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Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoAny updates on the nu-LK99? Two weeks of nothing since it was abuzz here.
- api 3y agoLithium is not actually that rare. We are just now spending a lot of effort to find more of it.
- mista2nith 3y ago[dead]
- surfingdino 3y agoApparently the UK has some too and the economics of it make production viable https://www.wired.co.uk/article/cornwall-lithium https://www.wired.co.uk/article/cornwall-lithium
- latchkey 3y agoIf Thailand has it, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia probably do too. Edit: After checking on a map, probably Myanmar/Malaysia.
- kyawzazaw 3y agoAs someone from Myanmar, this piques my interest
- Rodmine 3y agoIt's the new oil, so I would be careful. Democracy and camaraderie and all those greater good things tend to come where the cheap resources are.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoDeposits appear sufficiently distributed to not cause geopolitical conflicts [1]. This is not oil. Lithium is relatively abundant, and a mineral to be reused, not energy to be consumed once through. To keep it conflict free, we must continue to discover reserves and drive down the value of the commodity. No one goes to war over say, salt, in the 21st century (at least not yet!). [1] https://lithiumfuture.org/map.html https://lithiumfuture.org/map.html
- latchkey 3y agoIt won't cause conflict because China will just come in and take it. Look at what they've done with the silkroads through Laos/Cambodia. "Here, take a 'free' hydrodam on your river and we will just take some land and electricity."
- TaylorAlexander 3y agoSounds like a trade to me. Predatory tho if the country is very poor and easily exploited. But as someone from a country that loves to invade others for resources I’d take predatory trading over military force any day.
- latchkey 3y agoYou didn't dive deep enough into the literal eco/social catastrophe that the silkroad is. It isn't military because neither of those two countries have any sort of way to defend themselves against China, but it might as well be military, because China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative
- iinnPP 3y agoThat's a whole lot better than the deal from the US, frankly.
- hnu234 3y ago> It won't cause conflict because China will just come in and take it... vs > "Here, take a 'free' hydrodam on your river and we will just take some land and electricity." So which is it? They will 'take it' or they will trade for it? That's the problem with anti-chinese propaganda. It makes no sense and is full of contradictions.
- drak0n1c 3y agoMyanmar has the most bountiful gem mines in the world. I visited in 2019 and there were many shops with piles of ruby, jade, sapphire, even amber. They're already pretty specialized in mining and have little qualms about razing mining areas so would be able to take quick advantage - if their civil conflict allows.
- kingkongjaffa 3y ago> Myanmar has the most bountiful gem mines in the world. I assume that's hyperbole because I couldn't find a list of top producing countries that included Myanmar, do you have a link?
- seaal 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myanmar#Extractive_industries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myanmar#Extractive_industries > Myanmar produces precious stones such as rubies, sapphires, pearls, and jade. Rubies are the biggest earner; 90% of the world's rubies come from the country, whose red stones are prized for their purity and hue. The article that is cited is from 2010, seems like overall gem production has decreased significantly since then. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1061659/myanmar-production-volume-of-gems/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1061659/myanmar-producti...
- crossroadsguy 3y agoWell, it’s definitely not ideal. But if history is anything to go by, then either they themselves take it and maybe by killing each other; or someone from outside will come and do the killing for them and then take it all and also sell some freedoms while they’d be at it.
- huytersd 3y agoAnecdotal evidence can be misleading. I went to India and saw a literal pile, 7 ft high and maybe 10 ft in diameter of emeralds casually “stored” in a corner of a room but I don’t think India produces all that many emeralds (it’s primarily a cutting hub).
- panzi 3y agoGiven where the province is I would only speculate for Myanmar and Malaysia.
- latchkey 3y agoI admit that I didn't check closely enough on a map and now that I have, you're probably right about that.
- _aaed 3y agoCan't wait for the next genocide in the region, all in the name of freedom
- m00x 3y agoBecause there's not currently a genocide happening in the region? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide
- downrightmike 3y agoMyanmar is in active civil war and under sanctions https://www.state.gov/burma-sanctions/ https://www.state.gov/burma-sanctions/ Even if they did find it, no one would be able to use it.
