Salar de Rincon where the halite bodies have very high near surface permeability and the drawdown cones can impact on water resources around the Salar affecting the local environment.
But nevertheless we get to this point in the article
Llama farmer Natividad Sarapura, 66, in hat, says that since the mining companies have shown up, her grazing land outside the village of Susques has gone from lush to barren
The only mining operation in the area is Olaroz and the extraction in the past 3 years has been minimal in terms of the resource size. Furthermore, Susques is all of 40km from the edge of the salar. This is clearly nonsense - climate change is far more relevant - but is reported all the same. It may be her perception (and perceptions do matter), but it is a long long way from establishing brine extraction as the cause of her problem...
There were some balancing views in the article but on the whole it felt like he was trying overly hard to push the angle that he had already followed with cobalt - an oppressive technology industry extracting great wealth at tremendous cost to those at the source of supply.
