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Gold, Copper and Rare Earths at Pakistan's Reko Diq Could Exceed $500 Billion
The sale of Reko Diq mining rights is currently being reviewed by Pakistan Supreme Court in response to allegations of lack of transprarency. The entire discussion in the courtroom is primarily centered on valuations and estimates of traditional metals like gold and copper. The second topic of discussion in the apex court is about the absence of any contract provisions for development of downstream job-creating industries to extract these metals.
What is conspicuously absent from the debate is the potential for extraction at Reqo Diq of rare earth elements that are even more precious and in much greater and growing demand for the latest high-tech equipment and batteries for all-electric autos, communications, and other applications than traditional precious metals like gold and silver. It is the estimates of these rare earths at Reqo Diq that could put the value of the contract at considerably more than the current best estimates of $500 billion for copper and gold.
Recent trade disputes between China and its major trading partners in the United States, Europe and Japan have been the result of China restricting rare earth exports.
A current production Toyota Prius nickel metal hydride battery pack uses 30 kilograms of nickel, 2 kilograms of cobalt and 12 kilograms of lanthanum because the active hydrogen storage alloy in the battery is either LaNi4.5Co0.5 or (Ce, La, Nd, Pr)Ni5. The Prius assembly plant in Japan has so far used one and 1.5 million rechargeable nickel metal hydride battery packs and achieved with them some of the lowest numbers of service issues ever seen in the OEM automotive industry. In fact most of the original Prius rechargeable nickel metal hydride battery packs have exceeded their 8-year 100,000 mile warranty and are still functioning, according to Resource Investor website.
China controls 95% of the world’s supply of rare earth elements, a class of ores used not just in Toyota Prius electric motors and batteries but in a wide range of high-technology applications, from sonar systems to wind turbines, mobile phones and fluorescent lights.
All this gives China an extraordinary - some might say unfair - advantage to lead the race to dominate the manufacture of cutting-edge technology, according to the Wall Street Journal. Even before any major technology partnership announcements, there are reports that the legendary US investor Warren Buffet is investing in BYD, an obscure Chinese battery, mobile phone, and electric car company.
Here is how an expert who asked not to be named explained the mining potential in Balochistan:
"The Pegmatite rock that covers much of Balochistan (and other parts of Pakistan as well) has several different gems, in it which have been mined for a long time. These are easy to visualize as they differ in color from the rest of the rock, and can be removed with a small geologist's hammer. Pegmatite, though, also contains uranium which can be separated using a Geiger Counter, and rare metals and rare earths. Some of these like Lithium can be separated relatively easily. Others like Samarium and Dysprosium are vastly more difficult to separate because you need X-Ray equipment to help identify them. Also, their presence is very small - that is why they are classed as "rare." The presence of many of these metals was not known to science until recently and until the Japanese began to use them in electronics, hardly any effort was made to mine them. Now, of course, they are all the rage because they have been found especially useful in the latest "green" generation equipment as well as in defense and other applications. Indeed, until China banned their sale to Japan, no one really even bothered about them - it suited the Japanese to remain quiet as they were getting very good prices for these resources from an unaware Chinese, and the same thing is now happening in other parts of the world, in Pakistan in this case.
Much of the testing that is involved here is difficult and requires very advanced technical equipment, and even methods like gas spectrometry etc may not help identify materials that exist in extremely small percentages in soil or rock. In India for example, some of these metal reserves were not known until the USGS first and then the Russians helped analyze soil and rocks across the country. If nothing else, the Indians formed a government owned company called Indian Rare earths Limited which comes under the Atomic Energy Commission and is directly under the Prime Minister of India. They do seem to have handled the conservation and exploitation of these reserves far better than is being done in Pakistan."
Given the potential for tremendous mineral wealth at Reqo Diq, Saindak and other similar sites in Balochistan and elsewhere in Pakistan, it is extremely important for the Supreme Court to insist on an independent panel of experts to evaluate it, and to base court orders on the findings of such panel. How the Supreme Court tackles these issues now will have a significant impact on the future well-being of Pakistan in terms of the availablity of public funds for spending on education, health care and other badly needed human development projects in Balochistan and elsewhere in the country.
Click here for a video clip from GeoTV on Reko Diq.