- mikhailfranco 3y agoThe Chinese fund and own several regional warlords and resource mafias. They can probably bribe and subvert their way into any promising lithium find.
- buggythebug 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkcJEvMcnEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkcJEvMcnEg
- setgree 3y agowhen valuable resources are scarce, people have an incentive to find and produce more of those resources. As Henry George put it: "Both the jayhawk and the man eat chickens, but the more jayhawks, the fewer chickens, while the more men, the more chickens" [0]. [0] https://www.econlib.org/archives/2009/12/the_gist_of_jul.html https://www.econlib.org/archives/2009/12/the_gist_of_jul.htm...
- Waterluvian 3y agoLike with chickens, the Jayhawk should just learn to fuse hydrogen down to lithium. I think the analogy doesn’t quite work. Humans produce chickens because we can do that. We find more lithium because we need it. Jayhawks can also evolve to get better at finding more chickens. And by their very nature, have been doing exactly that.
- wolverine876 3y agoEvolution is a bit slow. How many millenia will it take the Jayhawks to figure it out? Humans can increase chicken production this year or maybe next.
- Waterluvian 3y agoFor sure. That’s what makes us exceptional. What I’m mainly pointing to is that we can’t currently just mass produce lithium. We just go around looking for it more.
- setgree 3y agohttps://www.cato.org/economic-development-bulletin/julian-simon-was-right-half-century-population-growth-increasing#simon-s-wisdom-in-historical-perspective https://www.cato.org/economic-development-bulletin/julian-si... > when a particular resource becomes scarcer, its price increases, and that change incentivizes people to discover more of the resource, ration it, recycle it, or develop a substitute for it. As such, population growth and resource use do not automatically lead to higher commodity prices in the long run. So no, we can't mass produce lithium, but a high enough price might drive someone to discover a substitute.
- brianbreslin 3y agoDoes this mean other elements like cobalt are becoming the bigger bottleneck in battery production? The US found a large lithium reserve in Nevada not long ago; or to be clear a large reserve that they can now more affordably extract. As another commenter said its not that rare, just wasn't cheap to extract before.
- cbg0 3y agoLFP batteries don't use cobalt.
- mbgerring 3y agoOr nickel!
- xeromal 3y agoPretty sure the Salton Sea in california is gonna be a big lithium mine once it dries up
- pkaye 3y agoThere is also the lithium in the California Salton Sea which is further along in getting into production. https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/us-department-energy-analysis-confirms-californias-salton-sea-region-be-rich-domestic https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/us-department-energy-an...
- Throw84949 3y agoLithium is quite common. Problem is minign it without totally destroying local environment!
- unglaublich 3y agoIronically, undestroyed local environment is getting quite rare.
- bregma 3y agoLithium is quite common in the ground. Mines are a dime a dozen all over the world. Mining it is the easy part. All processing is done by a handful of plants in China. It needs to be shipped to China, and the products need to be shipped from China to wherever they're used. Mining it is hard on the environment, yes, but it's just a drop in the bucket compared with the part no one talks about.
- ashconnor 3y agoDon't worry the Thai government won't care about the environment.
- riffic 3y ago[flagged]
- greggsy 3y agoLese Majeste has nothing to do with this news. Every country has problems.
- genman 3y ago[flagged]
- bobthepanda 3y agoat the same time Thailand is no Congo. the reason stuff like this gets downvoted is that it's pretty counterproductive to list a country's sins every single time an article remotely relevant is posted, to have it devolve in to a flame war
- linhns 3y agoAnd make everyone take extra scrolls.
- genman 3y agoYes, indeed, it is not, but coincidentally today a person was imprisoned for 50 years for being a little critical about the king of Thailand. 50 years! A young man! It clearly foreshadows this otherwise very good news. Many people I know live considerable time of the year in Thailand and they are very supportive of the country but in my opinion this particular legislation clearly reminds that not everything is good there and there exists a considerable risk to personal freedom. I think that we should be vocal about this and not accept it as a "local peculiarity" - voicing disagreement actually can change the world to a better place as silently accepting a wrongdoing clearly does not. Similarly we should not close our eyes in case of US when it is gravitation toward less freedom. But this news is not about US.
