Natural resources in Bolivia, same old, same old...

Two recent articles from the BBC and the New York times brought back the international attention to another one of Bolivia’s important natural resource, Lithium. Unfortunately these two articles fail to describe the already process of consultation that took place regarding the viability to exploit these resources several years ago, where local residents and Potosinos were opposed to the plans to authorize the exploitation to this resource as it affects the incipient, but important, tourist industry related to what for me is one of the greatest beauties on earth, the Salar de Uyuni. The issue at stake is not to take advantage, or not, of this natural resource but how to finally foster alternative forms of development beyond the old story of foreign company exporting raw materials. But let’s not be naïve here, Lithium is one of the most promising materials for future energy-producing technologies, the electric car industry and its nuclear use (peaceful and not that peaceful), something that provides many answers for those who questions the friendliness of distant Iran (including the existence of some uranium reserves in Bolivia).

Anyway, here are the two articles with their respective links to the sources.



Bolivia holds key to electric car future
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7707847.stm

By Damian Kahya
BBC News, Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia


Bolivia's lithium reserves could bring wealth to the country High in the Andes, in a remote corner of Bolivia, lies more than half the world's reserves of a mineral that could radically reduce our reliance on dwindling fossil fuels.

Lithium carries a great promise. It could help power the fuel efficient electric or petrol-electric hybrid vehicles of the future.

But, as is the case with fossil fuels, it is a limited resource.

Lithium carbonate is already in the batteries of laptop computers and mobile phones.

It is used because it allows more energy to be stored in a lighter, smaller space than most alternatives.

And as the auto industry rushes to produce new fuel efficient and electric cars, it too is turning to lithium batteries as its first choice to boost the power of their new models.

GM has one in its new hybrid Volt, Toyota is testing one in its next generation hybrid Prius. Mercedes is testing an electric version of its Smart, while BMW is doing the same with its Mini.

And Nissan-Renault, Mitsubishi and VW are all rushing to buy or produce enough of the batteries to power their future models.

The best of the pure electric cars can reach ranges of more than 150 kilometres per charge.

More is needed.

But there is a problem.

Mitsubishi, which plans to release its own electric car soon, estimates that the demand for lithium will outstrip supply in less than 10 years unless new sources are found.

And they have ended up in Bolivia.

"The demand for lithium won't double but increase by five times," according to Eichi Maeyama Mitsubishi's general manager in La Paz.

"We will need more lithium sources - and 50% of the world's reserves of lithium exist in Bolivia, in the Salar de Uyuni," he adds, pointing out that without new production, the price of lithium will rise prohibitively.

Valuable resource

Lithium is found in rocks and sea water.

But almost all the commercially exploitable reserves are found in the brine under salt flats.

The world's largest reserves lie in Bolivia at the Salar de Uyuni - in the remote southern Andean plane.

But Bolivia is not a country known to be friendly to foreign industry.

Its socialist president, Evo Morales, is keen to expand state control over its natural resources, a task carried out by Bolivia's minister for mining, Luis Alberto Echazu.

"We want to send a message to the industrialized countries and their companies," Mr Echazu says.

"We will not repeat the historical experience since the fifteenth century: raw materials exported for the industrialisation of the west that has left us poor."

Modest ambitions

Gold, silver, tin, oil and gas have all been found and exported from here whilst the country remains the poorest in the region.

They probably don't have a lot of experience of doing this sort of thing themselves so they'll have to bring in expertise and technology

For President Morales' supporters, that is reason enough not to allow in foreign mining companies to extract the lithium.

Across the flats, freelance miners work to break up the surface salt selling it to passing trucks for just a few dollars.

Indigenous and poor, they are core supporters of the president.

A grizzled old miner, giving his name only as Alfredo, says he does not believe that lithium will ever be extracted.

"We don't want to see foreign companies here," he says.

"It would be very bad, as the government says."

Alfredo's hopes for the future are modest.

