December futures trading on the CME briefly hit $2801.70 an ounce, topping the all-time high set last week, in overnight trade.

The rally comes despite rising bond yields and a stronger US dollar, which usually would have weighed on the precious metal. This brings bullion’s year-to-date gain to approximately 34%, making it one of the best-performing assets of 2024.

“Market positioning is elevated ahead of the election but also in anticipation of further Fed rate cuts and broader market and geopolitical uncertainty,” Standard Chartered Plc analyst Suki Cooper said in a note quoted by Bloomberg.

“Under a Trump-win scenario, markets are focused on the implications of wider tariffs, as well as inflationary pressures as a result of such tariffs.”

“Gold trades up on the week, despite deflating risk premiums elsewhere, confirming the focus remains the US election and especially the prospect of a Trump 2.0,” Saxo Bank said in a note to Bloomberg.

“It may bring greater policy disruption, trade tariffs and increased geopolitical risks.”

Global gold demand swelled about 5% in the third quarter, setting a record for the period and lifting consumption above $100 billion for the first time, according to the World Gold Council. The increase — which saw volumes climb to 1,313 tons — was underpinned by stronger investment flows from the West, including more high-net-worth individuals. 

Gold’s rally also follows new economic data released Tuesday that showed US job openings fell far more than expected while consumer confidence rose above all estimates. Investors now await more data later this week to further gauge the Federal Reserve’s stance on interest rates.

Markets are currently pricing in an almost 100% chance for a 25-basis-point rate cut by the US central bank in November.

“Gold should retain its upward bias and may even flirt with $2,800 in the days ahead, as long as US election risks continue weighing on market sentiment, while Fed rate cut expectations remain intact,” said Han Tan, chief market analyst at Exinity Group, on Tuesday.

(With files from Bloomberg and Reuters)

The increase — which saw volumes climb to 1,313 tons — was underpinned by stronger investment flows from the West, including more high-net-worth individuals, that helped offset waning appetite from Asia, the industry-funded group said in a report on Wednesday. Buying in bullion-backed exchange-traded funds flipped to gains in the quarter after prolonged outflows.

Gold has stormed higher this year, rallying by more than a third and setting successive records. The jump has been driven by robust central-bank buying and increased demand from wealthy investors, with recent gains aided by the Federal Reserve’s shift to cutting interest rates. Purchases in the opaque over-the-counter market were becoming an increasingly important force for prices, according to John Reade, the council’s chief market strategist.

“Demand has switched through the course of this year from predominantly emerging-market OTC buying — high-net-worth individuals — toward very much more Western OTC buying,” Reade said. OTC transactions are done through dealers or between buyers and sellers directly, without an exchange.

Gold — which set an intraday record just above $2,800 an ounce in Wednesday’s trading — has registered gains every month this year, apart from a minor pullback in January, and in June, when prices were flat. “The fact that corrections have been very shallow and short is a keen indication of FOMO buying,” Reade said in an interview, referring to investors’ so-called fear of missing out.

As the rate-cutting cycle gets underway, the WGC expects to see increased allocation to bullion, with geopolitical uncertainty — particularly surrounding next week’s tight US presidential election — adding to reasons why investors are seeking to hold the haven asset.

Investment flows were key to the metal’s 13% gain in the third quarter, with total demand for ETFs, bars and coins reaching the strongest levels since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Central-bank purchases continued — with Poland, Hungary and India among the top buyers — even as the pace of official activity slowed. Jewelry demand fell as record prices hurt consumption.

Looking ahead, fiscal concerns — especially about swelling levels of government debt in the US — may become more pronounced as a driver, according to Reade.

There are concerns, including from the International Monetary Fund, “saying the deficit’s too big and really needs to be sorted out,” Reade said. “That’s the primary attraction from the OTC community to increase their gold holdings.”

“As we look forward, demand growth will be driven by this energy transition,” he said, adding that as demand outstrips supply for copper, demand for aluminum will grow because it is a ready substitute in some applications, he told a conference in Sydney.

Megatrends are driving aluminum demand of 3%, 4%, and 5% every year, he said.

“Couple that with some supply changes in the industry, for instance the Chinese sticking to a mandatory cap they have put in place … that shapes up to a much stronger aluminum market globally,” he said.

(By Melanie Burton; Editing by Sandra Maler and Chris Reese)

Total transaction value as of Sept. 30 was $4.76 billion, down more than 50% compared to the $10.52 billion registered in the full year 2023, according to S&P’s latest report.

Steel producer H2GS AB’s (H2 Green Steel) $4.14 billion funding round in January led all private equity and venture capital deals in the metals and mining sector during that period.

The number of announced deals in the first three quarters totalled 59, on the year on track for the fewest deals in five years.

In the third quarter alone, total deal value plunged 80% year over year to $240 million from $1.22 billion, and the deal count dwindled to 15 from 37.

Antti Gronlund, managing director of UK-based private equity Appian Capital Advisory, said higher acquisition debt financing rates and reduced venture capital deployments have contributed to lower totals.

Transactions in 2023 may have benefited from large deals and non-sector-focused investors attracted by upbeat headlines focused on electric vehicles, which require significant amounts of critical minerals. Those headlines are now more subdued, affecting deal appetite, Gronlund explained.

Private equity investing is challenging because the sector is “working capital intensive,” added Kyle Mumford, partner at KPS Capital Partners LP.

“There are no small capital requests in a metals business. There’s only really big ones,” Mumford continued. “Unlike other businesses, in metals and mining, change in profitability and manufacturing to meet the demand that may be out there takes a long time and is really hard. It can mean a new equipment or a new mill or a new recycling capacity.

“Those are expensive and don’t often meet typical private equity return profiles.”

Still, opportunity exists for further investment in the coming years. Appian’s Gronlund noted that the mining industry is expected to require about $2.1 trillion by 2050 to support global net-zero goals, citing BloombergNEF estimates.

“A significant portion of that will need to come from private capital sources,” he added.

This Series B financing round was also supported by Andium’s existing investors Climate Investment, Intrepid Financial Partners and former Citadel chief information officer, Thomas Miglis.

Combined with the company’s $15 million Series A funding in 2021, this investment brings the total funding to over $40 million.

The new capital will help Andium accelerate its global expansion, including scaling operations across oil and gas basins in the US and the Middle East. It will also reduce technology and equipment costs, support ongoing research and development, and enhance the range of services Andium offers in industrial automation and emissions monitoring.

Andium’s solution combines AI-powered software with on-site sensors and cameras to provide a comprehensive, real-time solution for remote field monitoring. This enables accurate tracking of environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics, detecting issues like methane leaks, fires and equipment malfunctions.

By providing instant insights, Andium helps companies ensure continuous asset performance and regulatory compliance. The technology has already proven effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by up to 65% per location while lowering field operational costs by up to 45% for major energy companies like BP and ConocoPhillips, the company says.

Andium’s real-time monitoring automation is also able to reduce windshield time by over 80%, addressing labor challenges, empowering workers, and improving efficiency across remote locations, it adds.

“This investment is a powerful endorsement of our platform, which will be pivotal as we enter our next stage of growth,” said Jory Schwach, founder and CEO at Andium.

“Our end-to-end operating system, which monitors and provides real-time, verifiable emissions data from remote locations, has already been proven to lower operational costs, cut emissions, and improve safety — helping energy, mining and waste companies meet their net-zero and zero-harm goals.”

Aramco Ventures’ $1.5 billion sustainability fund supports innovative technologies that reduce Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions. This investment aligns with Aramco’s goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, the group said.

Bruce Niven, executive MD at Aramco Ventures, commented: “We are delighted to be partnering with Andium. This technology platform has the potential to reduce fugitive emissions as well as provide operational benefits in a variety of applications. It is an elegant and cost-effective solution.”

The financing from the federal agency could be for a 15-year term, the Vancouver-based company said on Monday. No interest rate was given. It follows a $22.8 million streaming loan in two tranches this year from Phoenix-based Monetary Metals & Co. and a $67 million funding deal with Sprott Private Resource Streaming and Royalty in May 2023.

The project is fully funded to start concentrate production by March or April using stockpiles, then ramp up mill throughput to 1,800 tonnes a day in about six months, Bunker Hill executive chairman Richard Williams told The Northern Miner by phone on Tuesday.

The new potential loan could help the mine expand to 2,500 tonnes a day. Depending on engineering studies due next year, the work may include a new 10,000-foot ramp, moving the crusher and installing underground conveyors, Williams said.

“We put a really great team on the ground in Idaho and the American government has paid attention,” he said. “Five years ago this site was rotting in a Superfund (cleanup program), didn’t have a processing facility and had no hope.”

Consolidation?

The expansion may encourage local M&A because it will dwarf nearby output by Hecla Mining (NYSE: HL) and Americas Gold and Silver (TSX: USA; NYSE USAS), Williams said.

“Why aren’t we doing all this together?” he said. “It’s not an accident we’re taking all these steps.”

Bunker Hill received a letter of intent from the bank which is to conduct due diligence on the project. The developer says it will submit a formal loan application to the bank by year’s end.

The first stage of the restart, due to begin by June, carries a $54.8 million capital cost, according to a 2022 prefeasibility study. However, the company said this year it’s choosing a more expensive pressure filtration system for tailings, over the disk filter system in the study, for better environmental management and easier expansion.

Bunker Hill plans an updated resource in next year’s first quarter followed by more drilling as the company preps the initial 1,800-tonne-per-day operation. Expansion plan details are to be published next year and the project might eventually tap the $150 million loan in late 2025 or 2026, Williams said.

Deeper veins

The expansion would increase mining and processing of the Quill-Newgard ore zones, the company said. It would later access the deeper, higher-grade silver-bearing galena veins that were extracted from the mine’s lower levels when Gulf Resources closed it in 1981, Bunker said.

Higher costs for environmental compliance and declining metal prices forced the shutdown, it said. Little production occurred under a new owner from 1988 to 1991, which also faced low metal prices.

“This the first positive statement of investment by the US government into Silver Valley mining since the mine shut,” Williams said. “That’s huge for Hecla, that’s huge for Americas Gold and Silver. That’s huge for us.”

It’s also good for New York-based Electrum Group, a finance company that owns a majority of the nearby Sunshine mine that’s been on care and maintenance for several years, Williams noted. From 1904 to 2001 the mine produced 364 million oz. silver as one the country’s largest silver operations.

