Lithium Reserves in Afghanistan

Lithium Reserves in Afghanistan

Subject – IR

Context – China’s support to the new Taliban regime in Afghanistan has raised suspicions that Beijing is eyeing Kabul’s mineral wealth, estimated at $1-3 trillion.

Concept –

• According to a 2015 report by the Henry M Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, Afghanistan has newly discovered mineral wealth that could boost its economy over the next few decades by $1-3 trillion and employ thousands of new workers.
• A 2010 US study had shown that Afghanistan could have among the world’s largest deposits of lithium.
• China is the top consumer of lithium, processing nearly 90 per cent of the total lithium hydroxide available globally.
• Chinese producers have invested significant volumes in lithium projects outside China this year. The Ganfeng Lithium group is among the notable investors
• China has much better options for foreign mineral extraction and is already using them — for example Argentina, Chile, Zambia and Congo DRC.
• Lithium, a key metal in Electric Vehicles, is in the limelight as prices have almost doubled since the start of the year.

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Lithium Reserves in India –

• India currently imports all its lithium needs.
• The domestic exploration push, which also includes exploratory work to extract lithium from the brine pools of Rajasthan and Gujarat and the mica belts of Odisha and Chhattisgarh, comes at a time when India has stepped up its economic offensive against China, a major source of lithium-ion energy storage products being imported into the country.
• The Marlagalla-Allapatna area, along the Nagamangala Schist Belt, which exposes mineralised complex pegmatites (igneous rocks), is seen as among the most promising geological domains for potential exploration for lithium and other rare metals.
• The lithium find is comparatively small, considering the size of the proven reserves in Bolivia (21 million tonnes), Argentina (17 million tonnes), Australia (6.3 million tonnes), and China (4.5 million tonnes).
• Lithium can be extracted in different ways, depending on the type of the deposit – it is generally done either through solar evaporation of large brine pools or by hard-rock extraction of the ore.
• In India, alongside the rock mining at Mandya, there is some potential for recovering lithium from the brines of Sambhar and Pachpadra in Rajasthan, and Rann of Kachchh in Gujarat. The major mica belts in Rajasthan, Bihar, and Andhra Pradesh, and the pegmatite belts in Odisha and Chhattisgarh apart from Karnataka, are the other potential geological domains.