The Nigerian Geological Survey Agency, NGSA, announced Monday the discovery of high-grade lithium in Nigeria, which is also one of the world’s most important solid minerals.
NGSA Director General, Dr Abdulrazaq Garba, disclosed this during a media interaction in Abuja.
Garba stated that lithium is a hot commodity right now, and fortunately, it is available in several parts of Nigeria.
He also stated that the occurrences are of high quality, which attracts investors who are eager to pay large sums of money for some of the dataset generated by the agency.
Meanwhile, according to the US Geological Survey’s Mineral Commodity Summaries for January 2022, lithium supply security has become a top priority for technology companies in Asia, Europe, and the US.
The survey also identified Events, Trends, and Issues: excluding US production, global lithium production in 2021 increased by 21% to approximately 100,000 tons from 82,500 tons in 2020 in response to strong demand from the lithium-ion battery market and rising lithium prices.
The global consumption of lithium in 2021 is expected to be 93,000 tons, up from 70,000 tons in 2020.
In China, spot lithium carbonate prices increased from around $7,000 per tonne in January to around $26,200 per tonne in November. In 2021, the annual average US lithium carbonate price for fixed contracts was $17,000 per ton, more than double the price in 2020.
Spot lithium hydroxide prices in China increased from around $9,000 per ton in January to around $10,000 per ton in February.
Spot spodumene (6 percent lithium oxide) prices in China rose from around $450 per ton in January to around $2,300 per ton in November. In China, spot lithium metal (99.9% lithium) prices increased from around $77,000 per ton in January to around $97,000 per tonne in July.
Lithium is still a valuable and necessary mineral composite for glass, aluminum, mobile phone batteries, laptop computers, digital cameras, electric vehicles, and other applications.
“Nigeria lithium is hot cake right now,” he said. “The mineral was discovered in several parts of the country during exploration of the National Integrated Mineral Exploration Project (NIMEP), and we did investigation and analysis and discovered that Nigeria lithium is of high grade.”
“High grade in the sense that the standard worldwide for even exploration and mining starts from 0.4 per cent lithium oxide but when we started exploration and mining, we saw one per cent up to 13 per cent lithium oxide content.
“Another advantage of Nigeria lithium is hard rock lithium found and that is what investors are looking out for worldwide.
Meanwhile, the NGSA CEO stated, “We even heard discussion with some private companies with mining licenses in Nigeria, and they conducted tests on the lithium, and we collaborated with Canada on that as well.”
He stated that all NIMEP data received were very exciting and would help the economy.
NIMEP is a standout project that provides investors with the reliable geosciences information they need to make sound mining investment decisions in Nigeria.
In addition, he stated that a mineralisation track of approximately two to ten kilometers length was discovered near Abuja.
He stated that anomolous Gold, Lead, and Silver were discovered with Tungsten during the resource evaluation.