Shares in Bunker Hill traded at C$0.16 apiece on Tuesday, valuing the company at C$52.4 million. They’ve traded in a 52-week range of C$0.09 to C$0.19.

Coeur d’Alene

Bunker Hill mine, in Idaho’s historical Coeur d’Alene mining district, started in 1887 and produced 35 million tons of mineralization grading 8.76% lead, 3.67% zinc and 5.49 oz. per ton (188.2 grams per tonne) silver. The mine remained in care and maintenance until 2020 when Placer Mining took over the project, and sold it to Bunker Hill in 2022.

The new project has a five-year life, an after-tax net present value of $52 million at an 8% discount rate and an internal rate of return of 36%, according to the 2022 prefeasibility study.

The site holds 3.2 million probable tonnes grading 1.12 grams silver per tonne, 2.59% lead and 5.81% zinc for 3.6 million oz. silver, 166 million lb. lead and 372.1 million lb. zinc, according to a 2022 resource.

”We are thrilled to announce this first step in a potential partnership with the Export Import Bank to rapidly expand Bunker Hill’s contribution to US domestic production of critical zinc and silver,” Bunker president and CEO Sam Ash said in a release.

“In the face of competition from China, Bunker Hill is proud to play its part in strengthening the US metals supply chain and creating new US mining jobs within the disadvantaged Shoshone County of northern Idaho.”

(With files by Henry Lazenby)

The study, published just a day after the United Nations warned the world is falling “miles short” of what’s needed to curb devastating global warming, indicates that an investment of $78 trillion will be needed to change this course and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations committed to limiting global warming to “well below” two degrees Celsius above the average temperatures recorded between 1850 and 1900, aiming for a target of 1.5 degrees Celsius if feasible. Efforts to date have not succeeded in meeting this challenge, the annual “Energy Transition Outlook” from Wood Mackenzie shows.

Unlike the UN pessimistic outlook, the Scottish consultancy believes that while major obstacles hinder short-term targets, particularly for 2030, a 2050 net-zero goal remains feasible. Immediate and coordinated global action would be necessary, WoodMac warns.

Threats to climate progress

A series of global crises, including the Russia-Ukraine conflict, escalating Middle East violence, rising populism in Europe and global trade tensions with China, are undermining the pace of the energy transition, Wood Mackenzie’s vice president head of scenarios and technologies, Prakash Sharma, said. 

He explains that without urgent policy changes and enhanced investment, a warming trajectory of 2.5˚C to 3˚C could become inevitable.

“We are under no illusion as to how challenging the net zero transition will be, given the fact that fossil fuels are widely available, cost-competitive and deeply embedded in today’s complex energy system,” Sharma added. “A price on carbon maybe the most effective way to drive emissions reduction but it’s hard to see it coming together in a polarized environment.”

Key investment are needed across several critical areas, according to WoodMac. As renewable energy sources grow, substantial upgrades to power supply and grid infrastructure are essential to meet the growing demand. Additionally, the need for critical minerals, such as lithium, nickel and cobalt, is projected to increase five- to ten-fold by 2050, as demand for batteries and other technologies essential for the energy transition continues to grow. 

WoodMac sees the need to back the development of emerging technologies, including carbon capture, low-carbon hydrogen, and nuclear power, are vital for facilitating the shift towards cleaner energy sources.

Securing this funding won’t be easy, the consultants noted. “Doubling annual investments to $3.5 trillion by 2050 will be necessary in our net zero scenario,” Sharma said, adding that it will require unprecedented policy coordination globally.

The role of electrification

The electrification of energy systems will play a pivotal role in decarbonization. Transitioning from fossil fuels to electric power, Wood Mackenzie forecasts that electricity’s share of global energy demand will increase from 23% to 35% by 2050 in a base case, and could reach as high as 55% in a net-zero scenario.

Wood Mackenzie’s analysis reveals that global energy demand is set to rise by 14% by 2050. Emerging economies are projected to see even steeper growth at 45%, driven by rising populations and economic advancement. 

In parallel, data centres, electric vehicles, and AI are emerging as new drivers of electricity consumption, with AI-related energy use alone expected to increase from 500 TWh in 2023 to up to 4,500 TWh by 2050.

Including renewable energy source to meet electrifications demand could help reduce emissions, the report says.

According to Wood Mackenzie, solar and wind currently account for 17% of the global power supply, and renewables capacity is expected to double by 2030 in its base case. Yet, this increase still falls short of the COP28 commitment made in 2023 to triple renewables by 2030.

Transition or coexistence?

While nuclear energy holds promise for providing consistent, zero-carbon electricity, its high cost and frequent project delays pose significant challenges. WoodMac says that nuclear power could play a more significant role as it has attracted interest, particularly from tech companies looking to power data centres sustainably.

While fossil fuels is expected to plateau in the 2040s before beginning a gradual decline, Wood Mackenzie predicts that the high capital costs of low-carbon technologies coupled with strong demand for energy, will require the continued use of oil and gas in the near term.

Wood Mackenzie says to meet climate targets there will be necessary that nations gathered at the COP29 meeting in Azerbaijan next month finalize Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. This section focuses on carbon markets and aims to establish a new climate finance goal to replace the previous annual target of $100 billion, which experts consider insufficient.

The consultancy’s report echoes concerns included in a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) study released last week. The document says the next decade is crucial in the battle against climate change, adding that failing to act now will jeopardize any chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. According to the UN body, the current rate of climate action could lead to a catastrophic increase of 3.1 degrees Celsius this century. 

“Either leaders bridge the emissions gap, or we plunge headlong into climate disaster, with the poorest and most vulnerable suffering the most,” Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned.

Even if all existing commitments to reduce emissions are fulfilled, global temperatures would still rise by 2.6 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, experts agree.

The rather hopefully named Beijing “bazooka” was expected to be followed up by another stimulus blitz the following week, this time focused more on fiscal policy and infrastructure investment, but the latter turned out to be a damp squib, with prices down 9% since then. 

Next week could be another make or break moment for the copper price in a highly anticipated meeting of the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress, the country’s highest lawmaking body, scheduled for 4–8 November. 

Copper markets will be hoping for more detail of the scale and nature of Beijing’s stimulus measures, but in a note the copper service of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence points out that the announcement did not mention debt or fiscal policy on the agenda, so it remains to be seen how forthcoming policymakers are with details: 

“If the meeting fails to shine further light on the scale of fiscal stimulus, we expect copper prices to come under renewed pressure. We note that copper prices have trended significantly above their implied relationship with the USD index since the announcement of China’s stimulus ‘blitz’ in late September. 

“If Chinese authorities follow through on the market’s expectations, we could see a permanent step-change in this relationship (just like we did post-COVID). Conversely, if the market loses faith in China’s stimulus efforts and deems them inadequate or superficial, our regression analysis suggests that copper stands to drop by close to $1,000 per tonne.”

Rare earths have strong magnetic qualities which make them key to applications from smart phones to laser guided missiles. Australia is classified as a domestic supplier to the United States for defence purposes.

“The magnet supply chain is actually in a really good position, regardless of which (US) government comes in,” CEO Rowena Smith told Reuters.

Smith said that Australian firms can potentially access US Department of Defence funding under the newly set up Office of Strategic Capital.

“When I met with them, they were… very confident that they had bipartisan support,” she told Reuters on the sidelines of the International Mining and Resources Conference (IMARC) conference in Melbourne.

“They’re expecting to come out of this calendar year with momentum. They asked me to come back February and talk to them again. So yeah, we’re feeling very optimistic of regardless of what the outcome is,” she said.

Context

ASM has been building funds to finance the development of its Dubbo rare earths project in Australia’s New South Wales state. It estimated in late 2021 that the project would cost A$1.678 billion ($1.10 billion).

ASM has already received a letter of interest for a debt funding package of up to $400 million from Canada’s official export credit agency and a promises for $600 million from the US Export-Import bank.

The Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital has recently been set up to distribute funds that are meant to seed investment in the defense industrial base’s supply chain.

What’s next

ASM is targeting a final investment decision for the first half of 2026 although a study is underway to potentially fast track production.

($1 = 1.5223 Australian dollars)

(By Melanie Burton; Editing by Michael Perry)

The loan, provisionally approved in March, is a key part of US President Joe Biden’s efforts to reduce dependence on lithium supplies from China, the world’s largest processor of the electric vehicle battery metal. Biden officials permitted a similar lithium project under development by ioneer last week.

The Thacker Pass project is slated to open later this decade and be a key supplier to General Motors, which earlier this month boosted its investment in the mine to nearly $1 billion.

“The Biden-Harris Administration recognizes mineral security is essential to winning the global clean energy race,” said Ali Zaidi, the White House national climate advisor.

Former President Donald Trump had permitted the mine just before leaving office. Initial construction at the site, just south of Nevada’s border with Oregon, started last year after the company won a long-running and complex court case brought by conservationists, ranchers and Indigenous communities.

With the loan now closed, Vancouver-based Lithium Americas plans to start major construction, a process that could take three years or longer. The mine’s first phase is expected to produce 40,000 metric tons of battery-quality lithium carbonate per year, enough for up to 800,000 EVs.

The project is expected to employ about 1,800 people during construction, and provide 360 full-time jobs once the mine is operational. The loan will have a 24-year term, with interest rates based on the US Treasury rate as each tranche is drawn.

“This essential loan helps us reduce dependence on foreign suppliers and secure America’s energy future,” said Lithium Americas CEO Jon Evans.

The mine’s cost had been increased from a previous estimate of $2.27 billion to nearly $2.93 billion due to higher engineering costs, an agreement to use union labor, and the company’s decision to build a housing facility for workers and their families in the remote region.

(By Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Richard Chang)

Using data from 2022, the study estimates that the US generated 13,767 kg of gold that year worth around £882.8 million from its e-waste. The gold was recycled from a world-leading 4.1 billion kg of wastes, owing to the nation’s consumerist culture.

In second place is China, which recycled fewer than half of the gold than its main rival at 6,630 kg worth £425.1 million. In 2022, the world’s top consumer recycled 1.9 billion kg of documented e-waste, contributed by its role as a global e-waste hub since the 1970s.