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Comment by Riaz Haq on September 7, 2020 at 4:25pm
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#Pakistan seeks relief from $5.8 Billion fine over Reko Diq #copper/#gold mining lease in #Balochistan. Economist Jeffrey Sachs calls it “mugging” of Pakistan. Others question reasoning behind huge award, over 2X biggest prior awards. .https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pakistan-seeking-relief-5-8b-0558303... via @YahooFinance
Pakistan is seeking the reversal of a $5.8 billion penalty imposed by an international tribunal for denying a mining lease to an Australian company, saying that paying the fine would hinder its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Reko Diq district in southwestern Pakistan’s Baluchistan province is famed for its mineral wealth, including gold and copper. Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government considers it a strategic national asset, though instead of yielding a bonanza the Reko Diq mining project may cost the country dearly.
The World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes is considering Pakistan's appeal against enforcing the penalty over its cancellation of the Reko Diq mining lease for Tethyan Copper Corp., a 50-50 joint venture of Barrick Gold Corp. of Australia and Antofagasto PLC of Chile.
In the meantime, the Baluchistan government has set up its own company to develop the mine: As prices for commodities surge, with gold recently at more than $2,000 an ounce, turning fiasco to fortune is all the more appealing.
Pakistan and Tethyan both have signaled a willingness to discuss alternative solutions, such as a settlement, but the status of any talks on a deal is unclear. Officials on the Pakistan side said they have not been in direct contact and no specific settlement has been proposed.
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By then, Tethyan had invested $220 million in Reko Diq. The Australian mining company sought help from the World Bank arbitration tribunal in 2012, and it ruled against Pakistan in 2017, rejecting an earlier decision against Tethyan by the Pakistan Supreme Court.
The miner originally sought $8.5 billion. The tribunal opted to use a formula for calculating damages for the cancelled lease based on the assumed profits Tethyan might have earned from the mine over 56 years, said an official at the Justice Ministry who spoke on condition he not be named because he was not authorized to speak to media about the case.
The resulting fine, of nearly $6 billion including the damages award and interest, is equal to about 2% of Pakistan’s GDP and is on a par with a recently agreed upon bailout package for Pakistan from the International Monetary Fund.
Economist Jeffrey Sachs described it as a “mugging” of Pakistan. Other experts also have questioned the reasoning behind huge award, which is more than double the size of the largest similar arbitration award, in the case between Dow Chemical and Kuwait Petrochemical Corp.
Documents explaining the award suggest one intention was to penalize Pakistan for having violated its investment treaty with Australia.
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Local consortium proposes to develop #Pakistan #copper & #gold mine at Reko Diq #Balochistan after arbitration. Consortium comprises Arif Habib Limited, Mari Petroleum, Liberty Mills Limited, Fatima group, Lucky group and South Western Mining. #resources https://reut.rs/3om3GNd
A local consortium has made a proposal to develop a major copper and gold mine in southwest Pakistan after a court decision blocked the mine’s development by a joint venture between Chile’s Antofagasta and Canada’s Barrick Gold.
Pakistan’s Supreme Court blocked the joint venture, Tethyan Copper, in 2013 from developing Reko Diq - one of the world’s biggest untapped deposits of copper and gold - following a court case over how the contract had been awarded.
Pakistan’s government was later ordered by a global arbitration body to pay $5.8 billion in damages after Tethyan Copper took it to court.
The local consortium, National Resources Private Limited, said in a statement on Sunday that it had submitted a proposal to develop Reko Diq and another major copper and gold mine, also in Balochistan province.
“The consortium has proposed (to the) government to develop and implement the Tanjeel reserves as a starter project, followed by development of the vast Reko Diq area reserves,” National Resources Private Limited said.
The Balochistan government said it was studying the proposal, the financial aspects of which were not disclosed.
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The Reko Diq porphyry copper-gold district, Chagai Belt, Balochistan Province, Pakistan
https://e-sga.org/shop/product-details/?categories_id%5B0%5D=31&...
Reko Diq, located in in the Chagai belt of western Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan and Iran, is one of the world´s largest porphyry Cu-Au districts. The western Chagai belt hosts several porphyry Cu and Cu-Au deposits and prospects, including the clusters at Saindak, Sor Baroot, Koh-Dalil and Reko Diq. Porphyry Cu-Au ± Mo mineralization at Reko Diq is associated with multi-stage intrusions of Miocene calcalkaline, commonly cigar-shape stock and dykes, emplaced into late Oligocene volcanic and sedimentary rocks. The H14-H15 deposit (4,100 Mt at 0.50% Cu and 0.29 g/t Au) is the largest deposit in the district and is characterized by Au-rich, Cu-Fe-sulfide mineralization associated with intense, magnetite-bearing K-silicate alteration. Supergene Cu oxidation and enrichment is weak in the district and is only well preserved in the form of a chalcocite blanket (0.70% Cu) in the central Tanjeel porphyry Cu deposit.