- maliker 3y agoLooks like existing worldwide reserves are 26M tons [0], so this is a big find. [0] https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2023/mcs2023-lithium.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2023/mcs2023-lithium.pd...
- SeanAnderson 3y agoThe second sentence of the article states, "The find means Thailand has the third largest lithium resources, behind Bolivia and Argentina, but it is not yet clear how much can be exploited commercially." If Thailand has 14M and there are two others with >14M then total known resources must be at least 42M tons, no?
- DougBTX 3y agoReserves and resources are different measures, same doc says 98M resources.
- marcosdumay 3y agoReserves are only defined when you also state a price. It's not a free number. Those people are probably using different prices, and not communicating them.
- whimsicalism 3y agoWhat? These are denominated in tons, not dollars.
- Vecr 3y agoTons economically extractable at that price.
- adgjlsfhk1 3y agoThe point is that reserves are only economically viable at a given price. At $0 there are 0 reserves because no one is willing to give you lithium. At $1 mil per kg, there is basically infinite reverses because you can do things like dig up the entire earth's crust and filter all the lithium out of it.
- cynicbot2024 3y ago[flagged]
- genman 3y agoThere is important lesson to learn from here. Everybody who claims that there is not enough some mineral for something must consider the following. First in every moment in time there are certain number of mineral resources - these are known deposits that are not all necessarily accessible economically, but some of them are - these are reserves. If the demand for something increases then also the price will increase, making more of the resources available as usable reserves at the new price point. At the same time it increases the incentives to find even more new resources. More over, if there is certain amount of mineral already in circulation then it may suddenly become economically viable to recycle it, limiting the demand for new resources. What is important to observe instead is if the increase in production can follow the increase in demand and if the resources grow at such speed that the growth can continue. https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/lithium-electric-vehicles https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/lithium-electric-v...
- gregwebs 3y agoThat's a good article. The issue is not finding another tonne of lithium, the issue is cranking up production. The article says 4-5 years minimum to build a mine, but sometimes it takes 10 years. So there is a supply issue- it is the supply produced by mines. We still could be in for more lithium prices shocks in the future as happened during the pandemic because the mining production can't elastically expand or contract (financing can make shutting down a non-option) as fast as demand. Building out a recycling program is something should be able to be done more quickly than building out a mine but there may still be issues if we don't design for recycling from the beginning. > The world doesn’t currently have the production capacity in mining operations to scale to this level. And, the problem is that the minimum time to build lithium mines is four to five years. They can be even longer – especially the lithium extracted from brine because it takes a long time to pump the saltwater out, before waiting for it to evaporate. > Countries have already invested in some increases in capacity, but we will need much more if we’re to keep up with demand. > This is a short-term challenge, and one that is typical of a fast-moving market. We’re playing catch-up. But, it’s a problem that we can’t afford: it could slow the decline in battery prices, and limit the number of EVs that companies can produce. > If we want to move the EV transition forward, we need to mine more lithium. And we need to do it quickly.
- wnevets 3y agoHow more stories do we need about finding lithium and "rare" earth metals being found before people realize they're not all that rare and we can stop reporting on it as if it's special?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- adtac 3y agoRare earth metals aren't actually rare. It's a misnomer. Some of them are pretty common. It's just that they're hard to extract and refine.
- whynotmaybe 3y agoLithium is so 'not' rare that you can find it in the geothermal water in... Belgium. https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/geothermal-developer-hita-sees-lithium-option-in-belgium/amp/ https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/geothermal-developer-hita-see...
- Accujack 3y agoOr under the Salton Sea.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- EasyMark 3y agoRare is not what you think it is in that context. Wikipedia article would be instructive as to why
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mullingitover 3y agoTechnically every non-landlocked county has a near-infinite supply of lithium. It's the extraction costs that are the problem.
- WrongAssumption 3y agoReserves take extraction cost into account.