Germany ranks third in estimated gold value from recycled e-waste, with 3,249 kg of gold worth approximately £208.4 million. The country processed 956.6 million kg of waste in 2022, a result of strict EU policies that require responsible collection and recycling.

Rounding out the top five are two other G7 nations — France and Japan — with 2,924 kg (£187.5 million) and 2,084 kg (£133.6 million) respectively.

The country that recycled the least amount of gold in 2022 was Azerbaijan, with just 10,000 kg. This could be for a range of reasons, such as a limited e-waste management infrastructure or the lack of regulations, the study says.

On a per-capita basis, Norway led the way with 19.42 kg of documented and recycled waste from electronic goods in 2022, which could generate an estimated 0.066 gram of gold worth £4.23.

For the full list of the world’s top gold recyclers from e-waste, click here.

The total stock market valuation of the world’s biggest mining companies is up a fairly modest 8% year to end-September and despite the good run is still $240 billion below the peak hit in the second quarter of 2022. And judging by the performance of the top tier in the final quarter (BHP down 8% QTD, Rio Tinto –5%, Vale –3%, Glencore –5%, Newmont –9%, Zijin –5%, Freeport –7%) the gap won’t be closing anytime soon.

In contrast, Nvidia — the maker of chips highly prized for artificial intelligence (AI) computing — is up nearly 200% so far this year (and 2,600% over five). When comparing the graphics card maker’s stock valuation to the mining industry’s collective worth, it’s difficult not to wonder if something is not awry with how global investors appraise the industrial economy.  

Should Nvidia (or Microsoft or Apple for that matter) be worth more than twice the top 50 miners? Outside the top 50 the average market cap quickly shrinks to the low teens so Nvidia is in fact worth more than the entire listed mining industry. 

Even when extending the top 50 into metals and energy –  steel, aluminium and electricity companies often operate their own mines – Nvidia can still throw shade. BHP does not even crack the top 100 most valuable companies in the world and is worth less than Booking.com, and Temu and Zara’s owners, none of which can exactly be called the building blocks of the global economy. 

Nvidia briefly surpassed Apple on Friday to become the world’s most valuable company. Its market capitalization is approximately $3.5 trillion, just below Apple’s, which remains the highest-valued firm globally.

The company’s Koch Technology Solutions unit agreed to license its so-called direct lithium extraction process to a joint venture of Standard Lithium Ltd. and Equinor ASA for use in a planned commercial plant in southwest Arkansas, the firms said Monday in a statement.

The technology strips out lithium directly from brine in a process that promises to be cheaper, faster and cleaner than the traditional lithium extraction methods used in South America, a region with about half of the world’s reserves. Dozens of firms have been working on improved extraction methods collectively known as DLE, though they’ve yet to be proven at a commercial scale.

The Koch agreement includes a performance guarantee — promising a lithium recovery rate that is about double the rate from the common practice of relying on recovering the metal from evaporation ponds. This is the first time a technology provider has stated in a binding agreement that its process is going to work, backing it with a specific number for how much lithium can be recouped from salty water.

(By Yvonne Yue Li)

The move, Blue Evolution said, creates a combined entity that will leverage enhanced R&D capabilities to drive innovation and commercialize new seaweed-based products across multiple sectors – agriculture, biomaterials – and critical minerals.

In December of last year, the US Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) first announced its selection of scientific teams to explore the feasibility of extracting critical minerals from ocean macroalgae.

In July this year, Blue Evolution announced a groundbreaking advancement in sustainable biomining after it partnered with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Virginia Tech to develop a revolutionary method for sustainably extracting critical minerals and rare earth elements from seaweed.

The company operates seaweed farms in California and Alaska, and this month finalized a joint venture with the Māori Iwi Tribe to scale regenerative seaweed farming in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

From biofuels to rare earths

Blue Evolution CEO Beau Perry has been working with ARPA-E since 2017, first on large-scale systems for cultivation of seaweed for biofuels in Kodiak, Alaska, testing new hardware to grow seaweed in abundance, sustainably and economically.

Alaska is unparalleled in the US in terms of seaweed farming because of its size, environmental conditions and infrastructure. Perry noted both the state and the public are much more receptive to seaweed farming than to mining projects.

“It’s a relatively new industry. In post-war Japan, the coastal seaweed the Japanese had harvested for a long time was kind of destroyed…A British woman had closed the life cycle on nori in the early 50s. Seaweed farming was fairly new as a major agricultural sector, but now we grow, globally, 30 million tons of it,” Perry told MINING.com in an interview.

More than half of it is grown in China, but also Japan, Korea, Philippines and Indonesia.

The United States only entered the market ten years ago, and Perry said the US has grown a couple thousand tons so far.

Of over 10,000 species of seaweed worldwide, 300 species have been commercialized. Blue Evolution is working with six different species – four that they are growing in Alaska. Perry said seaweed has the potential to enter multiple markets because of its sustainability.

“It soaks up a lot more carbon than any terrestrial biomass per area, and it really only needs sunlight and seawater,” he said.

“We were looking [at] how to render biofuels from seaweed. PNNL was doing very in-depth content analyses of different samples of different species from different locations in our farmer network. We worked with different farmers that we’ve helped set up in Alaska, including the first ever commercial farm in Kodiak.”

The team started to find some unusual levels of minerals designated as in the strategic interest of US economic development and national security, but Perry said what got the Department of Energy’s attention was the rare earths.

The discovery is a positive development for a nascent North American rare earths market and taps into the broader issue of the glaring lack of domestic production. China has a near monopoly on mining and refining the group of 17 metals that are crucial to the development of smart electronic devices and wind turbines, and which are notoriously difficult to extract and expensive to process.

“This was sort of a beautiful accident, and it’s all a function of what’s in the water where the seaweed is growing,” Perry said.

“They’re a prolific sponge – they soak up nitrogen, phosphorus, carbon and a lot of minerals, and so in this first pass at the content analysis, we got a certain set of signals around REEs and precious metals, like rhodium, palladium and scandium.”

Each species of seaweed is metabolically prone to take up a certain set of minerals, and Perry noted some are really fascinating.

“We’ve seen sort of peaks and flat lines from different locations around the globe, and now we’re starting to fill in the puzzle of which seaweed could grow where to get what minerals,” he said.

“It’s clear that each one is taking up some combination of precious minerals, REEs and these other strategic minerals.”

The team has preliminary data and is working to understand which species, where, how they are grown, and determining scalable extraction methods.

“There’s kind of this matrix of ‘what am I growing the seaweed for?’ I think critical minerals past a certain scale will always be part of that based on what we’re seeing,” Perry said. “ In certain locations, that might be the primary one if we find a species that really soaks this stuff up. We’re talking parts per million, and even parts per billion as a baseline. It’s perfectly standard in mining.”

Doubling seaweed value

Perry said the company is forging ahead with a “very critical mineral centric expedition” to find if there are places to focus on critical minerals and develop farms that are primarily oriented towards producing them.

“It’s possible that the critical minerals are disruptive to seaweed farming economics generally. They could double the value of the biomass,” he said.

“If I were to grow at a level where … at a significant scale relative to that market, the amount of critical minerals that will be running through our supply chain will be significant. In some cases, maybe fundamentally changing the supply picture for specific critical minerals.”

“There are some tricks that we’re going to explore to really enhance the amount of rare earths per ton of biomass. It’s taking these things up all the time.

There are ways to coax maybe orders of magnitude more than we’re finding by accident, not really trying. We can do things at the genetic level, selecting for strains that are going to bioaccumulate more of a given target critical mineral.”

The goal, Perry said, is to really understand what’s possible from an extraction standpoint.

“There’s a certain amount of critical minerals that are economically recoverable from a site, but around it are a million years of sediment that the seaweed will be sort of steeped in, like a sponge. And that yield should actually increase over time, given that the baseline of those minerals should stay the same pretty much over a long period of time. And we’re going to get better at getting the seaweed to accumulate them and getting them out.”

When you think about a seaweed farm as a mine, it’s unlikely to run out anytime soon,” Perry said. “It will be replenished constantly by the ocean. So that, I think, from a mining perspective is pretty radical – I don’t need to spend $100 million to maybe break ground on a mine in 20 years.”

Bullion climbed to its highest mark ever, around $2,758.49, on Wednesday as investors focused on key macro risks — from continued turmoil in the Middle East to the US election — in the weeks ahead. So far this year, gold is up 32%, outpacing the S&P 500 Index’s 23% gains.

“When we try to relate the moves in gold this year to traditional, financial and economic variables — interest rates, the dollar — the relationships have broken down,” said El-Erian, the president of Queens’ College, Cambridge, on Bloomberg Television Friday.

The “secular” move can be attributed to two fundamental drivers, he added.

“One is the slow diversification away from the dollar in the reserves of central banks around the world,” he said. “The other is a slow diversification away from the dollar payment system.”

While the move has been slow, “the bad news is the momentum is building up,” said El-Erian, who is also a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.

Recent events have accelerated the trend toward gold, according to El-Erian.

Chief among them is Russia’s ability to maintain trading relationships and grow even after the exclusion of its major banks from Swift, a global financial messaging service. While recent Swift data shows that the share of dollars in international payments has held relatively stable in recent years, just below 50% and far exceeding other currencies, transactions involving the yuan have risen in recent months.

The other event is the Middle East, El-Erian said, adding that a majority of countries have viewed US as an “inconsistent backer” of human rights and international law.

(By Carter Johnson)

Ioneer can now access a $700 million loan from the US Department of Energy (DOE) and a $490 million equity investment from Sibanye Stillwater (JSE: SSW; NYSE: SBSW) for Rhyolite Ridge that has an estimated life of 22 years.

The Sydney, Australia-based Ioneer aims to finalize its financing agreements for the $785 million project before year-end. However, legal battles, regulatory adjustments, and political uncertainty remain obstacles as the company pushes toward construction, CEO Bernard Rowe said on a late Thursday webcast.

“Legal challenges are almost inevitable,” he told investors, referring to lawsuits that environmental groups are expected to file over the mine’s impact on Tiehm’s buckwheat, an endangered plant found only at the project site, located about 362 km north of Las Vegas.