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#Tech #economy needs rare earths (#Lithium), and #Afghanistan has got a lot of them. "The #Chinese and the #Pakistanis and the #Russians are very much interested. And China has been dominating the critical, rare strategic metals market for the last decades"https://www.marketplace.org/2021/09/03/afghanistan-has-minerals-tech-economy-needs/
Ryssdal: All right, so make the turn here toward geopolitics for me, and I realize that’s not necessarily your specialty. But if the United States and the U.K. and most of Europe is not in the foreseeable future going to have business dealings with Afghanistan, as it’s run by the Taliban, but the Chinese are and the Russians might, that’s a balance of power thing.
Pitron: The Chinese and the Pakistanis and the Russians are very much interested. And China has been dominating the critical, rare strategic metals market for the last decades. So the fact that this potential is available, at least potentially to the Chinese, shows that after the 19th century, which was dominated by the English with the coal industry, and the 20th century, which was dominated by the Americans, thanks to their domination of the oil industry, then we’re moving to an age of where the Chinese are already controlling the metals industry for the [inaudible] energy revolution.
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The United States has pulled out of Afghanistan. But 11 years ago, Pentagon officials and American geologists discovered nearly $1 trillion in mineral deposits there, including elements and metals that are needed to power the growing tech economy. Lithium, for instance, is key material in making batteries for cellphones, laptops and electric vehicles. Getting those minerals out of the ground and building an industry around them is another issue in a country with deep political and economic instability.
“Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal spoke with Guillaume Pitron, a French journalist and author of “The Rare Metals War: The Dark Side of Clean Energy and Digital Technologies,” about the geopolitics of rare materials. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Guillaume Pitron: [Afghanistan] is said to be a country where you can find lots of copper, lots of lithium, rare earths elements, platinum, bauxite and other resources of this kind.
Kai Ryssdal: And the net worth, as it were, of those things even in the ground, before we get to actually getting them out of the ground in Afghanistan, the thing that makes it dynamic right now, is that we more than ever depend on those minerals — the lithium and the cobalt and all of that — for batteries and all of the things we need for this economy right now.
Pitron: The energy transition is a metallic transition. we would like to do away with oil and coal. But on the other side, we’ll have to tap into these minerals. And actually, the International Energy Agency, recently this year, published a report saying that our needs for these commodities will explode in the next decades for making the green revolution possible. And Afghanistan has these resources.
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The future of Silicon Valley may lie in the mountains of Afghanistan
https://venturebeat.com/2014/03/20/lithium-afghanistan/
United States Geological Survey teams discovered one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of lithium there six years ago (in 2008). The USGS was scouting the volatile country at the behest of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Task Force for Business and Stability Operations. Lithium is a soft metal used to make the lithium-ion and lithium-polymer batteries essential for powering desktop computers, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. And increasingly, electric cars like Tesla’s.
The vast discovery could very well propel Afghanistan — a war-ravaged land with a population of 31 million largely uneducated Pashtuns and Tajiks, and whose primary exports today are opium, hashish, and marijuana — into becoming the world’s next “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” according to an internal Pentagon memo cited by the New York Times.
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Depending on who you talk to, the current lithium global reserves are adequate for at least another generation of lithium-ion battery manufacturers to produce them.
But not everybody thinks so, and some say the light metal compound may someday run dry. That could in turn spell trouble for any company whose business depends on light and portable mobile electronics — unless someone comes up with an alternative to lithium batteries before then.
The experts VentureBeat interviewed pointed to sharp year-on-year increases in the demand for lithium. That’s putting heavy pressure on existing stockpiles.
According to Lithium Americas, a Canadian lithium-mining company with significant business interests in Argentina, lithium demand will more than double in the next 10 years, while lithium prices have nearly quadrupled during the same timeframe.
Tesla, for its part, is in the process of investing up to $5 billion to build its own lithium-ion Gigafactory in Texas, a plant capable of churning out 500,000 expensive battery packs a year by 2020 for its line of zero-emission, all-electric cars.
A Tesla spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.
As a potential source to feed that demand, enter Afghanistan.
“At some point, if present trends continue, demand [for lithium] will outstrip the supply. And again, at some point, the market for lithium-ion could get so big that it actually affects the supply chain,” said Donald R. Sadoway, a professor of the Materials Chemistry Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT.