- laweijfmvo 3y agoI'm assuming it's not a giant 15M ton chunk of (highly reactive) metal in the ground, but rather they took a bucket of dirt, analyzed it, and extrapolated how much lithium is available in the ground. My question is, how much "earth" do they need to dig up and refine to extract this amount of lithium?
- s0rce 3y agothis site says 0.4% so they would need to extract 3.5B tons of rock https://thethaiger.com/news/national/thai-lithium-deposits-outmatch-global-counterparts-boosting-ev-production https://thethaiger.com/news/national/thai-lithium-deposits-o...
- rmm 3y agoIts not. Its 0.4% of the 15M Tonnes. (so much smaller) This is most likely government minister/media hype.
- hackernewds 3y agodouble check your math
- herdrick 3y agoNormally an announcement like this would be based on a program of drilling. But yes there would be a lot of interpolation and I think some extrapolation.
- rmm 3y agofrom what i can see the media/government minister have blown this out of proportion. First off it looks like they identified 15M tonnes of lithium hosting rock (pegmatite) which has a grade of 0.4% of lithium in the form of spodumene (which then needs ot be processed to extract the lithium out of). But in general, how it works is they drill a bunch of holes in the ground and analyse the cores. From that that interpolate the size/shape of the ore body and calculate an estimate of size. The more holes they drill the greater the confidence. There is a lot of 'art' to this science
- oblio 3y agoOil is the standard example. I forgot what the exact peak oil production years were supposed to be, but they went something like this: In 1880 peak oil was expected to be 1910. In 1910 it was 1940. In 1940 it became 1970. Etc. Basically we kept finding more and more as technology and practical prospecting experience advanced.
- AdamH12113 3y agoUS oil production did, in fact, peak in 1970 and declined for decades afterward. Production only started to increase again about 15 years ago with the widespread use of hydraulic fracturing. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS2&f=M https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M... EDIT: To be clear, I am responding to a specific, narrow idea implied by the parent comment: that there was a prediction of peak oil in 1970, and that that prediction failed. I wanted to clarify the history. I know that global oil production continued to increase.
- kfrzcode 3y agoProductions; what about reserves?
- dwighttk 3y agoProduction is not the same as existence
- stouset 3y agoEvery year global we discover fewer additional oil reserves than what we are currently burning. Not that it matters. If we burn what we’ve already discovered, we’ll already be completely fucked from a greenhouse gas perspective.
- m00x 3y agoWe were heading into an ice age, which would be just as bad for humans. The issue is that we built a bunch of things that depend on the current climate, but the climate has been changing for a long time and will keep changing. We need to adapt to it or find a way to adapt it. The holocene is an incredibly small period compared to the age of the Earth. Nature doesn't gaf, it'll cycle in and out and we'll have to adapt.
- scythe 3y agoApparently this has been disputed: https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/general/2727119/thai-lithium-deposit-figures-hotly-debated https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/general/2727119/thai-li... >But Jessada Denduangboripant, another lecturer with the same faculty, used his Facebook page to offer a reality check. The 14.8 million tonnes, he wrote, represents the pegmatite igneous rocks that contains around 0.45% of lithium. This is a cumulative find in an ongoing exploration project that has identified multiple sites with various grades of lithium-bearing rock: https://www.chemanalyst.com/NewsAndDeals/NewsDetails/thailand-lithium-resource-upgrade-on-pan-asias-radar-16930 https://www.chemanalyst.com/NewsAndDeals/NewsDetails/thailan... The true quantity of lithium resources in Thailand will probably continue to be adjusted over the coming year, but it probably hasn't crossed the 10M mark.
- rkunde 3y agoWhat are the chances of battery tech advancing beyond lithium before extraction of these deposit can even begin at scale?
- mrinterweb 3y agoI've been wondering the same. Battery tech seems like there are new breakthroughs weekly. Investing billions in extraction/production seems like a pretty big gamble if by the time you're operational your tech is outdated. Still, even if there is a game changing battery tech breakthrough, it would take years before it could make it to mass production and adoption.
- Gravityloss 3y agoHmm so 300 million cars with 50 kg lithium in each. That's about four years worth of global car production. Would make a dent in oil usage certainly!