The plant’s presence forced Ioneer to redesign parts of the mine, creating buffer zones and a greenhouse propagation program. Rowe remains confident that regulatory efforts will hold up under scrutiny. “We are well-prepared, and we’ve built a solid scientific case around our environmental work,” he said.

Following six years of regulatory scrutiny, Rhyolite Ridge is the first lithium mine approved under the Biden administration. It reflects Washington’s push to secure domestic sources of critical minerals. The project also marks the first new lithium production in the US in over 60 years and the first boron mine in over a century, Rowe said. The operation will produce lithium carbonate and boric acid on-site, with the large chemical processing plant just a few kilometres from the mine.

Ioneer shares briefly spiked 9% to A$0.305 on Friday, a fresh 12-month high for the company, giving it a market capitalization of A$651 million. Shares come off a period low at A$0.105.

With the US federal election approaching, investors pressed management for their take on the potentially shifting political landscape. Still, Rowe dismissed the idea that a new administration could derail the project.

“There is strong bipartisan support for developing critical minerals in the US,” he said. “We’ve worked with both Republican and Democratic administrations, and the project has broad backing at the state and federal levels.”

Once operational, the mine will rival Albemarle (NYSE: ALB) and Lithium Americas (TSX: LAC; NYSE: LAC) as a top domestic producer. Albemarle operates the only active domestic lithium mine in Silver Peak, Nevada, and Lithium Americas is developing the Thacker Pass project, like Rhyolite Ridge another lithium clay site in Nevada.

Liquidity questioned

The DOE loan and Sibanye-Stillwater’s equity investment hinge on completing updates to the mine plan, reserve estimates, and project economics. Rowe stressed the importance of staying on schedule to avoid setbacks. “Permitting was the biggest hurdle, but we’re on track to close financing in the next few weeks.”

BMO Capital Markets mining analyst Raj Ray noted liquidity risks for Sibanye-Stillwater. It is set to invest $490 million in five equal tranches over 12 months. While the federal permit approval marks a positive step, Ray cautioned that Sibanye’s ability to meet its financial commitments remains uncertain.

Sibanye has net debt of $1.01 billion. It faces rising costs at Rhyolite Ridge and potential legal issues from a dispute with Appian, which could further strain liquidity. Earlier this month, Appian Capital, a London-based investment firm, won a UK court ruling forcing Sibanye to pay for terminating a $1.2 billion deal to acquire two Brazilian mines. The damages have not yet been determined.

“The 2020 DFS capex estimate of $785 million is stale (we currently model capex of $1.1 billion) and capex escalation beyond this sum is likely,” Ray said Friday in a note to clients. “However, between the DOE conditional loan and Sibanye’s investment, the project could potentially be fully funded.”

Ray said it remained to be seen how Sibanye manages its liquidity position over the next 12 months.

Boron kicker

Construction, scheduled to start early next year, will take about 30 months, putting the project on course for production in 2028.

The Rhyolite Ridge mine will run for 22 years. It will produce 22,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate a year. That’s enough to power 370,000 electric vehicles. It will also produce 170,000 tonnes of boric acid, according to the company.

The boron contributes 30% to 40% of the mine’s revenue, providing a buffer against lithium market volatility.

An April 2020 definitive feasibility study on the project pegged the after-tax net present value (8% discount) at $1.3 billion and the internal rate of return at 20.8%.

Rowe said that boric acid has had stable prices for decades, which helps balance the fluctuations in lithium prices. “We designed the process around known technologies, borrowing methods from copper leaching. This project will be a cornerstone for the US critical minerals supply chain.”

While confident in the path forward, Rowe stressed the importance of timely execution. “We have to make the final investment decision early next year, finalize contracts, and place long-lead orders,” he said. “We’re already gearing up, but delays could jeopardize our momentum.”

Ioneer expects the project to generate $125 million in annual wages, create 500 construction jobs, and employ 350 workers during operations. Though environmental groups remain opposed, Rowe believes the project’s benefits outweigh the risks.

“We’ve been at this for eight years, and reaching this point’s a tremendous feeling,” Rowe said. “Now it’s time to move forward.”

Without Ozernoye’s substantial contribution to global mined zinc supply next year, a shortage of zinc concentrate – a raw material to make zinc metal, used to galvanize steel, is likely to persist. Concern over tight supplies is one of the drivers that has pushed zinc prices to a 20-month high.

Asked about the possible delay, Ozernoye told Reuters it plans next year to produce concentrate “in volume comparable to the previously announced targets”.

Ozernoye officially launched production in September, saying that it would reach full capacity of about 320,000 metric tons of zinc in concentrate in 2025.

That represents 2.5% of next year’s global mined zinc supply estimated at 12.86 million tons, industry group the International Lead & Zinc Study Group (ILZSG) said.

The ILZSG included the ramp-up of Ozernoye in its forecasts of robust growth of 8.9% in new mining zinc supply outside China in 2025.

The sources, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said Ozernoye had yet to produce any material as it could not find an adequate replacement for the components that process rocks into powder-form concentrate.

Those parts were damaged by a fire in November 2023.

Ozernoye did not give any production targets when approached by smelters and traders interested in buying their concentrates next year, the sources said.

The components Ozernoye needs were developed and are made by commodity trader Glencore’s subsidiary Glencore Technology. Glencore taps an Australian zinc-lead deposit with a similar mineral composition to that of Ozernoye.

Glencore can no longer sell the concentrator parts to Ozernoye, which the US government placed under sanctions shortly after the fire.

Glencore declined to comment. The Swiss trader-miner said only it would “fully comply with all sanctions applicable to our business activities”.

Ozernoye is working with local company TEM Partner to try to replicate Glencore’s system, one source said. Production may start in November, the same source said.

The company statement said its equipment was made in Russia by its “in-house design bureau”.

It said it expected to achieve “project capacity within a year from the start of commissioning,” without specifying when that was.

“The part of the flotation equipment, which has already been commissioned, is behaving stably and the first batches of zinc concentrates have been received,” it said.

The uncertainty over Ozernoye’s output adds to the impact of other disruption, including Century’s force majeure and a slower-than-expected ramp-up at Ivanhoe’s Kipushi project in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Reflecting the difficulty of sourcing concentrate, zinc treatment charges (TC), the fees a smelter earns for converting concentrate into refined metal and a gauge of concentrates’ availability, dropped to minus $40 a ton end of September, according to pricing agency SMM.

The lower TC pushed some zinc smelters into losses and they had to cut production.

(By Julian Luk; Editing by Pratima Desai and Barbara Lewis)

The precious metal hit a record high on Wednesday and gold funds recorded their biggest weekly inflow since July 2020, a team led by Michael Hartnett wrote.

Other recent popular trades, such as selling bonds and buying artificial intelligence stocks, are holding up ahead of the Nov. 5 election, the strategists said. The yield on US 10-year government bonds briefly breached 4.2% this week, the highest level since July, while shares of US chip company Nvidia Corp. hit an all-time high.

The gold trade is part of a wider investor strategy to position portfolios against a possible win for Donald Trump in the election. The US dollar has also rallied on bets a win for the Republican candidate would trigger a rebound in inflation, a rising budget deficit and a potential trade war with China.

Hedge funds haven’t been this bullish on the dollar since June 2021, the BofA strategists said, citing CFTC data. The BofA team also noted that investors are placing bets against China despite recent stimulus measures.

Low payrolls data pointing to a recession could dent investor confidence about some of these trades and trigger a rotation from stocks to bonds, the strategists said. The impact of the presidential election on inflation could also motivate the Federal Reserve to reverse gear and raise rates instead of cutting them, they said.

The contest between Trump and Kamala Harris is currently very tight according to polls in swing states, while betting odds currently favor the Republican candidate.

(By Julien Ponthus and Sagarika Jaisinghani)

Tykac’s Sev.en Group has taken advantage of cheap valuations to buy up coal power stations and mines in the US, Australia and Vietnam, as well as gas-fired plants in the UK. After building his fortune in the Czech Republic, Tykac is using the expansion to shield his wealth from European Union efforts to lead the world in giving up fossil fuels.

It’s also a bet that delays and snags in the transition to renewable energy will keep coal in the mix for years to come, at least outside Europe.

Having amassed foreign assets worth an estimated €3 billion ($3.3 billion) in the past five years, Sev.en is preparing for more and bigger deals, according to Alan Svoboda, chief executive officer of the group’s international business.

“We have much more in the pipeline than in the past, and we’re hoping to grow even faster than we have so far,” he said in an interview at the Prague headquarters of Sev.en Global Investments AS. “We look at hundreds of opportunities every year and submit dozens of binding bids.”

The Vales Point power station outside Sydney is one such example. The Czech company bought the coal-fired facility, which has a license to operate until 2029, two years ago. Yet looming electricity shortages might prompt Australian authorities to extend its lifespan until 2033, according to Svoboda. If that were to happen, it could boost profits, even if it requires additional investment.

“The entire energy sector can’t change overnight, as some people hoped,” the CEO said. “The Australians have realized that it is not totally safe to force a speedy decommissioning of coal plants, and that it is better to let market forces determine when their operation will no longer make business sense.”

As institutional shareholders, lenders and insurers flee environmentally harmful industries in droves, it remains unclear whether the company’s push into coal will pay off. Revenue at Sev.en Global Investments, which now accounts for over 70% of Tykac’s empire, jumped 23% last year to €1.85 billion. Still, adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization fell 53% to €432 million as energy prices slid from the record levels notched in 2022.

Including his original Czech company, Sev.en Ceska Energie AS, Tykac now has about 6,000 employees worldwide and a net worth of around $3 billion, according to estimates from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Tykac, who declined to personally comment for this article, started out in business after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, when then-Czechoslovakia ditched communism. His first company was a computer manufacturer, and he later began investing in other local businesses and banks.

After 2006, Tykac transitioned into coal mines and power and heating plants around the Czech Republic. His Pocerady station, near the country’s northern border with Germany, is one of the country’s biggest polluters and has been a frequent target of environmental activists since it went online in the 1970s. It accounts for almost 6% of the country’s entire electricity production.

Unlike many peers, Tykac is not trying to greenwash his image. Sev.en Global Investment’s website describes its business model as focused on risky, high-return projects. It quotes Tykac as saying that his investments are “crucial for our economies” even as others might avoid them for ethical reasons.

