Chile




Source: Geology.com

Source: Geology.com


The Salar de Atacama, in northern Chile, is a 3,000 km2 desert salt basin and the world’s largest producer of lithium. Two companies, Sociedad Quimica y Minera (SQM) and Rockwood Holdings, Inc., extract lithium from this brine. SQM has a claim of ~820 km2 and two operations in the nucleus. It currently produces lithium from its south-western operation. Rockwood has a claim of ~137 km2 and one operation in the south-east, part of which is devoted to lithium extraction. A buffer zone ofaround 100 km2 separates the two companies’ claims. Atacama’s salt nucleus, in the southern half of the salar, is a layer of halite (salt) with an area of around 1,400 km2 and a thickness of around 360 m in the center of the basin. In the uppermost 30 to 40 m of the halite layer, there are abundant pores between the halite crystals. This porous zone is referred to as an aquifer, and it contains a very saline solution (brine) that contains from 900 ppm to 7,000 ppm of lithium, the world’s highest known concentrations in brines of this type. Brine outside of this nucleus has lower but still important concentrations of lithium, up to 1,000 ppm. Recent estimates for reserves of lithium in the aquifer range from 1.0 to 7.25 Mt. Tahil estimates that the aquifer contains 1.0 Mt of lithium. SQM estimates that their claim contains 6.0 Mt of lithium reserves. Including SQM’s and Rockwood’s claims, the buffer zone, and a portion of the area to the north of the nucleus containing 400,000 tonnes of lithium, Evans estimates that the salar contains a total of 7.0 Mt of lithium reserves. Yaksic and Tilton also accept this estimate. Clarke and Harben have a slightly higher value of 7.25 Mt but provide no information on why they increased the estimate.

Companies active in Chile



Li3 Energy, Inc. (LIEG:US)


Sociedad Chilena Del Litio Limitada

Sociedad Quimica y Minera (NYSE:SQM 
SQM finally ended an almost four year long dispute with the Chilean Government, with the latter allowing the company to expand their lithium production quota from around roughly 50-60K tonnes today up to 216,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) through 2025.  As a result of this news, the markets responded by selling off lithium stocks across the board out of worries of an oversupply caused by SQM flooding the markets.
Talison Lithium (Tianqi Lithium Corporation-51%, Abemarle-49%) 
Wealth Minerals (WML:CN)



 
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)