Friday, April 27, 2018

White Petroleum: A New War Is About To Start

It’s the modern gold rush. Around the world, the most sought-after mineral isn’t a precious metal, nor is it oil and gas…it’s lithium.
Lithium, or “white petroleum” as some call it, has become a crucial element in today’s high-tech economy.
Demand for lithium is soaring, and producers are frantically searching for new sources of supply. Prices have doubled in the last two years, rising as high as $16,500 per ton....
The fact that China is trying to corner the market has made the search for new deposits even more intense, as U.S. and European firms try to get around Chinese domination.
For the last five years, the commodities world has focused on the epic showdown between OPEC and U.S. shale drillers for oil market share. But it’s the war over “white petroleum” that will dominate the next decade....
OilPrice.com
A New Lithium War Is About To Begin
James Stafford

2 comments:

Unknown said...

It appears that the inventor of the lithium battery has come up with a new battery that triples the energy density of the lithium battery, and could replace the lithium with sodium.

Super-Safe Glass Battery Charges in Minutes, Not Hours

Quote:
Moreover, says lithium-glass battery co-developer Maria Helena Braga, a visiting research fellow at UT Austin and engineering professor at the University of Porto in Portugal, the glass battery charges in “minutes rather than hours.” This, she says, is because the lithium- or sodium-doped glass endows the battery with a far greater capacity to store energy in the electric field. So, the battery can, in this sense, behave a little more like a lightning-fast supercapacitor.

Matt Franko said...

“It’s peak lithium!!!!!”