"I just want to work until I die" he says, a smile across his face. It is not an uncommon sentiment here.

Sharing the benefits

In spite of the grinding poverty here, attempts in the 1980's and 1990's by foreign companies to extract the lithium met with resistance from the community.

They say the money would go elsewhere.

Francisco Quisbert is a local activist with President Morales' party who took part in the resistance.

Now he is working with the president to hammer out a new plan for a state-owned pilot plant on the flats.

"We don't want international involvement," he says.

"This plan has raised the hopes of the region.

"Before our grandparents lived on the salt. They arrived from the valleys in caravans of llamas, but the market forced them to leave.

"We want to return to live on the salar [and] improve our living conditions and to participate in the project."

To begin with the pilot plant will produce no more than 1.2 kilotonnes a year.

If an industrial plant is then built it may increase to around 30 kilotonnes by 2012, - thats just under a third of current production.

But most lithium now goes to small batteries for electronic goods.

Car batteries are far larger and Mitsubishi estimates the world will need 500 kilotonnes a year just to service a niche market. For electric cars to become the norm, it could need far more.

Mitsubishi predicts that there will be a supply shortage by 2015.

Pollution nevertheless

Analysts suspect that Bolivia's government can produce this much.

"Governments in South America have had a very successful history of mining," explains Charles Kernot, a mining analyst at Evolution Securities.

But the question is how fast.

"They probably don't have a lot of experience of doing this sort of thing themselves so they'll have to bring in expertise and technology," Mr Kernot adds.

"That whole process may take a lot longer than people are anticipating."

Consequently, he continues, "the car manufacturers will have to strike a balance between how quickly they manufacture with the supply of metal because they don't want to drive the price up to such an extent that the cars get priced out of the market".

Long-term, Bolivia's government is wary of the environmental damage mass extraction could cause.

The mining minister, Mr Eschazu, has a stark message for Western firms.

"The capitalist leaders have to change," he says.

"If all the world had consumers like North America, everyone with a car, it would grind to a halt.

"It is also going to generate pollution, not just from fossil fuels but also from lithium plants, which produce sulphur dioxide. This isn't a magic solution."

It is not a view likely to go down well in the offices of Toyota and General Motors.

In Bolivia, Untapped Bounty Meets Nationalism

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/world/americas/03lithium.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=bolivia%20lithium&st=cse

