Investing in U.S. Natural Resources, Part 1: A Lithium Supply Crisis
By Jack Lifton
13 Dec 2006 at 04:09 PM EST
DETRIOT (ResourceInvestor.com) -- Myopia in the business and financial community has once again turned its narrow focus on a critical natural resource, the lightest metal, lithium, and has managed as usual to ignore the critical issue of supply while looking only at demand. I believe that an attentive small investor may therefore have an opportunity to jump on (and off) the lithium bandwagon before it is discovered by Wall Street’s hucksters and hypesters.
There isn’t enough lithium produced annually for the hedge funds, probably even, to be interested in cornering and controlling its supply to turn a fast buck. This is not because it involves too much capital, but exactly the opposite. All of the lithium produced globally in 2006, perhaps 24,000 metric tonnes (mt) of contained lithium, could be bought, at the top price reached, so far in 2006, $7000.00/mt, for $168 million.
This is hamster feed for private equity, and if someone, very young or very greedy, foolishly did decide to buy up all of the lithium to be produced in 2007, so as to cause a supply shortage and run the price up to two or three or more times the current level then the situation would implode. The price of lithium and the elimination or constriction of supply would then cause the big project, which I am about to discuss, that is dependent on lithium, to simply be cancelled or dramatically rolled back as too expensive and the increases would also cause the “ordinary uses of lithium to get more expensive, and if they got expensive enough then mechanisms such as new production, substitution, recycling, and project abandonment would begin to operate.
This is exactly what has happened with strategic metals such as molybdenum, and is about to happen with tungsten, and eventually will happen with the platinum group metals. I will write next week about tungsten’s potential for turmoil in 2007.
All you want to know about lithium and some good insights are found on the minerals data section of the website of the United States Geological Survey, the USGS.
The key to understanding the demand crisis, which I am here calling “the lithium supply crisis of 2007” is the political pressure on the world’s car makers to do something about their perceived contribution (7%) towards the total carbon dioxide emissions added to the earth’s atmosphere each year, which total is considered by most “experts” as “contributing” to the global warming trend that the earth’s climate may be undergoing. This trend is considered harmful by the most politically active individuals and groups that make up the global environmental, or green, constituency.
As I have written on Resource Investor before, in the last year the OEM automotive industry has taken on a new tack towards the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. The industry has decided to go forward with the production of significant numbers of the best-possible-at-the-moment technology for reducing the emissions of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and unburned hydrocarbons all of which are considered to be “causes” of global warming.
The new tack actually started in 1997 when Toyota went ahead, for the sake, they said, of the environment, with the production and sale of the hybrid (a combination of an internal combustion engine [ICE] and a rechargeable battery pack delivering electric current to electric motors mounted so as to deliver power directly to the wheels) powered car, the Prius. The Prius is a sales’ hit.
Toyota had the field to itself for awhile because it had caught the other large manufacturer’s almost completely off-guard. The hybrid Prius was a money loser for Toyota right out of the starting gate. It cost more to produce than it could possibly be sold for, and the major variable cost issue was the battery pack. Lead acid batteries could be used, but they were too heavy and would waste power just to drag themselves along. Toyota went with a battery technology that had not, before the Prius, been used for such a large application, the rechargeable nickel-metal-hydride battery.
Toyota, as it is said in Detroit, had prepared ahead of time by using a holistic approach to nickel-metal-hydride battery supply. Toyota’s trading company, TTK, had negotiated supplies of, for the critical nickel metal hydride production, rare earth metals, such as lanthanum and cerium, as well as the high temperature metal, molybdenum with primary Chinese suppliers. This was advantageous to China, because Toyota it is said even helped convince a major supplier of the battery technology, the then called Ovonic Battery, a subsidiary of Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. [Nasdaq:ENER], to build a plant in China, where these critical raw materials were guaranteed. Included in the cost of the deal for Ovonic was said to be a license to the Chinese to manufacture nickel-metal-hydride batteries.
Honda, caught unawares by Toyota’s actions, decided, finally, to buy some Toyota hybrid technology and equipment to produce an Acura hybrid while Honda continued its internal research to develop its own system in-house.
Nissan was silent at the time, and we now know that until 2005 the company thought that the hybrid was a niche vehicle and didn’t want to pursue its development or sale.
In the U.S., Ford jumped in with some hybrid SUVs in the early 2000s, but Ford had technology problems and decided with regard to which, if any, technologies Ford would use to attack the problem of reducing emissions.
GM put 1000 wholly electric, battery powered, vehicles into the California market during this immediate post Prius period and then withdrew and scrapped them to the dismay of environmental activists but not soon enough for automotive performance enthusiasts. This was clearly just a GM large scale experiment to gather data the company’s actions have since made clear.