“Sufficiency of reliable, safe and affordable electricity,” it reads, “is one of the basic conditions for the existence of today’s civilization.”

Svoboda joined Sev.en in 2018 to take care of its overseas expansion. The 52-year-old former executive at Czech utility CEZ AS says the EU effort to phase out coal is posing “elevated regulatory risk” to companies such as Sev.en.

“We are largely losing interest in Europe, except for the UK,” Svoboda said. “We are drawn to America and Australia.”

While the focus remains on developed nations with stable political systems, Tykac’s empire is also expanding into communist-ruled Vietnam, where it has agreed to buy 70% of a coal plant from American and Chinese investors. The 1.2 gigawatt facility outside Hanoi comes with a supply contract that hedges the owner against swings in exchange rates and coal prices until 2055.

Sev.en is hoping that the investment could be followed by expansion into places like India, Indonesia and Malaysia, according to Svoboda. Many countries in the region aren’t planning to ditch coal anytime soon, and their governments are often willing to compensate foreign owners with long-term guarantees.

“We thought it was time to try something new,” said Svoboda. “We would like to replicate our investment in Vietnam in other places across South-East Asia.”

It does remain easier to secure funding for green projects, which is one reason why the group is also seeking to diversify into industries such as electricity storage and mining minerals, including those used in batteries. In Australia, it is about to start producing potassium-sulfate fertilizer made via an environmentally friendly process.

Over the past 18 months, Sev.en has opened offices in New York, London and Sydney in an effort to expand its global footprint. “We’ve been looking at bigger and bigger transactions,” said Svoboda, adding that the “sweet spot” for acquisitions is currently between €500 million and €1 billion.

Despite the rising appetite, Sev.en remains selective, according to Svoboda.

“Rather than having a broad portfolio of many smaller items,” he said, “our goal is to own a limited number of crown jewels that we go all-in on.”

(By Krystof Chamonikolas)

Newmont Corp. shares posted their biggest daily drop since 1997 on Thursday, tumbling 15% after the Denver-based company posted earnings, revenue and profit margins that fell short of analysts’ estimates in the third quarter, dragged down by higher costs. The stock traded a further 3% lower on Friday, with top rivals Barrick Gold Corp. and Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. also retreating.

Analysts had high hopes for the industry. Gold has surged more than 30% this year, while fuel prices — one of the miners’ key expenses — have been easing. But Newmont’s results revealed that big gold producers are still wrestling with inflationary pressures, especially regarding labor costs, that have lasted longer than expected.

“There’s a potential read-through here, assuming Newmont’s takeaways are accurate, that this is a risk factor for the industry,” said Josh Wolfson, a mining analyst with Royal Bank of Canada.

Newmont earned 80 cents a share, well short of the average estimate of 89 cents among analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Revenue of $4.61 billion also trailed estimates, as did its gross profit margin, which slipped below 50%.

The company said it spent more to dig up the precious metal at its mines in Australia, Canada, Peru and Papua New Guinea than in the previous quarter. Capital expenses rose 10% due to expansion projects in Australia and Argentina, while some of the company’s highest expenses came from major assets it picked up through last year’s $15 billion takeover of Newcrest Mining Ltd.

Some of those cost issues are specific to the company, and not necessarily indicative of a broader industry trend. Newmont is undertaking costly maintenance work at its Lihir mine in Papua New Guinea — a notoriously complex operation in a remote region — and it spent more to restart its Cerro Negro mine in Argentina after operations were paused due to the deaths of two workers in April.

But the company’s growing costs for workers could signal trouble across the industry.

“It’s the labor costs where we’re seeing that escalation,” chief executive officer Tom Palmer told analysts in a conference call Thursday.

“Whether that be maintenance shutdowns, maintenance that you use to supplement your workforce, costs of running camps, costs of flying people to and from the camps — that’s where we’re seeing some escalation beyond what we’d assumed at the start of the year.”

Miners’ pitch to investors is that they can offer better returns than owning the metal, partly due to greater investment options and shareholder payouts, but the industry has often underperformed over the past 15 years as major expansions left producers with big debts and angry shareholders.

Newmont’s earnings also serve as a preview for Canada’s Barrick, which shares a giant mining complex with Newmont in Nevada. The Nevada mines produced less gold compared to the previous quarter.

Despite investor disappointment, the gold miners are still being helped by the bullion boom: Newmont posted its highest quarterly profit in five years, raking in $922 million. Analysts expect Newmont is on track to net $3.2 billion in profit this year — which would be a record for the company.

Even after this week’s plunge, Newmont’s shares are up 15% this year.

Barrick, Agnico and other big producers including AngloGold Ashanti Plc and Gold Fields Ltd. are also expected to rake in windfall returns by the end of the year.

“The street expectations were too high,” said Carey MacRury, a mining analyst at Canaccord Genuity who recommends investors buy the shares. “It was negative, no doubt, but I don’t think it’s as negative as what the market’s telling us today.”

(By Jacob Lorinc)

Shares of the Australia-based critical minerals miner jumped more than 20% in New York trading on Thursday afternoon before easing down.

The approval ends a more-than six-year review process during which regulators, ioneer and conservationists tussled over the fate of a rare flower found at the mine site, a tension that exposed the sometimes competing priorities between climate change mitigation efforts and biodiversity protection.

The permit, which had been expected by the end of the year, comes amid a flurry of recent moves by Biden officials to support critical minerals production and offset China’s market dominance.

It also unlocks a $700 million loan from the US Department of Energy, as well as a $490 million equity investment from Sibanye Stillwater to fund the project.

“This is a science-based decision,” Laura Daniel-Davis, the Interior Department’s acting deputy secretary, told Reuters. “We’re trying to send a signal that there’s no topic with greater importance than addressing climate change.”

The US Bureau of Land Management, which is controlled by the Interior Department, on Thursday issued the Rhyolite Ridge project’s record of decision – essentially the mine’s permit – and said the project will “include significant protections for the local ecosystem” and help create hundreds of jobs in the rural region.

The project, roughly 225 miles (362 km) north of Las Vegas, contains enough lithium to power roughly 370,000 EVs each year. Construction is slated to begin next year, with production commencing by 2028, a timeline that would make Rhyolite Ridge one of the largest US lithium producers alongside Albemarle and Lithium Americas.

The US Geological Survey has labeled lithium a critical mineral vital for the US economy and national security.

“We’re proud to be the first US lithium mine permitted by the Biden administration,” James Calaway, ioneer’s chairman, told Reuters.

The project will extract lithium as well as boron – a chemical used to make ceramics and soaps – from a clay-like deposit. The lithium will be processed on site into two main derivatives used to make batteries, and the company said it plans to recycle half of all the water used at the site, higher than the industry average.

Ford and a joint venture between Toyota and Panasonic have agreed to buy lithium from the mine.

Endangered flower

In addition to the lithium and boron deposits, Rhyolite Ridge is home to the Tiehm’s buckwheat flower, which is found nowhere else on the planet and was declared an endangered species in 2022.

The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and some other conservation groups thus oppose ioneer’s project, saying it would push the flower to the brink of extinction.

After the permit was announced on Thursday, the CBD said it plans to sue the federal government to block the project.

“By greenlighting this mine, the Bureau of Land Management is abandoning its duty to protect endangered species like Tiehm’s buckwheat and it’s making a mockery of the Endangered Species Act,” said the CBD’s Patrick Donnelly.

The Interior Department’s Daniel-Davis declined to comment on the potential litigation, but noted the changes made to the mine’s operating plan as a result of the permit review process, including new design plans and propagation efforts that included construction of a greenhouse. Department officials also released an opinion stating their belief that the mine would not harm the flower.

“We have run a transparent process,” said Daniel-Davis. “The company was willing to reconfigure its entire project to take into account Tiehm’s buckwheat.”

The death of more than 17,000 flowers near the mine site in 2020 sparked allegations of a “premeditated” attack. Ioneer denied harming the flowers. The government later blamed thirsty squirrels.

(By Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

The Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission on Nov. 4 is to hear an application filed by those companies and others to potentially set the royalty rate. They have proposed a 1.82% royalty, while landowners are seeking 12.5%, according to BMO Capital Markets mining analyst Greg Jones.

The landowners’ proposal is “a level that would strain project cash flows based on our modelling,” Jones said in a note on Thursday. “We assume a 2.5% royalty in our base case, within the range of royalties applied in other jurisdictions. We anticipate the commission will take a balanced approach to support development of Arkansas’s lithium industry.”

This week, the United States Geological Survey and the Arkansas government said they’d found enough lithium in brine in the Smackover Formation within the state to supply global demand. They estimated the amount in the formation’s porous limestone left from an ancient sea at 5 million tonnes to 19 million tonnes. Scientists used water testing and machine learning to calculate the resource. The formation stretches from Texas to Florida, suggesting there could be even more lithium.

Standard project

The discovery comes as Standard and partner Equinor (NYSE: EQNR), Norway’s state-owned petroleum company, develop their South West Arkansas project in the same geologic structure towards a definitive feasibility study and formal investment decision next year. Equinor paid $30 million in May for 45% of Standard’s lithium projects in southwest Arkansas and East Texas, plus a pledge to invest $130 million more in the projects if they go ahead.

The US Department of Energy said on Sept. 20 it’s considering funding the project with as much as $225 million, one of the largest ever US government grants for critical minerals.

It’s part of the Biden administration’s push to source domestically more of the critical minerals needed for the energy transition. The departments of energy and defence as well as the Export-Import Bank are potentially able to allocate billions of dollars in funding for projects from mining and processing to finished products like vehicles. Even projects in Canada are getting financed. But the industry faces significant challenges as the price of lithium has crashed over the past two years.

Royalty faceoff

The South Arkansas Minerals Association, which represents the landowners, says the companies haven’t provided enough financial information to justify their proposed rate, BMO reports.

An Oct. 11 pre-hearing referenced some of the measures in state law for calculating the rate, such as the brine has to be profitably extracted before a rate can be applied, BMO said. But even the hearing officer noted it was unclear what evidence the commission would require to ensure a fair and equitable rate.

The companies’ proposed 1.82% royalty is based on precedent from a 2007 commission order, BMO said. The ruling determined the additional compensation attributable was 5.65¢ per barrel of brine. That equalled 1.82% of the per-acre value of the bromine extracted.

