Via Vedomosti, a report that Rosatom will mine lithium in Bolivia, an investment estimated at $600 million:

Uranium One (U1) , which is part of the state corporation Rosatom , has won a tender to develop a lithium deposit in Bolivia. This was reported to Vedomosti by a representative of Techsnabexport (TENEX; the head office of Uranium One).

We are talking about the development of Salar “Pastos Grandes”. Salars in Latin America are called salt marshes – dried lakes with a high salt content, which are abundant in the province of Potosi in southwestern Bolivia. An agreement on the establishment of a complex for the extraction of lithium was signed by U1 on June 29 with the Bolivian state company Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB). Lithium mining, according to a representative of Techsnabexport, is planned on the basis of the Russian technology of direct sorption extraction of metal from lithium-containing brines.

The agreement also provides for the construction of a plant for the production of “battery quality” lithium carbonate used for the production of batteries with a capacity of 25,000 tons per year with the launch of the first stage in 2025, the representative of Techsnabexport specified. Investments in the project are estimated at $600 million.

But the investor has yet to conduct additional surveys at the field to clarify the reserves and build all the necessary infrastructure from scratch, says a Vedomosti source familiar with the details of the project.

In January 2023, it was reported that the Bolivian authorities, following a tender, selected a consortium of Chinese companies led by the CBC Group to mine lithium in the country. It also included the largest battery manufacturer CATL and mining company CMOC. They were allowed to develop two of the three lithium salt marshes – the world’s largest deposit, Uyuni, which accounts for about a quarter of the world’s reserves, and Koipas.

CBC also received the rights to build two lithium plants as part of the deal, each of which will be able to produce up to 25,000 tons of lithium carbonate for batteries annually. YLB plays a leading role in the project. Investments in the first phase of the project, as Bolivian President Luis Arce specified during the signing ceremony of the agreement in La Paz, will amount to $1 billion.

In October 2022, the Financial Times wrote that Chinese companies and the Russian Rosatom were leading the fight for Bolivian lithium. This was also confirmed by a Vedomosti source close to the state corporation (see issue dated October 17, 2022). In the race for giant lithium deposits, in addition to companies from Russia and China, the American Lilac Solutions, supported by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, also participated.

Negotiations on a possible partnership with other foreign firms, including Lilac Solutions and the Rosatom structure, are ongoing, Arce said at the time. “Today, the era of industrialization of Bolivian lithium begins. There is no time to waste [on the development of the metal],” he emphasized (quoted by Reuters).

Attempts to industrialize Bolivia based on the development and commercialization of lithium deposits have been made since 2008 under former President Evo Morales. But they actually failed. Moreover, the resignation of Morales himself in 2019 was the result of a “lithium riot”. The politician was then forced to terminate the agreement signed in 2018 on the extraction of lithium with the German ACISA due to protests in Potosi, the capital of the region with the largest reserves of this metal in Bolivia.

Rosatom already has experience of cooperation with Bolivia: the state corporation received a contract from the government of the country to create a center for nuclear research and technology, the first facilities of which were put into operation in August 2022.

Rosatom is interested in gaining access to lithium reserves, including for the development of its own project for the production of batteries . Renera (part of the fuel division of Rosatom TVEL ) is building a gigafactory with a capacity of 4 GWh per year at the site of the Baltic NPP in Kaliningrad. The company is expected to start operating in 2026.

Polar Lithium, a joint venture between Atomredmetzoloto (ARMZ, part of Rosatom ) and Norilsk Nickel, in early February 2023 received the right to develop the largest lithium deposit in Russia in the Murmansk region – Kolmozerskoye with reserves of 75 million tons ( about 19% of all reserves in the Russian Federation). The project involves the production of 45,000 tons per year of lithium carbonate and hydroxide.

Today Renera is the only manufacturer of lithium-ion storage devices in Russia. At the same time, lithium itself is not mined in the Russian Federation, all raw materials are imported. The mine operated in the USSR at the Zavitinsky deposit in the Trans-Baikal Territory was mothballed back in 1997.

Market conditions are generally favorable for investment projects in this metal: lithium has risen in price by more than 10 times since the end of 2020 against the backdrop of growing demand for electric vehicles. According to Alfa-Bank , in 2022 its cost exceeded $80,000 per ton.

But in 2022, lithium carbonate prices, as noted by the managing director of the NRA rating service Sergey Grishunin, went down: by April of this year, they had fallen to $34,100/t against more than $85,000/t in November 2022. At the end of June 2023 ., according to the Analytical Center (AC) of the Fuel and Energy Complex of the Ministry of Energy of Russia, the price is about $42,500/t. But this fall in prices, caused by panic on world trading floors, according to Grishunin, so far “does not undermine the actual demand for metal,” as the production of electric vehicles in the world is growing and there are no plans to abandon the mass introduction of electric transport.

Global demand for lithium has more than quadrupled since 2015, adds Denis Deryushkin, head of consulting at the AC Fuel and Energy Complex. In 2022, global lithium consumption, he said, amounted to 0.7 million tons of LCE (lithium carbonate equivalent). It is expected that by 2030, against the backdrop of the development of electric transport, it can grow by about five times more than the current level, he adds.

Access to Bolivian lithium, according to Grishunin, will allow Rosatom to diversify supplies, since the development of the Kolmozerskoye field will take four to seven years. “In addition, Bolivian lithium is produced from brines, which means it will be at least 2–2.5 times cheaper than domestically produced lithium,” Grishunin added.

At the same time, the technology of extraction from salt lakes, according to Alexey Volostnov, a partner at Strategy Partners, is new and has been developed only at the level of “laboratory and pilot”. An industrial production scheme has not yet been applied, its effectiveness on specific projects has yet to be assessed, he believes. The expert notes that today Australia, China, Argentina, Chile and Bolivia are the leading lithium producing countries, but other states are also showing interest in lithium projects.

Grishunin also recalled that Latin American countries have recently “declared their desire to create a lithium OPEC” to reduce market volatility.