The Americas | The white gold rush

A battle for supremacy in the lithium triangle

Three South American countries have much of the world’s lithium. They take very different approaches to exploiting it

Jun 15th 2017|LA PAZ, SAN SALVADOR DE JUJUY AND SANTIAGO

THE Olaroz salt flat sits nearly 4,000 metres (13,000 feet) above sea level at the end of a road that snakes through the Andes mountains. The loudest sound in the featureless expanse is a mechanical one, made by untended pumps. They extract lithium-bearing brine from wells sunk deep below the salt crust and deposit it in evaporation pools. The concentrate will be taken to a nearby plant for processing into lithium carbonate. The operation in Argentina’s Jujuy state, an Argentine-Australian-Japanese joint venture, is one of the country’s two working lithium mines. Last year it produced 11,845 tonnes of lithium carbonate, about 6% of the world’s output. This year Sales de Jujuy plans to make 17,500 tonnes.

This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “The white gold rush”