Other jurisdictions have different rates, according to BMO. California charges per tonne of lithium carbonate-equivalent, from $400 to $800, depending on production totals. Nevada has a 5% tax on net lithium sales.

Western Australia levies a 5% royalty on revenue from sales of spodumene concentrate, which is from hard rock lithium ore, not brine. Argentinian provinces apply a 3% royalty to extracted minerals. Brazil charges a 2% royalty on gross income from lithium sales with deductions allowed for taxes paid on commercial sales.

Direct extraction

The projects in Arkansas, and in some other places where there is underground brine, such as Chile and Alberta, plan to use the emerging technology of direct lithium extraction (DLE). It’s somewhat like pumping crude oil, which would seem to be an opportunity for fossil fuel companies intent on expanding their energy focus. Miners can also benefit from vast petro-coffers. The combination is already tapping some Prairie former oil fields that have brine.

ExxonMobil is evaluating potential production costs after drilling exploratory wells at the 486-sq.-km Mobil Lithium project on the Smackover Formation this year. It plans initial production of the battery metal in 2027. By 2030 it wants to produce enough for 1 million vehicles.

In southern California, Occidental Petroleum and a unit of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.B) have begun feasibility testing to produce battery-grade lithium from the brine of 10 geothermal power plants.

In Alberta, E3 Lithium (TSXV: ETL) is advancing its $2.5 billion capex Clearwater project on one of Canada’s largest resources of the battery metal. It’s tapping former oil wells once pumped by ExxonMobil unit Imperial Oil (TSX: IMO), which is also helping fund the prefeasibility-stage project.

DLE advantages

DLE may cost more than using conventional brine evaporation ponds, but it can produce the battery metal in hours instead of months, can recover around double the metal, and occupies a much smaller footprint.

In Chile, where evaporation ponds dominate, heavyweight producer SQM (NYSE: SQM) has been testing various DLE technologies including a collaboration with French chemical company Adionics.

Their trials have shown recovery rates reaching up to 98% from brine at the Salar de Atacama. SQM aims to integrate DLE into its operations as part of Chile’s new public-private model for lithium production​.

US imports of copper have surged after traders capitalized on a rare arbitrage window that opened between the CME and the London Metal Exchange (LME) contracts at the height of the squeeze on CME short position holders.

The result has been a redistribution of global exchange inventory with CME stocks rebuilding from depleted levels and both LME and Shanghai Futures Exchange (ShFE) inventory falling.

It remains to be seen how long this global readjustment lasts but resilient demand and domestic production constraints have the potential to suck more metal into the United States.

Chilean exports redirected

The United States imported an average of 57,700 metric tons per month of refined copper in the first half of 2024.

Inbound shipments then jumped to 106,400 tons and 117,500 tons in July and August respectively, according to LSEG Group trade data.

The main source of the extra metal was Chile. US imports from the South American country accelerated from an average 39,600 tons per month in January-June to 78,200 tons in July and 89,800 tons in August.

Indeed, the United States became the major destination for Chilean copper in the May-August period as shipments to China dropped to an average 30,300 tons.

Shorts covered?

A significant portion of Chile’s shipments to the United States has been delivered against short positions on the CME.

The CME’s limited range of good-delivery brands was one of the reasons the May squeeze became so acute.

Chilean metal accounts for 18 of a total 57 deliverable copper brands on the US exchange, exceeding the 13 domestically-produced brands.

A total 76,440 tons of copper have entered CME warehouses in New Orleans since the start of August, helping lift registered inventory to 74,824 tons from a July low of 8,117 tons.

The liquidity boost has calmed CME time-spreads after the extreme backwardations seen in the second quarter.

It’s noticeable that while CME stocks have been rising, those registered with both the LME and the ShFE have fallen.

However, global exchange inventory is broadly unchanged at an elevated 521,600 tons, up 308,000 tons on the start of the year.

More to come?

CME copper stocks are by no means one-way traffic, with the daily inflows being offset by a steady stream of metal moving in the opposite direction.

This speaks to resilient demand in the United States even before the Federal Reserve’s bumper rate cut trickles down to the manufacturing sector.

Moreover, domestic production is going to take a significant knock due to geotechnical problems at one of country’s largest mines.

Production at the Bingham Canyon mine dropped 44% year-on-year in the third quarter due to movement in the walls of what is the world’s deepest open-pit copper mine.

Rio Tinto, which owns the mine, warned that mined production would be impacted to the tune of 50,000 tons this year as feed to the concentrator is supplemented with lower-grade ore. Mined output will also be affected both next year and in 2026, albeit to an as-yet unknown extent, it said.

It may not just be CME copper shorts that need more US imports in the months ahead.

(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, Andy Home, a columnist for Reuters.)

(Editing by Mark Potter)

In combined battery capacity deployed – a better indicator of battery materials demand than unit sales alone – the global electric car market expanded by 22% so far this year. 

In total, 505.6 GWh of fresh battery power hit the globe’s roads from January through August, according to data from Toronto-based EV supply chain research firm Adamas Intelligence.

The robust growth rate also comes despite a noticeable swing towards hybrid vehicles, which have inherently smaller batteries and therefore contained metal. 

The combined battery capacity of plug-in hybrid vehicles steered onto roads globally for the first time this year is up 70% versus a must more sedate pace for full electric passenger vehicles of 15%. At the same time the average battery capacity of plug-ins is also rising, up 14% this year to 23kWh, more than a third of the average full electric vehicle.

For miners supplying the EV battery industry, the news remain negative: when pairing metals demand with prices in the supply chain, declines this year are brutal. 

The latest data based on EV registrations in over 110 countries show the sales weighted average monthly dollar value of the lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite contained in the batteries​​ of the average EV based on global end-user registrations, battery capacity and chemistries.

Put it all together and the raw materials bill for the average EV is now down to $537 compared to $1,342 in August 2023 and a monthly peak of more than $1,900 at the beginning of last year, according to Adamas Intelligence analysis.      

The downtrend is led by lithium where the sales weighted average value per EV is down 75% over the past year to $236 and cobalt, which at little over $46 is 42% below the value reached in August 2023. Manganese is the only battery raw material in positive territory this year, up 3% but the raw material is also down 8% compare to the same month last year. For anode material, graphite loadings and values have held mostly steady at just under $26 per average EV.

The value of nickel in the average EV battery is down 26% as LFP battery chemistries continue to take global markets. LFP batteries represented 42% of the global total in terms of capacity deployed in GWh in August.

That compares to a 32% share during the same month last year, more than offsetting the long-running trend towards high-nickel cathodes, and the growing popularity of NCM batteries for larger plug-in and range-extending hybrids, where the energy density of nickel-based cathodes makes more sense given the weight of these vehicles. 

For a fuller analysis of the battery metals market check out the latest Northern Miner print and digital editions. 

* Frik Els is Editor at Large for MINING.COM and Head of Adamas Inside, providing news and analysis based on Adamas Intelligence data.

The Biden administration floated the potential restrictions at a meeting of G-7 finance officials in Washington this week as it mulls fresh ways to squeeze President Vladimir Putin’s war efforts. Russia’s MMC Norilsk Nickel PJSC is the biggest producer of palladium, which is mainly used in catalytic converters for automobiles. Norilsk Nickel’s press service declined to comment.

While Norilsk Nickel accounts for around 40% of global output, the company now sells most of its output to China, according to a person familiar with situation. It still sells some to the US, as no import ban for the metal is currently in place, the person said.

Still, sanctions risks “have reignited buying activity,” said Daniel Ghali, senior commodity strategist at TD Securities. Commodity trading advisor trend followers are adding to their palladium bullish positions, he said. “Fear is the trade.”

Shares of the four biggest palladium producers in South Africa — the world’s second-largest source of the metal — all jumped by more than 10%. One of them, Sibanye Stillwater Ltd., recently announced cuts to palladium output at its US mines due to weak prices.

Palladium has fallen about 37% since the start of last year and almost two-thirds from a March 2022 peak, which miners attribute to a subdued global economy and destocking by manufacturers.

The possibility of removing Russian palladium from the market may tighten the market as “South Africa and the other major producers won’t be able to fill the gap,” said Dan Smith, head of research at Amalgamated Metal Trading.

Gold pared gains after latest data pointed to economic resilience in the US, reinforcing bets that the Federal Reserve may take a measured approach to monetary easing. Rising yields and higher borrowing costs tend to weigh on gold, as the metal doesn’t pay interest.

Palladium rose 5.1% at $1,119.88 an ounce as of 10:38 a.m. in New York. Gold gained 0.3% at $2,723.98 after earlier rising by as much as 1%. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was down 0.1%. Silver slid while platinum advanced.

(By William Clowes and Yvonne Yue Li)

The company reported nearly 100 metres of copper and nickel mineralization from its first drill hole at the Boulderdash target in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, with a grade of 1.6% copper equivalent, starting at a depth of 9.1 metres. It now plans to add more drill holes for further evaluation.

“The distribution and abundance of magmatic sulphides intersected in the initial drilling at Boulderdash bear a striking resemblance to the early drill results from the Eagle deposit,” Dean Rossell, Talon’s chief exploration geologist said in a news release.

Rossell is credited with discovering the Eagle deposit.

“In 2001, one of the first drill holes intersected a long interval of disseminated sulphides with minor net-textured sulphides, which inspired us to drill the discovery hole in 2002, where we intersected 84.2 metres of high-grade massive sulphide mineralization,” Rossell said.

“US leaders are laser-focused on US dependency on critical minerals produced by foreign entities of concern. The discovery of a potential new domestic resource of copper and nickel is very timely,” CEO Henri van Rooyen added.

Talon’s mineral exploration activities in Michigan and Minnesota are funded by the US Department of Defense, which announced in 2023 that it would provide $20.6 million for accelerated exploration in both states.

Cantor Fitzgerald mining analyst Matthew O’Keefe said in a note to clients that the hole was “impressive” and could be indicative of a larger system, similar to Eagle.

In 2022, Talon entered into an option and earn-in agreement with UPX Minerals to acquire up to 80% ownership in mineral rights over a 1,620-sq.-km land package in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The first hole drilled at Boulderdash is part of this land package.

By 11 a.m. EDT in Toronto, Talon Metals’ shares were up 11%. The Canadian miner has a market capitalization of C$93.5 million ($67.5m).

