Rio Tinto to Produce Lithium in California, Joining Electric Car Battery Race | Hacker News Reader

Rio Tinto to Produce Lithium in California, Joining Electric Car Battery Race

bloomberg.com

33 pointshhs24 comments

This is interesting. This not a mine per se, but rather a re-mining of the tailings from previous mining at a site in Death Valley. They were “sifting” for precious metals when they realized it had considerable lithium.

I'm not sure I understand the geography here. The article says this is happening in Boron, which is 150 miles southwest of Death Valley.

Wake me up when someone solves the cobalt problem.

Cobalt is where the cost threat lies for lithium-ion car batteries.

See: https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/battery-builders-get-the...

it's not a problem, just like lithium is not a problem and Vanadium is not a problem and (add any other hyped resource) is not a problem.

A lot of this is i believe FUD, and sometimes when i get real pessimistic, i think it mustclever marketing on the part of some of there resource companies.

There just hasnt been enough demand for cobalt in the past. Trust me, once the price gets high enough, everyone will be going back to their old nickel mine core samples and making market announcements.

The amount of cobalt work I did back in 2016 when it first came on the radar is ridiculous. Kept me busy after lithium started to die. But now its all Vanadium.... And Zinc also Gold but Vanadium is the sexy one.

Literally happens every. single. time.

So it's like the miracle food , but in the case of food they "discover" every 2 years an old almost secret ancient food eaten by a old asian/southamerican people that will provide you with any buzz word and make you healthier. And suddenly is all over the blogs and recipe pages. Till the fade passes and discover a new one

HydroMining (which I assume will be the process they use) takes a LOT of water. Hope they got plenty of it.

There exists a way to convert CO2 into high-capacity batteries but nobody's looking for it because they think the only way to make batteries is with Lithium

I would also expect other LiIon (LiFePo specifically) cells to similarly benefit, making powerwalls for homes,both grid-tied and off-grid, much more affordable.

Rio Tinto, for the record, has been accused of war crimes and genocide in Papua New Guinean. Among other horrible and corrupt things.

I have heard a few unique perspectives about Bougainville Copper.

Rio Tinto held an old-fashioned and anglosphere-centric view that the government represented the people. The idea that negotiating with a government in Port Moresby was different from negotiating with the locals; and the idea that the situation would devolve so badly were both foreign to senior management who were used to stable and representative democratic government.

Bougainville was quite a lawless place. As it turned out Rio Tinto should never have tried to invest there but it isn't obvious how they could have known that in advance. Should they not have looked to the PNG government for law enforcement? Should they have resisted the PNG military? Morally, possibly. Practically it wasn't obvious.

Sure that is one factor. However the environmental impact of the mining as well as insufficient compensation to the people of Boganville is also contributed to the conflict.

> The mine was vitally important to the economy of Papua New Guinea. The PNG national government received a 20% share of profit from the mine, of which the Bougainvilleans received 5% - 1.25% share of the total profit [0]

Present day PNG has a per-capita GDP in the single-digit thousands, and that mine was a money printing machine.

Did the mine operation contribute to the conflict? Obviously yes, it was a major contributing cause. Insufficient compensation? Pull the other one, that sort profit sharing is reasonable and traditionally governments regulate if the environmental conditions aren't suitable. Besides, the environmental impact will have done them vastly less damage than them killing each other and and being dirt poor.

Francis Ona did a great deal of damage to PNG and to Beugainville, as did the PNG government's obvious mismanagement of the Beugainville region.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bougainville_Copper

From the wiki you are quoting from the Australian courts found that it was inadequate.

As to the government environmental regulation was insufficient I completely agree. However I am of the (perhaps naive) view that a company should be engaging in best practice with regards to environmental impact rather then "Only enough to comply with local laws".

That judgement is talking about a specific case of local farmers land plots damaged by building an access road; not the profit sharing situation of the mine overall.

I'd be shocked if they offered something that was normal under Australian law; Australian property is worth an order of magnitude more than PNG property. Purchasing Power Parity and all that.

You can't find a large project that pleases everyone. Roads, mines, skyscrapers, etc all upset somebody; such disputes are neither war crimes nor genocide. They aren't even a reflection of how much money the project is funnelling in to the local economy.

Also, best practice in the 80s was pretty poor practice. Miners have learned a lot / been regulated very differently in recent decades.

So they were bumbling idiots meddling in a developing nation's politics with disastrous consequences, rather than evil 4D-chess playing corporate masterminds? Is that supposed to make me feel better about the people who died so they could get rich?

There was a brutal civil war and the people of Baugainville (and PNG more broadly) lost a real albeit difficult to seize opportunity to modernise a big chunk of their country. You probably shouldn't feel better, that situation is pretty much the worst possible outcome.

But to lay that at the feet of Rio Tinto and claim they were responsible for a genocide and war crimes is crazy talk. PNG as a political body wasn't organised enough to maintain order and the shock of the vast wealth (and pollution) being created at BCL was too much for their systems to handle.

Rio Tinto was present, they were involved, they should have done things differently and the company changed its approach to community management afterwards. But it is a very morally ambiguous situation and the blame should probably sit with the PNG polity. It is not unreasonable for a company to expect and pressure a government to maintain law and order. Rio didn't try to set up that civil war - PNG did that to themselves. When it was obvious that the situation was getting violent Rio basically just evacuated and wrote the project off.

> But to lay that at the feet of Rio Tinto and claim they were responsible for a genocide and war crimes is crazy talk.