- kwhitefoot 3y agoAn EV doesn't have 50 kg of lithium. The 70 kWh battery in my Tesla S has about 12 kg of lithium.
- Gravityloss 3y agoHmm the the first source I found said 60 kg but now found others saying a lot less like only 6 kg. https://electrek.co/2016/11/01/breakdown-raw-materials-tesla-batteries-possible-bottleneck/ https://electrek.co/2016/11/01/breakdown-raw-materials-tesla... https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/the-key-minerals-in-an-ev-battery/ https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/the-key-minerals-in-an...
- Aloisius 3y agoThe 63 kg number is lithium carbonate equivalent, not elemental lithium. It originated from a Goldman report and they used it because lithium carbonate is what's traded.
- stetrain 3y agoAnd long term the supply a new lithium needed per year will be less than that needed to meet that year's global car production. Most of the metals used in EV batteries are recyclable, they aren't consumed permanently by putting them in a battery.
- saos 3y agoTheir govt should be all over that before they get leeched
- _heimdall 3y agoOne thing I didn't see mentioned here, lithium brine extraction has some pretty serious environmental downsides. Finding all that lithium will be a win if/when its extracted and usable, actually extracting it is a different story.
- epistasis 3y agoI hear people complain about this, but they never place it in context with the damage from, say, iron or copper mining. I've done lots of web searches, read lots of articles, and there's never definitive measures of harm or comparisons to what current mining does. In a standard f150, how much damage is done from mining? How much damage comes from oil extraction compared to the one-time cost to extract lithium?
- _heimdall 3y agoOh for sure, I have no idea how similar comparisons would shake out. I can say, though, that such comparisons pretty easily lead to tragedy of the commons problems. If we want to decrease our impact on the environment we need to stop using so much energy and so many resources, period. Chasing the next miracle cure, in this case lithium batteries for energy storage, we can easily run down that path picking up all the ecological damage of lithium mining and new manufacturing only to find that there are new problems and we're not much better off, we simply have different problems and a similar level if environmental damage as if had we stayed on the original path. Now that doesn't mean I don't have hope for alternative energies or think we should decrease dependence on nonrenewable sources. I do like the promise of wind, solar, nuclear. etc and also think we should be killing off non-renewables as quickly as possible. I just hope we don't attempt to treat environmental impact as a zero sum game, signing off on more damage based on not exceeding the damage caused by current systems. I also hope we don't stick to a consistent growth of 2-3% in annual energy consumption, its no coincidence that number matches GDP targets and its unsustainable.
- panick21_ 3y ago> If we want to decrease our impact on the environment we need to stop using so much energy and so many resources, period. That is fundamentally false. Energy austerity is the road to poverty and more environmental damage. Not to mention war. > Chasing the next miracle cure Nobody is claiming any miracles. > we can easily run down that path picking up all the ecological damage of lithium mining and new manufacturing only to find that there are new problems and we're not much better off, we simply have different problems and a similar level if environmental damage as if had we stayed on the original path. Sure, but we can also do basic research on the subject. Then make reasonable choices about that. And that's what happened. Lithium mining is not nearly the problem some of the propaganda suggest. At worsts its like other mining. Mostly its better. The total lithium amount needed is tiny even if you think all cars are going to be lithium batteries. Lithium mining is a drop in the bucked compared to iron and friends. > I also hope we don't stick to a consistent growth of 2-3% in annual energy consumption, its no coincidence that number matches GDP targets and its unsustainable. Its not unsustainable actually. What you are really arguing actually is 'why should people in India and China be rich, it would be much better if they were poor'. Are you gone determine what is 'rich enough' and when people should stop? Is Europe to rich already? Are you gone tell poor Americans 'sorry, you can't use more energy'. Energy poverty isn't the solution to anything.
- tiffanyh 3y agoDumb question: how do they measure/know it's "15M tonnes". Meaning, it's not like they just found one big 15M tonne solid bar of lithium.
- great_psy 3y agoI think there’s different ways: - take random samples from the area and statistically come up with that value - put a radar/sonar/ xray etc in a hole and get an outline of how big the deposit is. I did not work in this field explicitly, but worked on Gaussian processes which were first used as a way to aggregate data like this from multiple sources to minimize the number of drillings required to find oil.