In the last six months of 2006 there have been a flurry of announcements from the world’s car makers about the future of hybrids (with both gasoline and diesel ICEs), solely battery powered, and solely fuel cell powered vehicles all designed to reduce, primarily, carbon dioxide emissions. The most often mentioned fuel for the future hybrids, more efficient ICEs, and fuel cell powered vehicles is hydrogen, but for the next generation it is clear we will all be driving cars, which if they have an ICE, will be using gasoline or ethanol as a fuel.
The problem common to every power train design, which is in operation today or under development for use in the near term, is that it requires a higher performance and higher capacity from its batteries obtainable from any other electrochemical system other than the so-called lithium-ion system.
The common denominator of every announcement made this year by all of the companies that make up the global OEM automotive industry was that their future hybrids, battery powered, and fuel cell powered vehicles will use lithium based battery technology.
The most ambitious programs have been announced by GM, which has stated unequivocally that it will produce 1000s of fuel cell powered, most likely hydrogen fuelled, vehicles by 2012, and hundreds of thousands of hybrids by 2010. Even as early as next year, 2007, GM, BMW and DCX plan to manufacture and sell gasoline and diesel ICE based hybrid SUVs and trucks that get superior fuel consumption.
At this point we must remember that just a few months ago a statistically significant number of fires were found to have originated in faulty lithium-ion battery packs supplied by SONY to laptop computer manufacturers such as Dell and HP. This very public failure of lithium-ion battery packs alerted environmentalists and safety specialists to the not-ready-for-prime-time state of larger lithium-ion battery packs such as the hundreds of thousands of them that car makers were planning to install in the deluge of hybrids, battery powered and fuel cell powered cars coming soon.
SONY, which has now been surpassed as the world’s largest maker of consumer electronic goods by upstart Samsung of Korea, says that it will solve the lithium-ion battery problem, probably, by using one of two new lithium technologies. One called lithium-polymer membrane technology and the other, a, perhaps, sturdier version of the first, using lithium-ceramic membrane technology.
The OEM automobile companies using a technique borrowed from government are making soothing announcements that simply ignore the years of testing for reliability and safety that they normally trumpet before they jump first into the pool.
GM, Ford and Chrysler have just announced that they are contributing $15 million this year to the Advanced Battery Consortium, which they fund jointly along with an agency of the U.S. Federal Government to develop commercial battery application for environmental purposes. GM, Ford and Chrysler do not want to waste money. They know full well that money doesn’t buy discoveries or time. At most it buys the rapid development of what already is known or hoped to work. GM just paid Tiger Woods $20 million for one commercial for Buick. This tells us what they think of the Advanced Battery Consortium.
Renault has gone GM one better. They just announced that they will produce hundreds of thousands of safe reliable lithium battery technology using hybrids by 2010. And this will be done with in-house developed battery technology.
Every car maker has a similar public relations approach to solving the lithium battery technology problem that has reared its ugly head in the last six months.
Now for the wind up to this story:
The world’s lithium mining industry is in balance. There is no surplus inventory of material.
For the world’s carmakers to produce the nearly two million or so hybrids they have promised to sell in 2010 there will need to be a sharp increase in lithium production no matter how the battery design is finalized. There are no other technologies known that can provide the power and the capacity of lithium based technologies.
The United States has one primary producer of lithium, Chemetall Foote Corp, now a subsidiary of the high tech materials company, Rockwood Holdings Inc., [NYSE:ROC]. Rockwood is a high tech holding company that has the savvy to have bought not only America’s only lithium producer and its parent company, but also a silicon chip recycler just in the last year or two. The lithium mine in Nevada can be expanded, but it takes time. What does Rockwood know that we should also?
The United States today uses 8% of the world’s annual production of lithium. Although the exact figures are proprietary it seems clear that the U.S. is now a net importer of lithium.
There is today no viable way to recycle economically the lithium from current production lithium-ion batteries, which use some high value metals in their manufacturing that add to the recovered value significantly.
The hopes of the car companies in America are on a lithium-ion system, which today has less likelihood of commercial recycling than the previous lithium technology.
Every pound of lithium used to make the battery pack for a hybrid or an all-electric vehicle, if the total of 1 million vehicles per year by 2010 now promised by U.S. based car makers is produced, nearly doubles the total annual usage of lithium for all purposes in the U.S.
If all of the global OEM industry goes to lithium battery technology for its hybrids and electrics then every pound used by just the non-ICE powered cars now promised to be made by 2010 will use up more than 10% of the world’s annual production of lithium.
There is no substitute for lithium in the near term if the first mass production of hybrids and all electric battery powered cars are to meet their time tables for production and their promised performance characteristics.
My guess is that when the American OEM automotive industry executives figure that out they will be investing a lot more than $15 million with lithium producers to increase production as rapidly as possible and guarantee that they are not squeezed out by competitors through off-takes. I think this is already under way, but that the “lithium supply crisis” will only be recognized by Wall Street in 2007.
The world’s largest producer of lithium chemicals is Chile, but for Americans, our estimated reserves of 750,000 tonnes and the expertise and skill of ROC look a lot closer and better.