The move reflects the growing realization in Washington that efforts to combat climate change will be moot unless the US boosts its production of lithium, cobalt, and other critical minerals and curbs reliance on China and other overseas rivals.

Washington last December issued proposed rules for manufacturers to access the so-called 45X tax credit, created by President Joe Biden’s 2022 climate change law, the Inflation Reduction Act, which offers a 10% production credit for US-made products. Those draft rules excluded raw materials from the production costs in favor of processing. For example, the mining of lithium would not have received the credit, but the processing of that lithium into a form usable to build a battery would.

The mining industry cried foul, noting that processing is impossible without first extracting a mineral.

Citing “feedback from stakeholders,” the Treasury Department on Thursday reversed itself, saying that the “material costs and extraction costs” would be eligible for the tax credit under the final 45X rules, “provided certain conditions are met.”

“The Biden-Harris administration understands how important onshoring the production of critical minerals is to developing secure, clean energy supply chains,” Wally Adeyemo, the deputy Treasury secretary, told reporters on a call. “This will not only help incentivize additional mining, but will mean that mining that already exists is more profitable and they can make greater investments in those mines,” he said.

The final rules stipulate that the credit can only be obtained once an “eligible component” is created, essentially favoring mining companies that own processing facilities. The mining would have to take place in the United States, officials said.

“The action of extraction alone does not produce an eligible component,” the Treasury Department said in the final rule, which ran to 177 pages.

That may help Sibanye Stillwater, which mines and processes palladium in Montana and had pushed for the 45X expansion to offset cutthroat Russian competition. But several proposed US nickel mines, for example, would not be eligible because the US does not yet have a nickel smelter.

Ali Zaidi, the White House national climate adviser, gave the hypothetical example of a lithium hydroxide processor that also runs a lithium mine. That company would be eligible for a 10% per metric ton credit for the mining and another 10% per metric ton credit for the processing, he said.

“This is absolutely a game changer for our ability to lean into mineral security,” said Zaidi.

The credits would begin phasing out in 2030 and end after 2032 for clean energy components. Critical mineral credits will not phase out.

The National Mining Association, whose members include Lithium Americas, ioneer Ltd and other mining companies that do not process metals, said it appreciated the updated rules but was disappointed they were linked to processing.

“Treasury’s decision to limit the credit to those producers who also refine materials will prevent many important projects from benefiting from the credit as Congress intended,” said Rich Nolan, the trade group’s CEO.

(By Nichola Groom, Ernest Scheyder and Timothy Gardner; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Copper prices remained elevated in the quarter, supported by optimism about Chinese demand following a series of stimulus measures from Beijing. Long-term demand view for the red metal continues to be bullish on the back of its critical role in the energy transition.

Teck said copper prices rose by about 11.7% from a year earlier and averaged around $4.21 per pound.

The Quebrada Blanca (QB) mine in Chile reported record production during the quarter as operations continued to ramp up. This helped Teck achieve a jump of around 60% in copper output to 115,000 metric tons.

However, the company cut its full-year copper production forecast for the second time in a row, citing labour issues and mining delays at the Highland Valley Copper mine in Canada.

It also reduced the upper end of its 2024 annual copper production guidance for QB. Teck now expects full-year copper production of 420,000 to 455,000 tons, compared with the previous guidance of 435,000 to 500,000 tons.

Teck revamped its operations this year by selling 77% interest in the steelmaking coal unit to Swiss miner Glencore Plc. The deal, one of the largest in the industry, was completed in July.

The deal was part of Teck’s transition into a pure-play energy transition metals company.

“We have returned more than $1.3 billion to shareholders so far this year, while also reducing debt and ramping-up copper production,” CEO Jonathan Price said in a statement

The company reported an adjusted profit of C$0.60 ($0.4340) per share for the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with analysts’ average estimate of C$0.37 per share, according to data compiled by LSEG.

($1 = 1.3824 Canadian dollars)

(By Mrinalika Roy and Surbhi Misra; Editing by Rashmi Aich and Janane Vengatraman)

Sliding prices for several critical minerals this year – in part due to overproduction in China, Russia and elsewhere – have put the traditionally conservative US mining companies in the unusual position of seeking Washington’s help to survive, a reliance that helps link their corporate fates to American government decisions.

US industrial policy has shifted in recent years to more fully embrace tariffs, tax credits and other financial tools that directly inject government dollars into critical sectors, including through the IRA, the CHIPS Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, among others.

“One of the biggest challenges we have in mining in America – setting aside permitting – is that mines here are just not commercially competitive,” said Gracelin Baskaran, director of the critical minerals security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

A fight over government largesse shows how much the stakes have changed for US mines as overseas rivals have expanded market control.

South African miner Sibanye’s Stillwater palladium mine, located roughly 40 miles (64 km) from Montana’s border with Wyoming, last year lost nearly $600 on every ounce it mined, or roughly $269 million, as Russian rivals boosted production at safety standards below what is acceptable in the US Palladium prices fell 40% in 2023.

The mine’s loss, executives said, would have been lessened by a little-known tax credit provision of the IRA known as 45X, which reimburses 10% of production costs. That, they said, could have helped save some of the roughly 800 jobs slated to be cut next month, with the fate of the entire mine uncertain.

The US Treasury Department issued draft rules last year saying the 45X credit does not apply to mining but rather final processing of a mineral.

The draft rule was seen as a strict interpretation of the IRA’s language and meant to appease conservationists and environmental groups, although the United Steelworkers and other labor unions have called for the 45X provision to apply to mining.

While miners lobbied behind the scenes for months, the draft rule appears on track to be finalized in coming days, analysts said. The Treasury Department said it expects to issue final draft rules soon.

Sibanye estimates its costs for labor, electricity and related areas have increased 30% since 2020, part of the reason why it is cutting staff now but did not when prices for palladium – used to make semiconductors, among other goods – were near similar levels in 2018.

“It’s very hard to compete when Russia is selling the exact same product,” said Heather McDowell, a Sibanye executive. “We believe Congress intended for the tax credit to incentivize those of us who produce critical minerals the right way, in this country.”

Other US mining projects have pushed for Washington to support two-tiers of metals pricing, stop negotiations with Indonesia and other minerals-rich countries using controversial mining practices, and forcing government contractors to buy American-produced minerals.

That shift in US industrial policy in a way paradoxically reflects steps that China has already taken, said George Cheveley of Ninety One, a London-based asset manager with investments across the mining sector.

“If you look at the way the US and China are approaching the energy transition, they’re actually doing it the same way,” said Cheveley. “Their view is, ‘We will subsidize the industry to get it up to scale and then we’ll have a profitable, functioning industry with the latest technology.'”

Election ramifications

The 45X issue has now worked its way into control of the US Senate. Montana Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat facing a tough re-election race next month, said little about 45X when the draft rules were issued, but in the wake of Sibanye’s layoffs, has gone public with calls for the credit to cover mining and has lobbied Treasury officials.

Mining is the highest-paying industry in Montana, with an average annual wage of $98,000, 81% higher than the state’s average.

Tester has called the layoffs “unacceptable,” blamed Russia and asked the Treasury Department to expand the 45X credit to mining.

“This mine is a big deal for local economies and our national security,” Tester, a farmer by profession, said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

Tester’s Republican opponent, businessman Tim Sheehy, has blamed what he sees as Democrats’ “job-killing, climate cult agenda” for the job losses in recent public statements. Sheehy’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Polls show Tester trailing Sheehy, although the race remains tight and the winner could help determine control of the Senate given close races elsewhere in the country.

(By Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Veronica and Marguerita Choy)

Biden administration officials floated the possibility during a meeting of G-7 deputy finance ministers on Tuesday in Washington, according to the person, who asked not to be identified discussing a private discussion. Finance officials from around the world have gathered in the US capital for annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The US raised the idea to spur conversation about further choking off the Russian economy almost three years after Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine, the person said.

Palladium is a key ingredient in computer chips and in catalytic converters for automobiles, while titanium has uses from airplanes to medical implants.

One major challenge is that Europe is reliant on the metals and has shown little appetite to target them in the past. G-7 members Germany, France and Italy would also need the backing of the other 24 members of the European Union for such sanctions.

The US has already blacklisted Russian titanium, but the metals are key inputs for everything from catalytic converters to semiconductors to airplanes, and western governments have been wary of cutting off supplies for fear of roiling global markets and disrupting their own supply chains.

The Treasury Department declined to comment.

Western nations have long struggled with their approach to metals sanctions on Russia. The price of palladium rose as much as 12% in December on speculation the metal could be next in line for restrictions after the UK issued sanctions on purchases of certain Russian metals. Earlier this year, the US and UK imposed restrictions on trading Russian aluminum, copper and nickel.

Sanctioning titanium would also provide a combative response to a recent proposal by Putin. In September, he suggested his government should think about limiting exports of some commodities such as nickel, titanium and uranium in retaliation for western sanctions after ensuring that it wouldn’t hurt Russia.

The US still buys Russian palladium. Russian company Norilsk Nickel represents about 40% of global output, a share of the market that would be hard to replace quickly.

For the European Union, supplies of both metals from Russia are critical, especially for titanium used in aviation. Putin has asked his government to consider limiting exports of titanium, which could drive prices up and hurt European airplane manufacturers such as Airbus.

(By Daniel Flatley)

Shares fell as much as 9.1% in New York on Thursday, the biggest intraday decline since July 2022. The stock drop came a day after Newmont posted third-quarter results that missed analysts’ estimates on adjusted earnings, costs and revenue. Newmont fell short of expectations after spending more to dig up the precious metal at its mines in Australia, Canada, Peru and Papua New Guinea.

The Denver-based company is the first major gold producer to post results in an earnings season where investors have been anticipating bumper profits from bullion producers. Gold is among the best-performing metals this year, surging more than 30% since the start of January and setting repeated record highs.

“The street expectations were too high,” said Carey MacRury, a mining analyst at Canaccord Genuity. “It was negative, no doubt, but I don’t think it’s as negative as what the market’s telling us today.”

Despite the missed expectations, Newmont posted its highest quarterly profits in five years — raking in $922 million in net income attributable to shareholders for the quarter.

