No Wells Coming Off Confidential List -- October 26, 2022

Weekly EIA petroleum report: pending. 

December 5, 2022: harsh Russian oil sanctions begin. Analysts feel Russia won't have buyers for all its oil.

Europe, natural gas, record LNG at sea and Europe already has maxed out its storage.

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Back to the Bakken

The Far Side: link here.

Active rigs: 43.

WTI: $86.18.

Natural gas: $5.525. See above.

No wells coming off confidential list.

RBN Energy: US lithium production and processing projects, part 2. Archived.

The world will need extraordinarily large quantities of lithium to support the development of renewable energy, batteries and electric vehicles (EVs). The problem is, much of the supply chain for lithium and many other important energy-transition minerals is either owned or controlled by China, whose strategic and economic interests are directly at odds with the U.S. and its allies. In response, the Biden administration and Congress have been taking steps to reduce our dependence on Chinese supplies by providing financial incentives to encourage the development of more domestic mineral production and processing capacity. But that development can only happen if the projects can clear the often-daunting regulatory and legal hurdles they almost always face. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss a few of the leading U.S. projects being planned and the challenges they face in moving forward.

The sole operating lithium production site in the U.S. is Albemarle Corp.’s Silver Peak facility in Nevada. There, brine is evaporated over a period of 18 to 24 months and the concentrate is run through a conversion unit to make lithium carbonate. Silver Peak currently produces about 5,000 metric tons per year (MT/year) of lithium carbonate, or enough to help make about 80,000 EV batteries — enough to supply about one-tenth of the 800,000-plus EVs expected to be sold in the U.S. this year. Albemarle plans to double the capacity of the facility by 2025.

As for new U.S. lithium projects under development, the one that’s garnered the most attention is Lithium Americas’ planned Thacker Pass project in Humboldt County, NV. 

Thacker Pass still faces a number of legal challenges from environmental groups and Native American tribes.