UYUNI, Bolivia — In the rush to build the next generation of hybrid or electric cars, a sobering fact confronts both automakers and governments seeking to lower their reliance on foreign oil: almost half of the world’s lithium, the mineral needed to power the vehicles, is found here in Bolivia — a country that may not be willing to surrender it so easily. Skip to next paragraph
Japanese and European companies are busily trying to strike deals to tap the resource, but a nationalist sentiment about the lithium is building quickly in the government of President Evo Morales, an ardent critic of the United States who has already nationalized Bolivia’s oil and natural gas industries.
For now, the government talks of closely controlling the lithium and keeping foreigners at bay. Adding to the pressure, indigenous groups here in the remote salt desert where the mineral lies are pushing for a share in the eventual bounty.
“We know that Bolivia can become the Saudi Arabia of lithium,” said Francisco Quisbert, 64, the leader of Frutcas, a group of salt gatherers and quinoa farmers on the edge of Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat. “We are poor, but we are not stupid peasants. The lithium may be Bolivia’s, but it is also our property.”
The new Constitution that Mr. Morales managed to get handily passed by voters last month bolstered such claims. One provision could give Indians control over the natural resources in their territory, strengthening their ability to win concessions from the authorities and private companies, or even block mining projects.
None of this is dampening efforts by foreigners, including the Japanese conglomerates Mitsubishi and Sumitomo and a group led by a French industrialist, Vincent Bolloré. In recent months all three have sent representatives to La Paz, the capital, to meet with Mr. Morales’s government about gaining access to the lithium, a critical component for the batteries that power cars and other electronics.
“There are salt lakes in Chile and Argentina, and a promising lithium deposit in Tibet, but the prize is clearly in Bolivia,” Oji Baba, an executive in Mitsubishi’s Base Metals Unit, said in La Paz. “If we want to be a force in the next wave of automobiles and the batteries that power them, then we must be here.”
Mitsubishi is not alone in planning to produce cars using lithium-ion batteries. Ailing automakers in the United States are pinning their hopes on lithium. One of them is General Motors, which next year plans to roll out its Volt, a car using a lithium-ion battery along with a gas engine. Nissan, Ford and BMW, among other carmakers, have similar projects.
Demand for lithium, long used in small amounts in mood-stabilizing drugs and thermonuclear weapons, has climbed as makers of batteries for BlackBerrys and other electronic devices use the mineral. But the automotive industry holds the biggest untapped potential for lithium, analysts say. Since it weighs less than nickel, which is also used in batteries, it would allow electric cars to store more energy and be driven longer distances.
With governments, including the Obama administration, seeking to increase fuel efficiency and reduce their dependence on imported oil, private companies are focusing their attention on this desolate corner of the Andes, where Quechua-speaking Indians subsist on the remains of an ancient inland sea by bartering the salt they carry out on llama caravans.
The United States Geological Survey says 5.4 million tons of lithium could potentially be extracted in Bolivia, compared with 3 million in Chile, 1.1 million in China and just 410,000 in the United States. Independent geologists estimate that Bolivia might have even more lithium at Uyuni and its other salt deserts, though high altitudes and the quality of the reserves could make access to the mineral difficult.
While estimates vary widely, some geologists say electric-car manufacturers could draw on Bolivia’s lithium reserves for decades to come.
But amid such potential, foreigners seeking to tap Bolivia’s lithium reserves must navigate the policies of Mr. Morales, 49, who has clashed repeatedly with American, European and even South American investors.
Mr. Morales shocked neighboring Brazil, with whom he is on friendly terms, by nationalizing that country’s natural gas projects here in 2006 and seeking a sharp rise in prices. He carried out his latest nationalization before the vote on the Constitution, sending soldiers to occupy the operations of the British oil giant BP.
At the La Paz headquarters of Comibol, the state agency that oversees mining projects, Mr. Morales’s vision of combining socialism with advocacy for Bolivia’s Indians is prominently on display. Copies of Cambio, a new state-controlled daily newspaper, are available in the lobby, while posters of Che Guevara, the leftist icon killed in Bolivia in 1967, appear at the entrance to Comibol’s offices.
“The previous imperialist model of exploitation of our natural resources will never be repeated in Bolivia,” said Saúl Villegas, head of a division in Comibol that oversees lithium extraction. “Maybe there could be the possibility of foreigners accepted as minority partners, or better yet, as our clients.”
To that end, Comibol is investing about $6 million in a small plant near the village of Río Grande on the edge of Salar de Uyuni, where it hopes to begin Bolivia’s first industrial-scale effort to mine lithium from the white, moonlike landscape and process it into carbonate for batteries.
Technicians first need to get a brine, or water saturated with salt that is found deep beneath the salt desert, to the surface, where it is evaporated in pools to expose the lithium. Mr. Morales wants the plant finished by the end of this year.
Workers here were in a frenzy to meet that goal during late January, laboring under the sun around half-finished walls of brick. Over a meal of llama stew and a Pepsi, Marcelo Castro, 48, the manager overseeing the project, explained that along with processing lithium, the plant had another objective.
“Of course, lithium is the mineral that will lead us to the post-petroleum era,” Mr. Castro said. “But in order to go down that road, we must raise the revolutionary consciousness of our people, starting on the floor of this very factory.”
Beyond the tiny plant, lithium analysts say Bolivia, one of Latin America’s least developed nations, needs to be investing much more to start producing carbonate. But with economic growth slowing and a decline in oil prices limiting the reach of its top patron, Venezuela, it remains unclear how Bolivia can achieve this on its own.
Still, even though Mr. Morales is asserting greater control of the economy and taking over oil and gas projects, optimistic industry analysts point out that he allowed some foreign companies to remain in the country as minority partners.
Mining lithium in Bolivia has its own history of fits and starts. In the early 1990s, nationalist opposition reportedly led by Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, a wealthy holder of mining concessions who later became Bolivia’s president, thwarted a plan by Lithco, an American company, to tap the lithium deposits here.
That history, coupled with Mr. Morales’s current tensions with Washington, might help explain why American companies appear to be on the sidelines as others seek lithium deals here. Mr. Sánchez de Lozada was ultimately forced to resign as president in 2003 after Mr. Morales led protests against his efforts to export natural gas with the help of foreign capital.
As Bolivia ponders how to tap its lithium, nations with smaller reserves are stepping up. China has emerged as a top lithium producer, tapping reserves found in a Tibetan salt flat.
But geologists and economists are fiercely debating whether the lithium reserves outside of Bolivia are enough to meet the climbing global demand. Keith Evans, a California-based geologist, argues that accessible lithium resources outside Bolivia are significantly larger than estimated by the United States Geological Survey.
Juan Carlos Zuleta, an economist in La Paz, said: “We have the most magnificent lithium reserves on the planet, but if we don’t step into the race now, we will lose this chance. The market will find other solutions for the world’s battery needs.”
On the flat salt desert of Uyuni, such debate seems remote to those still laboring as their ancestors did, scraping salt off the ground into the cone-shaped piles that line the horizon like some geometric mirage. The lithium found under the surface of this desert seems even more remote for these 21st-century salt gatherers.
“I’ve heard of the lithium, but I only hope it creates work for us,” said Pedro Camata, 19, his face shielded from the unforgiving sun by a ski mask and cheap sunglasses covering his eyes. “Without work out here, one is dead.”



