3 ms·

Bolivia has 9 million tons of unexploited lithium reserves in their salt flats. "The region has 50% to 70% of the world's lithium reserves in the Salar de Uyun

by cwkoss 7y ago

Bolivia has 9 million tons of unexploited lithium reserves in their salt flats. "The region has 50% to 70% of the world's lithium reserves in the Salar de Uyuni salt flats." https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/11/bolivian-coup-comes-less-week-after-morales-stopped-multinational-firms-lithium-deal https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/11/bolivian-coup-c...

aalleavitch 7y ago
Between that and the natural gas, Bolivia will be a key natural resource in the eventual solar-dominated energy economy.
emmp 7y ago
That doesn't seem to track with the latest USGS numbers here. https://prd-wret.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/atoms/files/mcs-2019-lithi.pdf https://prd-wret.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium... Bolivia doesn't even chart for reserves (i.e., extractable right now). Have they brought significant capacity online in the last year since this report was collected? For resources (extractable in principle) there are 62 million tons of identified resources worldwide, of which Bolivia has 9 million tons. That is a lot, about 15%, but certainly no where near 50-70%. Notably Argentina has 14.8 million tons. I guess I'm just curious if there are better sources or if I'm misunderstanding the USGS report.
ksec 7y ago
>Bolivia has 9 million tons of unexploited lithium reserves in their salt flats. "The region has 50% to 70% of the world's lithium reserves in the Salar de Uyuni salt flats." >I actually think that it's less likely for companies to be going after the lithium than it is that they're going after the natural gas. BP has every incentive in the world to want to overthrow Morales. So basically lithium is Quantum, and some organisation wants the world to hold on to most of the World's Lithium Reserves?

3 ms·

Bolivia has 9 million tons of unexploited lithium reserves in their salt flats. "The region has 50% to 70% of the world's lithium reserves in the Salar de Uyun

by cwkoss 7y ago

aalleavitch 7y ago
Between that and the natural gas, Bolivia will be a key natural resource in the eventual solar-dominated energy economy.
emmp 7y ago
That doesn't seem to track with the latest USGS numbers here. https://prd-wret.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/atoms/files/mcs-2019-lithi.pdf https://prd-wret.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium... Bolivia doesn't even chart for reserves (i.e., extractable right now). Have they brought significant capacity online in the last year since this report was collected? For resources (extractable in principle) there are 62 million tons of identified resources worldwide, of which Bolivia has 9 million tons. That is a lot, about 15%, but certainly no where near 50-70%. Notably Argentina has 14.8 million tons. I guess I'm just curious if there are better sources or if I'm misunderstanding the USGS report.
ksec 7y ago
>Bolivia has 9 million tons of unexploited lithium reserves in their salt flats. "The region has 50% to 70% of the world's lithium reserves in the Salar de Uyuni salt flats." >I actually think that it's less likely for companies to be going after the lithium than it is that they're going after the natural gas. BP has every incentive in the world to want to overthrow Morales. So basically lithium is Quantum, and some organisation wants the world to hold on to most of the World's Lithium Reserves?