- rmm 3y agonot a dumb question, as seen by the fact that the media/government minister etc. have blown this story out of proportion. In reality its most likely 15M tonnes inferrred resource of 0.4% lithium content So much smaller amount of actual lithium. They work this out by doing core drilling, and then inferring/extrapolating the size/shape of the orebody boundaries. (Im a mining engineer)
- specialist 3y agoAside: The global trade community should insist countries set up sovereign wealth funds wrt exports tied to resource extraction. Like Norway did (FTW) and Australia didn't (ruefully).
- brianmcc 3y agoHighly recommend this if you've not heard of it yet, goes into detail about lithium and some other vital raw materials : https://www.amazon.co.uk/Material-World-Substantial-Story-Future-ebook/dp/B0BFGZJDVH/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Material-World-Substantial-Story-Fu... "Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium. They built our world, and they will transform our future."
- darth_avocado 3y agoThis was discovered in Phang Nga. It is full of natural beauty and has some of the most recognizable tourist spots. I wonder how those would be affected.
- alpineidyll3 3y ago[flagged]
- outlore 3y agoThe cultural significance of the resource wars in the middle east has been immense. I wonder if the modern imperial powers will wage new wars for resources in east Asia in the future.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ggm 3y agoLithium mines in australia (spodumene) are either delaying opening, or shutting down because market prices have fallen below cost of production. There is no shortage of lithium.
- rmm 3y agoThis is my wheelhouse (mining engineer) and sorry to say this is bunk from what i can see. Its not 15M Tonnes of Lithium. Its 15M Tonnes of lithium containing ore, with an average grade of 0.4% (which i also question without seening core results). Also terms such as "resource" and "reserve" have very specific meaning in mining (to do with economic viability of deposity/ level of confidence) and this is by no way a "reserve". Most likely overzealous government minister/media hyper. (sorry to rain on parade!)
- bboygravity 3y agoThe real info is always in the comments.
- kronks 3y ago[dead]
- manvillej 3y agoso like 6 million KG of lithium. or enough lithium for 750,000 EV cars
- mkl 3y ago15,000,000t×0.004 = 60,000,000kg. 60,000,000kg/63kg per car [1] ≈ 952,000 cars, about 55% of Tesla's production last year. [1] https://electrek.co/2016/11/01/breakdown-raw-materials-tesla-batteries-possible-bottleneck/ https://electrek.co/2016/11/01/breakdown-raw-materials-tesla...
- uoaei 3y agoYikes, looks like EVs are gonna be resource-constrained real soon unless new battery tech emerges.
- Throwawayh89 3y agoOr new lithium sources
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoWhile all y'all are muttering about EVs and batteries, psychiatrists and phrmacists alike are salivating at how they can expand diagnoses of bipolar disorder and drug patients with lithium carbonate medication. That's the primary aim of these discoveries.
- Geee 3y agoEarth is huge. It's diameter is almost 13,000 kilometers. The deepest mine is 4 km. There's plenty of stuff.
- andrewstuart 3y agoAny such discovery in Australia is assumed to be owned by our minerals billionaires.
- jongjong 3y ago15 million tonnes of Lithium... That reminds me. Isn't Thailand a monarchy? How long until US government decides to restore democracy there?
- print_r 3y agoWhenever I read articles like this about a small country that finds a rare resource I can't help but think about playing civ 5 in late game and finding out that I have a ton of uranium on my land.
- dudeinjapan 3y agoRIP Kurt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkcJEvMcnEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkcJEvMcnEg
- mikhailfranco 3y agoI would be interested to see any detailed locations of the finds. Phang Nga ('Paang Nah') is a very beautiful province, with spectacular limestone mountains, tilting down to the south, to become astonishing stacks and islands in Phang Nga Bay and the Andaman Gulf. But it also includes a long west coast from Phuket up to Ranong. There are several National Parks and scenic areas. So protection and access may both be problems for any exploitation. However, Thailand is very corrupt, so Chinese money will find a way.