Nickel: Indonesia wants to create an OPEC-like cartel among producers
Indonesia, the world's largest nickel extractor, has proposed to Canada to create an OPEC-like group of major nickel producers "to coordinate and unify policies on nickel products," the ministry said . Indonesian Investments.
The proposal was made by Indonesian Investment Minister Bahlil Lahadalia during a meeting with Canadian International Trade Minister Mary Ng on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali.
"Through this collaboration, we hope that all nickel-producing countries will benefit from evenly distributed value addition," the Indonesian minister said, quoted by Reuters .
Canadian Ng tweeted about the meeting, saying she spoke with Bahlil Lahadalia "about the potential for partnerships to develop Indonesia's critical mineral value chains."
The Indonesian minister told the Financial Times last month that his country was considering forming a cartel to manage the supply of nickel and some other key metals for batteries, similar to what OPEC does for oil.
“I see merit in creating OPEC to manage oil trade governance and ensure predictability for potential investors and consumers,” Indonesian Investment Minister Bahlil Lahadalia told the Financial Times in an interview at the end of October. .
At the time, Indonesian officials told the FT that the country had not yet contacted other nickel-producing countries to discuss the idea of a producer group, adding that it was still working on the governance structure of a future alliance to be proposed to other manufacturers.
Indonesia has deposits of laterite-type nickel, which is of inferior quality and requires further energy-intensive processing to become battery nickel, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a July 2022 report. , Global Supply Chains of EV Batteries.
“Although Indonesia produces about 40% of the total nickel, little of this is currently used in the EV battery supply chain. The largest producers of Class 1 battery nickel are Russia, Canada and Australia,” the IEA said.
If this cartel were born, we would probably have the imposition of production quotas with an increase in mineral prices, even if the current market conditions are not simple.
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The article Nickel: Indonesia wants to create an OPEC-like cartel among producers comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/nichel-lindonesia-vuole-creare-un-cartello-simil-opec-fra-i-produttori/ on Thu, 17 Nov 2022 10:00:37 +0000.