Mexico wants to nationalize its lithium reserves
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has ordered the Energy Ministry to "take the necessary actions to carry out" the nationalization of the country's lithium reserves, Reuters reported, citing a decree the Mexican president signed on Sunday.
“Let's make the nation own this strategic mineral,” Obrador said at an event in Sonora, where the aforementioned decree designated a 907-square-mile area as a mining zone, designated Li-MX 1.
“What we are doing now (…) is nationalizing lithium so that it cannot be exploited by foreigners, neither by Russia, nor by China, nor by the United States. The oil and lithium belong to the nation, they belong to the Mexican people, to you, to everyone who lives in this region of Sonora, to all Mexicans,” Obrador said, quoted by the Mexico Daily Post.
At the same time, Obrador admitted that Mexico lacks the technology needed to extract lithium. According to Reuters, some studies have estimated the country's lithium reserves as high as 1.7 million tons. To exploit them, however, requires special technology, which Mexico does not have.
“Now comes the technological part, because the lithium here is, according to the technicians, in the clay (…) therefore it requires special treatment, but the researchers are already carrying out studies to find a way to extract it, work it, i.e. separate it from the clay and already have this raw material, which is essential for making batteries,” said the Mexican president.
The Obrador government created a state-owned lithium mining company last year following the announcement that lithium reserves will be nationalized, with the aim of positioning itself favorably for the energy transition.
Experts, however, were skeptical of the venture's success due to the nature of Mexico's lithium reserves: Lithium is mostly found in clay, and there is no commercially available technology to extract lithium from clay.
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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/il-messico-vuole-nazionalizzare-le-proprie-riserve-di-litio/ on Mon, 20 Feb 2023 10:04:23 +0000.