Jan 16 (Reuters) – Scientists in Chile’s Patagonia region are unearthing the southernmost dinosaur fossils recorded outside Antarctica, including remains of megaraptors that would have dominated the area’s food chain before their mass extinction.
Fossils of megaraptors, a carnivorous dinosaur that inhabited parts of South America during the Cretaceous period some 70 million years ago, were found in sizes up to 10 meters long, according to the Journal of South American Earth Sciences.
“We were missing a piece,” Marcelo Leppe, director of the Chilean Antarctic Institute (INACH), told Reuters. “We knew where there were large mammals, there would also be large carnivores, but we hadn’t found them yet.”
The remains, recovered from Chile’s far south Rio de las Chinas Valley in the Magallanes Basin between 2016 and 2020, also include some unusual remains of unenlagia, velociraptor-like dinosaurs which likely lived covered in feathers.
The specimens, according to University of Chile researcher Jared Amudeo, had some characteristics not present in Argentine or Brazilian counterparts.
[1/5] A man works at the area where scientists discovered megaraptor fossils at ‘Guido’ hill in the Chilean Patagonia area, close to Torres del Paine park, in Magallanes and Antarctic region, Chile in this undated handout photo provided by the Instituto Chileno Antartico on January 16, 2023. Instituto Chileno Antartico/Handout via REUTERS
“It could be a new species, which is very likely, or belong to another family of dinosaurs that are closely related,” he said, adding more conclusive evidence is needed.
The studies also shed more light on the conditions of the meteorite impact on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula that may have triggered the dinosaurs’ extinction some 65 million years ago.
INACH’s Leppe pointed to a sharp drop in temperatures over present-day Patagonia and waves of intense cold lasting up to several thousand years, in contrast to the extremely warm climate that prevailed for much of the Cretaceous period.
“The enormous variation we are seeing, the biological diversity, was also responding to very powerful environmental stimuli,” Leppe said.
“This world was already in crisis before (the meteorite) and this is evidenced in the rocks of the Rio de las Chinas Valley,” he said.
Reporting by Marion Giraldo; Writing by Sarah Morland, Editing by Alistair Bell
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WASHINGTON, Jan 11 (Reuters) – Embattled U.S. Representative George Santos said he had no plans to heed fellow New York Republicans’ calls to step down, a plea they made on Wednesday due to what they called “lie after lie after lie” about his career and history.
Top House of Representatives Republican Kevin McCarthy said he had no intention of pressuring Santos, part of his narrow 222-212 majority, despite the public plea by more than a dozen top Republicans, many of them from Santos’ suburban New York City district.
The New York Republicans made their plea at a news conference two days after a nonpartisan watchdog accused Santos of breaking campaign finance laws in a filing with the Federal Election Commission.
“It’s just lie after lie after lie. It became a pattern,” said Joseph Cairo Jr., the party chairman in Nassau County.
Republican Representative Nick Langworthy from western New York and Representative Anthony D’Esposito, who represents a district next to that of Santos, were also among those calling on the first-term congressman to step down.
“I join with my colleagues in saying that George Santos does not have the ability to serve here in the House of Representatives and should resign,” he said.
Santos rejected those calls in remarks to reporters at the Capitol and elaborated on his plans on Twitter.
“I was elected to serve the people of #NY03 not the party & politicians, I remain committed to doing that and regret to hear that local officials refuse to work with my office,” he wrote, referring to the congressional district he represents.
McCarthy on Wednesday told reporters that voters, not lawmakers, should choose who represents them.
“In America today, you’re innocent until proven guilty,” he said.
‘SIMPLY TRAGIC AND OUTRAGEOUS’
[1/5] Newly elected U.S. Rep. George Santos (R-NY) sits alone on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives during voting for a new House Speaker on the fourth day of the 118th Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., January 6, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Santos, who represents much of Nassau County, as well as a small slice of New York City, has admitted to fabricating much of his resume.
He won his November race over Democrat Robert Zimmerman by a margin of 7.5 percentage points.
But his victory was quickly overshadowed by media reports indicating that the persona he presented to voters was largely a work of fiction.