Bolivia's president lands in Iran

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7591097.stm
Sep 1, 2008


Bolivia's president is seeking new allies and overseas investment Bolivian President Evo Morales has arrived in Iran to discuss trade and closer ties with his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

His visit follows a trip made by Mr Ahmadinejad to La Paz last year, during which he pledged a $1.1bn (£600m) investment in the Andean nation.

The trip will be closely watched by the US, which has tense relations with Tehran over its nuclear programme.

Mr Morales has also been in Libya, for talks with leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Bolivia and Libya recently established diplomatic relations and the two men were expected to sign energy agreements.

Little in common

Mr Morales and his trade delegation were met from the plane at Tehran airport by Iran's Industries Minister Ali Akbar Mehrabian.

He was due to meet Mr Ahmadinejad later in the day, Iranian press reported.


Iran's president is said to be interested in Bolivia's uranium reserves

Bolivia had described the trip as an attempt to reach out to other nations "rejected by the international community".

Mr Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, described his country and Iran as "two friendly and revolutionary countries" that are strengthening ties.

In a recent speech, he had said Iran's efforts to provide economic and political backing would "support the peasant struggle in Latin America".

Iran's investment will be directed at boosting bilateral economic and agricultural ties, from milk processing plants, to TV and radio stations to funding hydrocarbon and hydroelectric exploration.

Reports also suggest Mr Ahmadinejad is interested in Bolivia's reserves of uranium and lithium for use in Iran's nuclear projects.

The growing relationship between the two governments has raised eyebrows amongst Bolivia's right-wing opposition and in the United States - which takes a dim view of Iranian influence in its backyard, the BBC's Andres Schipani in Bolivia says.

To some analysts, Iran is seeking to gain geopolitical control in Latin America with the aid of Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez, an unconditional ally of Mr Morales.

Mr Morales has joked on several occasions that he is part of the "axis of evil".

But apart from the fact that both presidents are strong critics of the US, analysts say there is very little in common between Mr Morales and Mr Ahmadinejad.