LITHIUM STOCKS AND CHARTS

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Lithium triangle: Rubbing the crystal ball.
hashtag#chile, hashtag#argentina, hashtag#bolivia, hashtag#oscarvargasvillazon, February 19, 2024.
How is this year coming in terms of lithium?

On the demand side, the machine continues to heat up, the electrification of the car fleet is irreversible, no one is going to stop anymore and sales of electric vehicles are growing at rates of more than 40% per year, the kind of figures that only disruptive technologies are capable of offering.

In this regard, if in 2010 humanity was satiated with one hundred thousand tons per year of lithium carbonate equivalent, this year 2024 will not be satisfied with less than twelve times that amount, 1.5 thousand tons. By 2030 the prediction is 20 million LCEs.

On the supply side, countries blessed with white gold will continue to respond to market signals by developing new projects proportionately, with two notable exceptions:

Bolivia: Still in the grip of the anachronistic nationalization implemented in 2008 that establishes that lithium carbonate production must be 100% state-owned.

However, this year 2024 the communist model will be abandoned, in order to reach pragmatic agreements: PPPs, public-private agreements with its three partners, CATL, Uranimium One and Citic Guoan Group, with whom for the moment it only has a framework agreement for studies in the pilot and demo phase, which indicates that in 2024, lithium production will continue to be at a pilot plant level, next to nothing.

Chile: President Boric will continue for now
without new initiatives, in a total inertia that caused US$ 6,000 million to escape from Chile to Argentina, during 2023.

At that snail's pace, he will have to be content with the suspicious agreement between CODELCO and SQM, to exploit lithium until 2060, there is a buyer who is very happy to have lithium uncontaminated until that date, he is a friend of (Turning point USA).

This agreement frees the mysterious and powerful buyer from the problem of lithium interruption and in the process gives a golden gift to Ponce Lerou, who is not only untouchable before justice, but is today the "godfather" of lithium in Chile.

Lithium mining will continue to be as newsworthy as
has been the trend during the recent past, which allows companies to make fortunes links Canadian stock exchange, just by announcing that they discovered the "holy grail" of Direct Lithium Extraction (DLS), of course we have seen in 2023 that in 99% of cases they were hoaxes.

Most importantly, at some point in the first quarter of 2024 we will know the details of the agreement between SQM and Codelco, whose Memorandum of Understanding was announced as a panacea for a Chilean industry that has been paralyzed for a year.

What is close, a word of a fortune teller, is that Chile will lose second place in production, surpassed by Argentina, China and Zimbabwe.