Looking at Afghanistan, Sadoway says the war-ravaged nation, which has no effective mining infrastructure in place, may well be attractive to the world’s mining outfits.
“In this regard,” Sadoway, one of the world’s foremost experts on energy sources, says, “the deposits in Afghanistan could be important.”
Andrew Chung, a venture capitalist with Khosla Ventures in Silicon Valley who has invested in multiple startups producing alternative batteries, says lithium-ion batteries are limited in their lifetime cycles, scalability, and cost. Despite this, Chung says, he can understand how the untapped reserves of Afghan lithium are now an increasing focus.
“It is an issue of the supply chain, whether it’s Afghanistan or other [countries]. There is a finite supply, and lithium-ion will continue to be the [power] choice for the next decade,” Chung said.
Some of the Valley’s biggest and most powerful tech companies either declined to comment for this story or never returned calls. But they didn’t deny the importance of lithium-ion batteries.
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Taliban rolls out red carpet to China's Belt and Road Initiative - Nikkei Asia
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Afghanista...
KARACHI -- With the U.S. departed in disarray, Afghanistan's newly ensconced Taliban regime is looking to China for major investments in the coming six months, but experts expect Beijing to tread a very cautious line.
Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesperson, said earlier this week that the new government wants to join the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, the flagship $50 billion Pakistan component of China's Belt and Road Initiative.
A source with close links to the Taliban told Nikkei Asia on condition of anonymity that China has been courting the Taliban since 2018 on possible projects in Afghanistan. "There are verbal agreements between Beijing and Taliban about investments," he said. "Once the Taliban government gains global recognition, China will start building infrastructure projects in war-torn Afghanistan."
On Wednesday, a virtual meeting of the foreign ministers of Afghanistan's neighbors -- China, Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan -- was hosted by Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistan's foreign minister.
"The situation in Afghanistan remains complex and fluid," Qureshi later tweeted. "We hope the political situation stabilizes leading to normalcy soon. The new reality requires us to discard old lenses, develop new insights and proceed with a realistic, pragmatic approach," he said.
During the meeting, China promised emergency aid of $31 million to Afghanistan, including grain, winter supplies, vaccines and medicines. "What China can do now is maintain necessary contacts with the Taliban in the fields of normal economic activities and people-to-people exchanges," reported Global Times, Beijing's English-language mouthpiece.
Andrew Small, a senior trans-Atlantic fellow with the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund, believes the Taliban's immediate investment requests give China leverage. Beijing will provide some immediate economic support, but proceed to greater involvement more gingerly.
"Beijing will be happy to dangle promises and engage in talks on the BRI and CPEC extensions, but will not move ahead with anything on the ground until they are confident of political and security conditions," Small told Nikkei.
Experts note the Taliban's limited investor choices. "It is to be expected that China would be willing to help the Taliban government after the U.S. pulled out of a region that is too important for China to leave alone," Hasaan Khawar, a public policy analyst in Islamabad, told Nikkei.
China is well aware of Afghanistan's vast mineral resources that include the Mes Aynak copper mine, which is reputed to be the second-largest in the world in terms of reserved volume. China Metallurgical Group bought the exploration lease on the massive deposit in 2008 for $3 billion, but work has been stalled for more than a decade because of security concerns. The idle mine is a salutary reminder to China of how big investments can easily fail in such an unstable setting.
"Copper is essential for electric wiring, electronic products, motors and many other products manufactured in China," Jeremy Garlick, assistant professor of international relations at the University of Economics in Prague, told Nikkei. "The Chinese will not rush to put their heads in the lion's mouth -- I would expect them to weigh any decision to get more deeply involved in Afghanistan carefully."
The problem of militancy and the use of Afghan soil as a launchpad for global terrorism is the biggest concern for the global community, including China. Experts believe that unless the Taliban controls this problem, China will be unable to invest -- however much it wants to.
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The Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has performed a successful test flight at a Chinese-built runway in the mineral-rich region of Balochistan’s Saindak town, China Urdu reported.
https://tribune.com.pk/story/2320056/watch-pia-performs-successful-...
The development comes a day after Juzzak Airport in the Chagai district of Balochistan was made operational for flights to and from Karachi mainly for the Chinese engineers working on projects in the region.
Last month, the Parliamentary Committee on China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was informed that the progress on New Gwadar International Airport (NGIA) was on track and it would be fully operational by September 2023.
