PEACE.- Bolivia This Friday it inaugurated its first state lithium carbonate plant in the Salar de Uyuni (southwest), where the country concentrates a large part of its enormous resources of this key metal in the transition towards so-called clean energies.
With an investment of 110.2 million dollars, the factory began operating five years after its construction began, a process with several delays.
“We take a transcendental step in the historical economic life of the country, by entering the industrialization plan of Bolivian lithium,” said President Luis Arce, when inaugurating the facilities.
The “white gold”
The plant will have the capacity to produce “more than 15,000 tons of lithium carbonate per year” in the future, said the Minister of Hydrocarbons and Energy, Franklin Molina.
Called ‘white gold’, lithium is the main component for the manufacture of cell phone batteries, computers and electric cars, among other products. Its demand has grown exponentially within the framework of the efforts of many countries to abandon the use of coal, oil and gas, the main sources of global warming.
Bolivia has one of the largest volumes of lithium resources, about 21 million tons, according to the record of the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
Unlike reserves, which are quantities of a mineral that can be exploited, resources indicate the available deposit whose commercial viability has yet to be proven.
The complex inaugurated this Friday, which began operations at 20% of its capacity, was built by the state-owned Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) in the municipality of Colcha K, in the Salar de Uyuni.
According to the state company, the plant will apply water-saving technology which will mitigate its environmental impact.
The “lithium triangle”
Together with Chile and Argentina, the South American country forms the so-called “lithium triangle”, the largest global deposit of this material.
This year Bolivia allied itself with China and Russia to begin industrial-scale exploitation of its lithium. One of the first projects of that alliance foresees an investment of 450 million dollars by the Russian state-owned Uranium One Group.
The Arce government expects lithium exports to reach $5 billion next year, above gas sales, until recently its main resource, but whose industry is going through a deep crisis due to lack of investment in exploration.
Source: AFP