Among other claims, Santos said he had degrees from New York University and Baruch College, despite neither institution having any record of him attending. He claimed to have worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, which was also untrue.
He also falsely said that he was Jewish and that his grandparents escaped the Nazis during World War Two.
“For him to make up this story that his parents were Holocaust survivors is beyond the pale. It is simply tragic and outrageous and disgusting,” Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said. “He is a stain on the House of Representatives.”
During the news conference, officials said they would direct Santos’ constituents to Representative D’Esposito in some cases, who had agreed to help residents of Santos’ district.
Two House Democrats on Tuesday referred the matter to the House ethics committee this week. The local district attorney has said her office is investigating Santos.
If Santos were to resign, his district could make for a competitive special election.
He won his 2022 election with 52% of the vote to Democrat Zimmerman’s 45%, handing Republicans a seat formerly held by Democrat Thomas Suozzi.
The 2022 election took place with newly-drawn district boundaries. Had those lines been in place in the 2020 presidential election, Democratic President Joe Biden would won the district by eight percentage points.
Under New York and federal law, the seat would be vacant until a special election is held, which would take roughly three months.
Reporting by Gram Slattery and Moira Warburton, additional reporting by Jason Lange and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Scott Malone, Mark Porter and Aurora Ellis
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Gram Slattery
Thomson Reuters
Washington-based correspondent covering campaigns and Congress. Previously posted in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Santiago, Chile, and has reported extensively throughout Latin America. Co-winner of the 2021 Reuters Journalist of the Year Award in the business coverage category for a series on corruption and fraud in the oil industry. He was born in Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard College.
BRASILIA, Jan 2 (Reuters) – Brazilian markets delivered a withering verdict on leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s first full day in office on Monday, after he pledged to prioritize social issues and ordered a budget-busting extension to a fuel tax exemption.
Lula’s decision to extend the fuel tax exemption, which will deprive the Treasury of 52.9 billion reais ($9.9 billion) a year in fiscal income, was a stinging rebuke of his finance minister Fernando Haddad, a Workers Party (PT) loyalist who had said it would not be extended.
Haddad, who is seeking to dispel market fears that he might not maintain fiscal discipline, took office on Monday, pledging to control spending. “We are not here for adventures,” he said.
Markets seemed unconvinced.
The real currency lost 1.5% in value against the dollar in afternoon trading, while the benchmark Sao Paulo stock market index (.BVSP) ended 3.06% down. Shares of state-run oil company Petrobras (PETR4.SA) retreated nearly 6.45%.
In speeches delivered at his inauguration in Brasilia on Sunday, Lula promised that tackling hunger and poverty would be “the hallmark” of his third presidency after two previous stints running the country from 2003 to 2010.
Financial analysts said the start of Lula’s third presidency was in line with his campaign promises, and looked similar to earlier Workers Party policies that led to a deep recession.
Lula narrowly defeated far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in October, swinging South America’s largest nation back on a left-wing track.
On Monday, Lula instructed ministers to revoke steps to privatize state companies taken by the previous administration, including studies to sell Petrobras, the Post Office and state broadcasting company EBC.
On Sunday, he signed a decree extending an exemption for fuels from federal taxes, a measure passed by his predecessor aimed at lowering their cost in the run-up to the election, but which will deprive the Treasury of 52.9 billion reais ($9.9 billion) a year in fiscal income.
The federal tax exemption for fuels will last one year for diesel and biodiesel and two months for gasoline and ethanol, a decree published in the official gazette showed on Monday.
Gabriel Araujo Gracia, analyst at Guide Investimentos, said Lula’s plans to increase social spending, expand the role of state banks and abolish a constitutionally mandated spending ceiling harked back to the worst days of Workers Party rule.
“The policies remind us of Dilma Rousseff’s government rather than Lula’s,” Gracia said, referring to Lula’s handpicked successor, who was impeached while in office. “Her policies led to Brazil’s worst recession since 1929.”
Lula, who lifted millions of Brazilians from poverty during his first two terms, criticized Bolsonaro for allowing hunger to return to Brazil, and wept during his speech to supporters on Sunday as he described how poverty had increased again.
