A certain amount of excitement as Iran claims to have found 8.5 million tonnes of lithium reserves. Apparently this will make Iran very rich and will also change global geopolitics.
No. We explained all of this, at length, some time ago. This is, in anything like a useful approximation of reality, trivially unimportant.
The claim:
Ebrahim Ali Molabeigi Iran’s minister of Industry announces “the discovery of the first lithium reserve estimated to be 8.5 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) in Hamedan province signalling positive news of the possibility of other reserves in the western Iranian region”.
Just no. If the claim is “estimated” then it’s not mineral reserves. Reserves are what has been proven, not what is estimated. Resources are the estimated, vague, stuff. We can even check this:
According to Iran’s industry officials, the lithium reserve, discovered in western Hamedan Province, holds up to 8.5 million tons of the element, and considering the world’s current discovered lithium reserves, Iran could hold up to 10 percent of the total global reserves.
The U.S. Geological Survey, which maps raw materials deposits across the planet, estimated the world’s total lithium reserves to stand at roughly 89 million tons.
No, USGS has global mineral resources at 89 million tonnes.
Owing to continuing exploration, identified lithium resources have increased substantially worldwide and total about 89 million tons.
Some will think that this is a trivial detail. But this isn’t - this is a definitional point of vast importance. Mineral resources are where from we think, to are pretty sure, we can dig up something of interest. Mineral reserves are where we have proven this to an economic and legal standard. It costs tens to hundreds of million of dollars to convert a resource into a reserve. Mineral reserves, that is, are a human made manufacture. They also equate, largely enough, to the current stock of extant or soon to be opened mines.
There is no, none, zip, connection between the amount of reserves and the amount of resources. Yes, contrary to all those claims from the environmentalists. There is no relationship at all between the volume of one and the volume of the other.
Finding a resource of lithium - in a clay that no one has proven, as yet, can be mined economically - is something of vague interest to aficionados of the outer edges of the mining industry. It’s not a fact of any geopolitical importance, nor really of any economic.
Definitions do matter. The error here is almost certainly one of translation. That the translator - perhaps even the Minister - does not know the difference between resource and reserve so the wrong word is used in the English language announcement.
Only if we understand the terms of art in a field can we work out what is being said in and by that field. Or even, report correctly what the field is saying. Finding lithium resources at this level of proof is not something of any great importance.