CANADIAN EXPLORATION Make metals with China not war, Friedland tells PDAC

PDAC | Fighting climate change more important than Taiwan, Ivanhoe founder says

BY COLIN MCCLELLAND

Robert Friedland, founder and executive co-chair of Ivanhoe Mines (TSX: IVN), says the West shouldn’t go to war over Taiwan because it needs investment from China to mine metals for the global green energy transition.

BY COLIN MCCLELLAND

Canada is aiming to trim four to five years off the time it takes for mining project approval, mainly by syncing federal and provincial requirements, Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson says.

With Canadian mines taking 12 to 15 years on average from discovery to commissioning, Wilkin- son said he was open to cutting the review process by a third during an interview in Toronto with The Northern Miner as PDAC wound down on Mar. 8.

“That would be a good objective,” the minister said. “I was just meeting with officials from Australia, we were talking about regulatory process. They have mines they are permitting in four years and yet they are very strongly focused on environmental and Indigenous issues. I’m not saying we can necessarily get there, but we should be striving to actually be as efficient as we possibly can.”

Canada is among Western countries trying to ramp up mining output to meet rising demand for metals used in electric vehicle batteries instead of relying on China. The Asian power refines 40% of the globe’s copper, 59% of lithium, 68% of nickel and 73% of cobalt, according to the Washington-based Brookings Institution. But many countries are targeting net-zero emissions for dates long before they will have approved the mines needed to achieve their climate change-fighting goals.

A day earlier at PDAC, Wilkinson told reporters that the government is also considering how to match funding opportunities by the United States for critical mineral projects while balancing national security with the need for Chinese investment. The U.S. Energy Department is looking at helping pay for the construction of some large mines, such as the US$4 billion Thacker Pass lithium operation in Nevada proposed by Lithium Americas (TSX: LAC; NYSE: LAC).

Wilkinson mentioned that Foran Mining’s (TSXV: FOM; US-OTC: FMCXF) McIlvenna Bay project in Saskatchewan is a contender

Canada’s order last year for China to divest from Canadian companies’ critical minerals projects deprives junior miners when investment bank Goldman Sachs says US$2.8 trillion is needed to meet carbon-zero targets this decade, the legendary financier told hundreds at the PDAC conference on Mar. 5 in Toronto.

“We’re going to have to find capital from Americans or Saudis or sovereign wealth funds, but we need a lot more money coming to junior mining, orders of magnitude more,” Friedland said. “So, I’m all in favour of not going to war over Taiwan.”

The integration of the world economy peaked around 2008 when China was buying about half the world’s copper and making almost everything the world consumed, Friedland said. The global economy has since lost trillions of dollars through balkanization and trade wars after former president Donald Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese goods that President Joe Biden hasn’t rescinded.

“So, we see a gradual, slow drift towards war between America and China,” he said. “This is a very bad idea. We should compete like the Harvard-Yale football game and break each other’s collarbones according to a set of rules.”

Ore-smashing tech

In a speech ranging from the solar system’s 230-million-year orbit around the Milky Way to Ivanhoe’s startup next year of the world’s largest precious metals project, Flatreef in South Africa, Friedland also mocked the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and promoted the potential of the Democratic Republic of the Congo where Ivanhoe and China’s Zijin Mining own the Kamoa-Kakula copper mine.

He also touted new technologies he says will cut 99% of the energy used to pulverize ore and slash the time to make a lithium battery from brine to three days from 19 months.

Friedland said mining is under increasing pressure to produce green energy metals and ran through a series of statistics: 2.3 billion people have migrated to cities over the last 35 years, people breathe the most carbon dioxide in the air in 2 million years at 420 parts per million, and the Russia-Ukraine war has fired 50,000 tonnes of copper into oblivion using just one type of artillery shell, among many.

He also said electric vehicles hit a 10% market share in 2022, eight years ahead of a forecast by the International Energy Agency, and renewable energy capacity reached 320 gigawatts last year, about equal to 320 nuclear plants.

“So, the United States government initiated the U.S. inflation creation act setting aside US$370 billion,” Friedland said. “You

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