Allies said Lula’s newfound social conscience was the result of his 580 days in prison, Reuters reported on Sunday.
Lula kicks off his third presidential term after persuading Congress to pass a one-year, 170 billion-reais increased social spending package, in line with his campaign promises.
“The package ended up being bigger than expected, with potential repercussions for public debt sustainability,” Banco BTG Pactual said in a research note.
Lula spent his first day in office meeting with more than a dozen heads of state who attended his inauguration.
The meetings started with the king of Spain, and continued with South American presidents, among them the leftist leaders of Argentina, Chile and Bolivia, as well as representatives from Cuba and Venezuela, and Vice President Wang Qishan of China.
On Twitter, Lula said he had received a letter from Chinese leader Xi Jinping expressing a desire to increase cooperation between the two countries.
“China is our biggest trading partner, and we can further expand relations between our countries,” Lula added.
The new president is also set to attend the wake of Brazilian soccer star Pele, who died on Thursday at 82 after battling colon cancer.
Lula will pay his respects and pay tribute to Pele and his family on Tuesday morning, the president’s office said in a statement.
($1 = 5.3633 reais)
Reporting by Anthony Boadle, Marcela Ayres and Gabriel Araujo; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Jonathan Oatis
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LIMA, Nov 18 (Reuters) – A LATAM Airlines (LTM.SN) jet collided with a firetruck on the runway of Peru’s Jorge Chavez International Airport as it was taking off on Friday, the carrier said, resulting in the death of two firefighters.
No passengers or flight crew members were killed in the incident, the airline said.
It remains unclear why the firetruck entered the runway while the plane was taking off and the prosecutors’ office said it was investigating the incident as potential manslaughter.
Video posted on social media showed the jet colliding with the firetruck as it careened down the runway, then rapidly catching fire and smoking heavily as it ground to a halt.
Lima Airport Partners, which operates Jorge Chavez in Lima, the nation’s most important airport, said the airport will remain closed at least through 1 p.m. local time on Saturday.
The flight was LA2213, covering the domestic Lima-Juliaca route, LATAM Airlines said.
This is the second incident in less than a month involving LATAM Airlines, after one of its planes had its nose destroyed during a severe storm that forced it to make an emergency landing.
Reporting by Marco Aquino in Lima, additional reporting by Fabian Cambero in Santiago, Marcelo Rochabrun in Lima and Carolina Pulice in Mexico City; Editing by Anthony Esposito, Rosalba O’Brien and Matthew Lewis
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SANTIAGO, Aug 8 – Chile will seek to apply harsh sanctions to those responsible for a huge sinkhole near a copper mine in the country’s north, the mining minister said on Monday.
The mysterious hole of 36.5 meters in diameter that emerged in late July has provoked the mobilization of local authorities and led the mining regulator to suspend operations of a nearby mine owned by Canada’s Lundin (LUN.TO) in the northern district of Candelaria.
“We are going to go all the way with consequences, to sanction, not just fine,” Mining Minister Marcela Hernando said in a press release, adding that fines tend to be insignificant and the ruling must be “exemplary” to mining companies.
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Chilean authorities have not provided details of the investigation into causes of the sinkhole.
Local and foreign media showed various aerial images of the huge hole in a field near the Lundin Mining operation, about 665 kilometers north of the Chilean capital. Initially, the hole, near the town of Tierra Amarilla, measured about 25 meters (82 feet) across, with water visible at the bottom. read more
The Canadian firm owns 80% of the property, while the remaining 20% is in the hands of Japan’s Sumitomo Metal Mining Co Ltd (5713.T) and Sumitomo Corp (8053.T).
The minister added that although the country’s mining regulator had carried out an inspection in the area in July, it was not able to detect this “overexploitation.”
“That also makes us think that we have to reformulate what our inspection processes are,” she said.
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Reporting by Fabian Andres Cambero; Writing by Carolina Pulice;
Editing by Leslie Adler
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Aug 7 (Reuters) – A sinkhole in Chile has doubled in size, growing large enough to engulf France’s Arc de Triomphe and prompting officials to order work to stop at a nearby copper mine.