The flashpoint for the violence was the rio tinto ran mine - specifically the low wages, environmental damage, and unfair distribution of profits. To excuse them of responsibility for the ensuing violence is crazy talk.

If I come to your family home, and start paying your brother to use your room as a garbage dump - am I innocent of the resulting conflict between you and your brother?

> If I come to your family home, and start paying your brother to use your room as a garbage dump - am I innocent of the resulting conflict between you and your brother?

Yes. Obviously that is between my brother and I.

Rio wanted peace and stability. If people start a civil war, that is on them. Principle of personal responsibility and all that jazz. If the Beaugainvillians (and mainlands) had behaved like civilised and reasonable people rather than reaching for explosives and violence then they would have gotten a much better outcome - that sits with them. Life is not fair, other people treating someone badly doesn't excuse their purposefully choosing poor behaviour.

Completely disagree, but I guess we're at an impasse. I believe that companies are responsible and should be held responsible for the consequences of their resource exploitation. Do you really see a difference between this situation, and blood diamonds? Or do you also think blood diamonds are covered under the "Principle of personal responsibility"?

Where would that end? Do we hold consumers responsible for purchasing things that use materials that were mined? For better or worse, justified or otherwise, people choosing violent rebellion against law and order are responsible for their own actions even if the greedy corporations are bringing infrastructure, wealth and pollution to their island. A remarkable number of people have successfully not started civil wars when Rio Tinto opens a mine nearby.

I don't know anything about blood diamonds and don't care to learn; although I think it is something to do with Africa. I refuse to work in Africa because everything I've heard suggests it is too unsafe. I think lab-grown diamonds are cheaper and of higher quality so we should go with them instead. Or Rio Tinto's pink diamonds sourced from the Argyle mine in Australia.

> Do we hold consumers responsible for purchasing things that use materials that were mined?

Well a good first step would be forcing companies to disclose that so consumers had the ABILITY to choose. Until they have the ability, there is no way to blame them. Once they do... yes I do think consumers are responsible for the practices of the companies they buy from. It's pretty diffuse blame, but...

> people choosing violent rebellion against law and order

The specific case we're talking about was, at least from the perspective of the rebels, a violent rebellion against a _corrupt government_ and the profiteering corporation working with them. Nobody was like "you know what I hate! Law and order and infrastructure!"... no, they were like "we are being treated like slaves".

They weren't being treated like slaves. Rio would have been paying them more money than they'd ever seen in one place before, and I have it on excellent authority that the mine was trying hard to bring up the standards of living on the island.

It is not reasonable to blame Rio Tinto for the PNG government was corrupt. That is the fault of the PNG government and the PNG people. As for the profiteering - operating a mine is not profiteering; it is pretty routine business. They had a 20-25% profit sharing agreement with PNG. They were investing in training the locals.

Rio wasn't shooting at anyone and wasn't advocating shooting at anyone. They were using explosives on rocks, the Bougainvillians were using them on buildings. The locals and their own government are ultimately responsible for tensions escalating out of hand.

I'm picking up that you might not like corporations here, but you can't call a company genocidal and responsible for war crimes because some backwater has a corrupt and ineffective government and it turns out they don't have an advanced enough social system to handle big infrastructure projects. Corporations simply do not have primacy over a government; governments get to do what they like and are responsible for that power. People who are in an active state of rebellion are also responsible for their own actions.

Rio Tinto has been widely criticised by environmentalist groups for its mining activities. Opposition to the company focuses on its mining methods due to environmental degradation, the company's coal operations for their contribution to global warming, and uranium operations for environmental and nuclear technology concerns. Perhaps the most significant environmental criticism to date has come from the government of Norway, which divested itself from Rio Tinto shares and banned further investment due to environmental concerns. Claims of severe environmental damages related to Rio Tinto's engagement in the Grasberg mine in Indonesia led the Government Pension Fund of Norway to exclude Rio Tinto from its investment portfolio. The fund, which is said to be the world's second-largest pension fund, sold shares in the company valued at 4.85 billion kr (US$855 million) to avoid contributing to environmental damages caused by the company.[99]

Carbon-dioxide emissions According to The Guardian, Rio Tinto is one of the top 100 industrial greenhouse gas producers in the world, accounting for 0.75 percent of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions between 1988 to 2015.[102] In 2016, Rio Tinto estimated to have produced 32 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in its own climate change report.[103]

In March 2018, Rio Tinto was urged by institutional investors to set new rules requiring the company to adhere to the goals of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, including detailed plans to reduce scope 1 to 3 emissions.[104] Rio Tinto's top executives rejected the resolution, arguing that the company had made a lot of progress in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions and that appropriate plans were in place to deal with climate change.[105]

Rio also argued that that scope 3 emissions, those of its customers, were beyond the firm's control.[106] Nevertheless, the corporation in September 2019 signed a partnership with Chinese steelmaker China Baowu Steel Group to find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from steel making, in an attempt to tackle the scope 3 issue.[107]

Labour and human rights Activist groups have also expressed concern regarding Rio Tinto's operations in Papua New Guinea, which they allege were one catalyst of the Bougainville separatist crisis.[108] The British antipoverty charity War on Want has also criticised Rio Tinto for its complicity in the serious human rights violations which have occurred near the mines it operates in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.[109]

On 31 January 2010, Rio Tinto locked out nearly 600 workers from a mine in Boron, California, USA.[110]

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Tinto_(corporation)

Horrible. But is there any such thing as a mining company that isn’t evil?

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