In a meeting of the committee presided over by Sher Ali Arbab, the Aviation Division secretary told the panel that the project, which was originally expected to be completed by next year, has been postponed till October 2023.
The China Airport Construction Group informed the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (PCAA) about the new time limit for the project, deferring the project funded by the Chinese company.
According to the document obtained by The Express Tribune, the passenger terminal building of the project will be completed by June 2023; work related to air traffic control will be completed by March 2023 while the overall construction of the airport will finish by October 2023.
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Chinese company allowed exploration in Saindak area
https://www.dawn.com/news/1566257/chinese-company-allowed-explorati...
The Balochistan government has allowed Chinese firm Metrological Construction Company of China (MCC) — registered locally with the name of Saindak Metals Limited (SML) — the exploration and development of East Ore Body in Saindak lease area and the company has been issued an NoC for the purpose.
Official sources said on Monday that the provincial government also extended the contract of MCC/SML for another 15 years under which the company would continue exploration work on East Ore Body site after the expiry of its present contract on Oct 31, 2022. The MCC, working at the Saindak-Gold-cum-Copper Project since 2002, applied the Balochistan Mines and Mineral Department to allow the company to start exploration work on the East Ore Body of Saindak lease area as its exploration work at the present Saindak site had almost finished.
Officials said the contract agreement of the SML/MCC was scheduled to expire on Oct 31, 2022, and the Balochistan chief minister approved it for another 15 years. “The extension of MCC-SML contract would ensure investment of $45 million by MCC/SML at their own risk for exploration and development of East Ore Body in Saindak area,” said an official letter sent to the Ministry of Energy, Petroleum Division.
However, the letter said that the matter of extension of the SML mining lease (valid up to 2025) would be dealt with separately as per provisions of the Balochistan Minerals Rules, 2002.
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MCC mining project winning hearts and minds of families in Pakistan
http://epaper.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202105/21/WS60a6fca0a31099a234356...
By promoting the local economy and helping to improve social welfare, China Metallurgical Group Corp, or MCC, is dedicated to becoming a model business in boosting economic cooperation between China and Pakistan.
As a State-owned company in the iron and steel industry, MCC is one of the earliest Chinese companies to operate businesses and projects in Pakistan.
In 1990, MCC managed the construction of the Saindak Copper-Gold Mine based on an engineering, procurement and construction contract-.
The Saindak Copper-Gold Mine was set up by Saindak Metals Ltd, a company owned by the government of Pakistan, at the end of 1995. In 2002, MCC beat the competition in the project bidding and began the first phase of the lease.
Saindak Copper-Gold Mine has made a steady profit for 18 consecutive years, becoming a major driver of local economy and praised by governments on both sides as "a model of China-Pakistan economic cooperation-"-.
Located in Saindak in Chagai district, Balochistan, the project has helped to improve local livelihoods in aspects such as water, electricity, healthcare and education.
To illustrate, Saindak Copper-Gold Mine has tackled problems in water and power supplies for local residents. It offers more than 15,000 cubic meters of purified water and more than 20,000 cu m of raw water for free, at an annual expenditure of over $100,000. It supplies electricity 24/7 for nearby villages free of charge, incurring related cost for the project at $1 million annually.
To date, Saindak Copper-Gold Mine has more than 1,500 Pakistani employees. Every year, MCC assigns its Chinese engineers to conduct skills training.
During the last 18 years, more than 10,000 training sessions of various kinds were held covering approximately 100,000 man-hours. Thousands of Pakistani employees have become skilled through the systematic training. Some of them took their skills out of the project and are contributing to the economic and social advancement of different sectors in Pakistan.
In addition, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, MCC actively played its part in contributing medical supplies for Pakistanis and maintained steady production in 2020.
Apart from providing anti-pandemic materials, MCC also organized charity events to assist disadvantaged households in Balochistan-last year. It helped more than 3,000 needy families in Chagai district and 300 families in six local villages by sending daily necessities such as flour, rice and cooking oil.
Such moves have been appreciated by local people and are part of MCC's effort to fulfill corporate social responsibility as a State-owned enterprise-.
Under the support of the two countries' governments, MCC will continue to cooperate with Pakistani people and build closer partnerships between the two sides.
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Ovais
@Sabbandkardo
One more record for CY 2021 was Pakistan copper exports which touched 717m$ in CY 2021.
Pakistan Copper exports increased more than 3 times since 2018 from 233m$ to 717m$ .
https://twitter.com/Sabbandkardo/status/1490256306611298305?s=20&am...
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