The sinkhole, which emerged on July 30, now stretches 50 meters (160 feet) across and goes down 200 meters (656 feet). Seattle’s Space Needle would also comfortably fit in the black pit, as would six Christ the Redeemer statues from Brazil stacked head-to-head, giant arms outstretched.
The National Service of Geology and Mining said late on Saturday it is still investigating the gaping hole near the Alcaparrosa mine operated by Canadian company Lundin Mining (LUN.TO), about 665 km (413 miles) north of Santiago.
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In addition to ordering all work to stop, the geology and mining service said it was starting a “sanctioning process.” The agency did not provide details on what that action would involve.
Lundin did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The company last week said the hole did not affect workers or community members and that it was working to determine the cause. read more
Lundin owns 80% of the property and the rest is held by Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation.
Initially, the hole near the town of Tierra Amarilla measured about 25 meters (82 feet) across, with water visible at the bottom. read more
The geology and mining service said it has installed water extraction pumps at the mine and in the next few days would investigate the mine’s underground chambers for potential over-extraction.
Local officials have expressed worry that the Alcaparrosa mine could have flooded below ground, destabilizing the surrounding land. It would be “something completely out of the ordinary,” Tierra Amarilla Mayor Cristobal Zuniga told local media.
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Reporting by Marion Giraldo; Writing by Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Lisa Shumaker
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, maker of Tide detergent and Pampers diapers, is predicting the slowest sales growth in years as consumer belt-tightening is beginning to hit household staples.
The outlook comes after the Cincinnati-based consumer-products giant on Friday reported its biggest annual sales increase in 16 years because of the price increases that it placed on mainstays from toothpaste to toilet paper.
P&G’s organic sales, a closely watched metric that strips out deals and currency moves, rose 7% for the year ended June 30, the most since 2006. Shoppers paid substantially higher prices.
But consumers are beginning to cut back amid mounting inflation, executives said. They are using up products they stockpiled during the pandemic or holding off on replenishing supplies. Sales volumes declined 1% in the most recent quarter.
“For us, the downturn is not yet visible,” P&G finance chief
Andre Schulten
said. “We’re also not naive, we see the pressure on the consumer.”
P&G expects organic sales growth of 3% to 5% for the current year, the lowest since 2019 when the company notched a 5% increase. The company predicts consumer-goods industry growth will slow by a percentage point or more from the last fiscal year’s 5% growth.
P&G Chief Executive
Jon Moeller
said in an interview that consumers are beginning to shift to cheaper, private-label alternatives, a trend already under way in food and beverages. He called the shift small but noticeable.
Mr. Moeller said he is confident that growth, though more muted relative to the past few years, will remain solid as high employment levels coupled with healthy household balance sheets enable consumers to keep spending on necessities while they cut costs elsewhere.
“There is no inherent reason why people are just going to stop buying modestly priced consumer products, daily-use essentials where performance matters,” he said. “You have to look elsewhere to get signals of consumer stress.”
The consumer-sentiment index and the consumer-confidence index both try to measure the same thing: consumers’ feelings. WSJ explains why the Federal Reserve is keeping a close eye on consumer confidence in 2022. Illustration: Adele Morgan
P&G shares fell more than 6%.
P&G’s results and outlook largely echo the messages coming from other big consumer brands. Companies including
Coca-Cola Co.
,
McDonald’s Corp.
and
Kimberly-Clark Corp.
this week reported sales gains driven by higher prices, and executives said they would keep passing along increased costs to shoppers for now. Yet some executives also said consumers are starting to show signs of stress, trading down to cheaper brands or cutting back on how much they buy.
The world’s biggest consumer packaged goods company by sales, P&G has largely outpaced competitors amid the pandemic, especially in the U.S.
Rivals are showing signs of gaining ground.
Colgate-Palmolive Co.
on Friday said it now expects bigger-than-expected organic sales gains, predicting an increase of 5% to 7% for the calendar year, up from 4% to 6%. Last week,
Kimberly-Clark
and
Unilever
PLC also raised sales outlooks for the calendar year.
Church & Dwight Co.
Chief Executive
Matthew Farrell
said on Friday that demand is accelerating for low-cost laundry detergent, while people are giving up electric toothbrushes for manual options. “Consumers are making choices to make their budget stretch further,” he said.