Gold miners have struggled with higher labor and energy costs over the past few years. Newmont said its capital expenses rose 10% due to expansion projects in Australia and Argentina. But some of the company’s higher expenses came from major assets it picked up through last year’s $15 billion takeover of Newcrest Mining Ltd. Newmont posted 55% higher all-in sustaining costs at its Lihir operation in Papua New Guinea in the third quarter compared to the prior period.

The higher expenses are largely due to specific operational issues at Newmont mines, according to MacRury.

“We don’t see the cost miss as inflation read-through to the broader industry,” he said.

(By Jacob Lorinc)

Other notable names include Anglo American (LON: AAL), Newmont (TSX: NGT, NYSE: NEM), Vale (NYSE: VALE), Agnico Eagle Mines (TSX, NYSE: AEM), Glencore (LON: GLEN), AngloGold Ashanti (NYSE: AU) and Teck Resources (TSX: TECK.A, TECK.B, NYSE: TECK).

To make the list, Forbes teamed up with market research firm Statista and surveyed more than 300,000 employees in over 50 countries who work for multinational corporate groups that meet the following criteria: employ more than 1,000 workers and operate in at least two of the six continental regions (Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America and Oceania).

Respondents were asked whether they would recommend their company to family or friends, and to rate it based on such criteria as salary, talent development and remote work options. They could also rate companies they knew through their own industry knowledge and through friends and family who worked there.

Survey responses were then analyzed and tallied — along with data from the previous three years — with a heavier weight placed on the more recent data and evaluations from current employees.

While the number of honorees per country varied based on the population and qualifying companies in each area, a total of 850 companies spanning 48 countries earned a ranking on Forbes’ final list.

BHP topped all mining companies under the raw materials category, with a ranking of 90. After that, Anglo American was the highest ranked company at No. 251, followed by Newmont at No. 474, Vale at No. 502, Agnico at No. 649, Glencore at No. 675, AngloGold at No. 789, Teck at No. 797 and Poland’s KGHM at No. 823.

Spot gold dropped 1.0% to $2,718.79 an ounce by 12:10 p.m. ET after briefly hitting an all-time high of $2,758.25 in the morning trading. US gold futures also fell 1.0% to $2,734.00 an ounce in New York.

Bullion was down as much as 1.5% earlier in the session, with some traders exiting positions amid signs that the precious metal’s recent rally to successive highs may be excessive.

Gold’s relative strength index has been above the overbought level of 70 for the past three sessions, according to Bloomberg data.

A stronger US dollar and rising bond yields also weighed on the metal, whose price has surged by more than 30% in anticipation of the Federal Reserve’s pivot to interest rate cuts. The rally also intensified as uncertainties surrounding the US presidential race and the Middle East conflict grew.

Standard Chartered analyst Suki Cooper expects further upside risk in the coming weeks. The bank sees gold averaging $2,800 an ounce in the fourth quarter, with prices set to average $2,900 for the first three months of next year.

Analysts from Citi Research have a similar outlook. The bank recently upgraded its three-month gold price view to $2,800 per ounce from $2,700 previously, adding that its 6- to 12-month forecast is $3,000.

(With files from Bloomberg)

The primary objective of the program was to infill the near-surface inferred resources that define the up-dip extension of RPM North core zone, a high-grade discovery located in the southern part of the Estelle project area. Previous drilling at RPM North returned gold grades as high as 11.1 grams per tonne.

The secondary objective was to extend drilling from current RPM North resource and test a potential link with the newly discovered RPM Valley zone situated 150 metres to the southwest. Previous drilling indicated that the RPM North deposit remains wide open to that direction.

Backed by the latest drill results, Nova considers the 2024 program to have accomplished both objectives. In particular, it was able to extend the RPM North core zone to surface with over 20 board intercepts from grading over 5 g/t gold and a high of 52.7 g/t. Highlighting the new results was one intercept of 29 metres at 7.1 g/t from surface.

“The 2024 drill results have confirmed a broad zone of high-grade mineralization starting at surface at RPM North. This should prove positive for our upcoming studies focused on executing our current strategy to fast track development of RPM as a scale-able low capex/high margin starter operation,” Nova Minerals CEO Christopher Gerteisen said in a news release.

The new results, combined with that from last year’s program, are expected to support Nova’s mineral resource update for RPM North due later this year, as well as the pre-feasibility study that is underway. Nova anticipates that the 2023-24 drilling will “add significant ounces” to the measured and indicated categories, which currently total 330,000 oz. at 2.4 g/t.

The company is looking to commence the starter mine at RPM as soon as possible to generate cash flow for the larger 500 km² Estelle project located along Alaska’s Tintina gold belt. An updated economic study is currently being prepared for the project, which comprises four deposits across two main areas (Korbel and RPM). Their combined resources in all categories are estimated at 1.1 billion tonnes grading 0.3 g/t for 9.9 million oz.

According to Gerteisen, the Estelle project remains one of the largest undeveloped gold projects in the world, with significant upside remaining with gold, antimony, copper, silver and other critical elements.

Nova Minerals’ stock rose 11.3% by 11:45 a.m. ET on the Nasdaq following the new drill results. The company’s market capitalization is just under $40.6 million.

Volt has been operating its proprietary direct lithium extraction (DLE) system in the field since September 17, when the company achieved its first lithium production.

According to the company, samples of lithium carbonate have been created and verified via third-party testing for review by potential offtake partners.

Volt said it will continue to produce lithium chloride concentrate, as well as technical-grade and battery-grade lithium carbonate, in the field for the remainder of 2024.

“Successfully producing battery-grade lithium carbonate from the Permian is another significant milestone that Volt has achieved this year,” CEO Alex Wylie said in a statement, adding that “Volt Lithium is on track to become one of North America’s first commercial producers of lithium from oilfield brine.”

Volt’s DLE approach involves a two-stage process. The first stage focuses on removing contaminants from the brine before extraction. In the second stage, the breakthrough in their technology came with the development of specialized ion exchange beads, the company said.

“Unlike traditional beads, our innovative creation boasts a size of five microns and an impressive 800 times the surface area of other industry-standard beads, enhancing extraction efficiency,” Wylie told The Northern Miner in 2023.

This advancement, he said, allowed the team to consistently extract lithium from brines during various testing stages, including successful pilot projects.

The company aims to ramp up commercial production to 100,000 barrels per day of brine during the second half of 2025.

Volt’s shares were up 6% in Toronto on Wednesday morning, bringing the company’s market capitalization to approximately C$63 million ($45.5 million).

• Stockpiling. The Trump Administration supported and the Harris campaign supports increased mineral stockpiling. According to the Department of Defense, the National Defense Stockpile (NDS), as of March 2023, only had inventories to cover 6 percent of the US military’s and essential civilian demand’s estimated material shortfalls in a hypothetical one-year conflict with China, followed by a three-year recovery. The president could tap the NDS Transaction Fund for mineral stockpiling, as well as the Defense Production Act (DPA) fund. The Eisenhower Administration used DPA funds for mineral stockpiling during the Cold War, and the president still has this authority (50 USC §4533). Importantly, the next administration’s Department of Defense should prioritize stockpiling minerals extracted and processed in the United States.

• Subsidies. The Trump Administration supported and the Harris campaign supports subsidies for critical mineral projects. The Trump Administration deemed critical mineral processing projects eligible for direct loans under the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing (ATVM) program, and the Biden-Harris Administration has loaned to such projects. The next administration’s Department of Energy could also deem mining projects eligible under the ATVM program by issuing a draft rule that adds “mining” to 10 CFR 611.2 “Eligible Project” (3). To specifically lower costs for US mineral processing facilities, the next administration’s Internal Revenue Service could propose new regulations extending the production costs covered by the Section 45X 10-percent production tax credit to feedstock acquisition, as has been urged by several organizations and mining companies.

• Procurement. Both the Trump and Biden-Harris administrations support increased domestic content requirements for government procurement. Under the authority of Executive Order 14005, the next administration’s Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council could issue a draft rule that adds a new part to the Federal Acquisition Regulations, requiring that acquisitions of specified clean energy technologies contain a certain threshold percentage of minerals extracted in the United States. For example, the draft rule could ultimately require that the General Services Administration—the federal government’s main source for procuring non-tactical vehicles—only acquire electric vehicles with batteries containing a high percentage of chemicals derived from US-extracted minerals. The next administration’s US Postal Service could adopt a similar content requirement in its Supplying Principles and Practices for electric vehicle acquisitions.

• Tariffs. Trump has pledged significant tariff increases, while the Biden-Harris Administration increased tariffs on several minerals imported from China. Domestic mineral projects like South32’s Hermosa manganese-zinc project support such trade protections to reduce US reliance on foreign minerals. The next president could (likely) impose tariffs on any mineral imports immediately under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The only prerequisite is a national emergency declaration, like the now-expired critical minerals executive order. If concerned about the legality of levying tariffs under IEEPA, the president could also direct the secretary of commerce to open a Section 232 investigation into mineral imports, although the tariff imposition would likely take several months to occur.

• Permitting. Both Trump and Harris support expedited permitting for building major projects. Previously, most US mining projects required Clean Water Act section 404 permits—which trigger the National Environmental Policy Act—but the Supreme Court’s decision in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency (2023) circumscribed the areas requiring these permits, possibly lowering the permitting requirements for many mine projects. Determining whether a project requires a section 404 permit, however, can take up to one year based on the district. To expedite this process, the next administration’s US Army Corps of Engineers could issue a regulatory guidance letter directing district engineers to prioritize the review of approved jurisdictional determinations for sites of potential mining projects.

In short, the next president’s administration has significant unilateral authority to support US mining of critical minerals. First, it could increase mineral stockpiling by tapping both the NDS Transaction Fund and DPA fund for mineral acquisitions.

The next administration could also expand existing subsidies—like the ATVM direct loan program—to mining projects. For government acquisitions of clean energy technologies, it could set content requirements for US-extracted minerals.

The next administration could, additionally, impose tariffs on mineral imports of their choosing by issuing a national emergency declaration concerning mineral imports under IEEPA.

Lastly, it could expedite permitting by prioritizing jurisdictional determinations for sites of potential mining projects. On January 20, 2025, the next US president could—and should—take these actions to bolster US mining of critical minerals.

** Gregory Wischer is the founder of Dei Gratia Minerals, a critical minerals consulting firm.