A central question is how consumers and retailers respond to further price increases. P&G said Friday that it had announced to retailers another round of price increases, in mid-single-digit percentages, which will take effect toward the end of summer.
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P&G, after more than four years of market-share gains, lost share in the four-week period ended July 16 compared with a year ago, Bernstein analyst Callum Elliott said in a research note analyzing retail data. Losses are in every category except for beauty, he said.
“While prices spiral, the consumer also continues to adjust to the new reality,” he said.
Mr. Moeller said P&G continues to gain market share broadly in the U.S. and globally.
Organic sales rose 7% in the quarter ended June 30, with prices up 8% on average. P&G attributed the 1% decline in sales volume primarily to Covid-related shutdowns in China and intentional downsizing of its business in Russia amid the war in Ukraine.
P&G reported $19.5 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 3% from a year ago. Diluted net earnings per share were $1.21, up 7%.
The company expects diluted net earnings per share will be between flat and up 4% for the fiscal year as it faces an anticipated $3.3 billion hit tied to foreign-exchange rates and higher costs for materials and freight.
An artist’s impression showing what the binary star system VFTS 243 – containing a black hole and a large luminous star orbiting each other – might look like if we were observing it up close is seen in this undated handout image. The system, which is located in the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, is composed of a hot, blue star with 25 times the sun’s mass and a black hole, which is at least nine times the mass of the sun. ESO/L. Calcada/Handout via REUTERS
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WASHINGTON, July 18 (Reuters) – Astronomers have spotted in a galaxy adjacent to our Milky Way what they are calling a cosmic “needle in a haystack” – a black hole that not only is classified as dormant but appears to have been born without the explosion of a dying star.
Researchers said on Monday this one differs from all other known black holes in that it is “X-ray quiet” – not emitting powerful X-ray radiation indicative of gobbling up nearby material with its strong gravitational pull – and that it was not born in a stellar blast called a supernova.
Black holes are extraordinarily dense objects with gravity so intense not even light can escape.
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This one, with a mass at least nine times greater than our sun, was detected in the Tarantula Nebula region of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy and is located about 160,000 light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).
An extremely luminous and hot blue star with a mass about 25 times that of the sun orbits with this black hole in a stellar marriage. This so-called binary system is named VFTS 243. The researchers believe the companion star eventually also will become a black hole and could merge with the other one.
Dormant black holes, thought to be relatively common, are hard to detect because they interact very little with their surroundings. Numerous prior proposed candidates have been debunked with further study, including by members of the team that uncovered this one.
“The challenge is finding those objects,” said Tomer Shenar, a research fellow in astronomy at Amsterdam University, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Astronomy. “We identified a needle in a haystack.”
“It’s the first object of its kind discovered after astronomers have been searching for decades,” said astronomer and study co-author Kareem El-Badry of the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The researchers used six years of observations from the European Southern Observatory’s Chile-based Very Large Telescope.
There are different categories of black holes. The smallest, like the newly detected one, are so-called stellar-mass black holes formed by the collapse of massive individual stars at the ends of their life cycles. There also are intermediate-mass black holes as well as the enormous supermassive black holes residing at the center of most galaxies.
“Black holes are intrinsically dark objects. They do not emit any light. Therefore, in order to detect a black hole, we usually look at binary systems in which we see one luminous star moving around a second, not-detected object,” said study co-author Julia Bodensteiner, a postdoctoral research fellow at the European Southern Observatory in Munich.
It is typically assumed that the collapse of massive stars into black holes is associated with a powerful supernova explosion. In this case, a star perhaps 20 times our sun’s mass blew some of its material into space in its death throes, then collapsed in on itself without an explosion.
The shape of its orbit with its companion offers evidence for the lack of an explosion.
“The orbit of the system is almost perfectly circular,” Shenar said.
Had a supernova occurred, the blast’s force would have kicked the newly formed black hole in a random direction and yielded an elliptical rather than circular orbit, Shenar added.
Black holes can be mercilessly ravenous, guzzling any material – gas, dust and stars – wandering within their gravitational pull.
“Black holes can only be mercilessly ravenous if there is something close enough to them that they can devour. Usually, we detect them if they are receiving material from a companion star, a process we call accretion,” Bodensteiner said.
Shenar added, “In so-called dormant black hole systems, the companion is far enough away that the material does not accumulate around the black hole to heat up and emit X-rays. Instead, it is immediately swallowed by the black hole.”
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Reporting by Will Dunham, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien
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Pope Francis talks with Cardinal Angelo Sodano as they arrive to attend a consistory at the Vatican February 13, 2015. REUTERS/Tony Gentile
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VATICAN CITY, May 28 (Reuters) – Cardinal Angelo Sodano, a controversial Vatican power broker for more than a quarter of a century who was accused of covering up one of the Catholic Church’s most notorious sex abusers, has died at the age of 94.
Sodano, who had been ill for some time and died on Friday night, was secretary of state under two popes — John Paul II and Benedict XVI — holding the number two post in the Vatican hierarchy for 16 years between 1990 and 2006.
It was widely believed that Sodano, together with John Paul’s secretary, then-Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, ran the Church in the final years of the late pope’s life as his health deteriorated from Parkinson’s and other illnesses. John Paul died in 2005.
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In a series of exposes in the National Catholic Reporter in 2010, author Jason Berry, a leading expert on the Church’s sex abuse crisis, wrote how Sodano blocked the Vatican from investigating Father Marcial Maciel, disgraced founder of the Legion of Christ religious order.
After John Paul’s death, Pope Benedict ramped up investigations of Maciel and removed him in 2006, when the Vatican acknowledged that allegations it had been brushed aside for decades were true.
The cult-like Legion of Christ order, whose rules forbade criticizing its founder or questioning his motives, later acknowledged that Maciel, who died in 2008, lived a double life as a paedophile, womanizer and drug addict.
Sodano several times denied allegations that he was aware of Maciel’s double life and that he had covered up for him. Maciel, a conservative seen as a bulwark against liberalism in the Church, was known to have made generous financial gifts to the Vatican.
In 2010, four years after Pope Benedict replaced Sodano as secretary of state, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna accused Sodano of having blocked a full-scale investigation of former Austrian Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer.
Groer stepped down as archbishop of Vienna in 1995 after allegations that he had sexually abused young seminarians in the past. He died in 2003 never admitting guilt or facing charges.
Sodano also denied those accusations.
In 2010, victims of clergy sexual abuse condemned Sodano for saying at a public Easter address that abuse was mostly “petty gossip”.
Ordained a priest in 1950, Sodano joined the diplomatic service several years later. He served in Vatican embassies in Ecuador, Uruguay, Chile before being called back to the Vatican for senior administrative roles, including the number two spot.
Juan Carlos Cruz, a victim of clergy sexual abuse in his native Chile and now a member of a Vatican commission on preventing sexual abuse, wrote on Twitter that Sodano was “a man who inflicted so much damage on so many people and covered up years of abuse in Chile and the world”.
Sodano was Vatican ambassador in Chile between 1977-1988.
Vatican insiders have said that even after he retired, Sodano, who continued to live in the Vatican, exercised significant influence in the careers of Vatican officials for the remainder of Benedict’s pontificate. Benedict resigned in 2013.
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Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Ros Russell and Daniel Wallis
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Green, digital booms fuel demand for rare minerals
China is pre-eminent in critical minerals supply
GRAPHIC-S.Korea’s reliance on China:
SANGDONG, South Korea, May 9 (Reuters) – Blue tungsten winking from the walls of abandoned mine shafts, in a town that’s seen better days, could be a catalyst for South Korea’s bid to break China’s dominance of critical minerals and stake its claim to the raw materials of the future.
The mine in Sangdong, 180 km southeast of Seoul, is being brought back from the dead to extract the rare metal that’s found fresh value in the digital age in technologies ranging from phones and chips to electric vehicles and missiles.
“Why reopen it now after 30 years? Because it means sovereignty over natural resources,” said Lee Dong-seob, vice president of mine owner Almonty Korea Tungsten Corp.
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“Resources have become weapons and strategic assets.”
Sangdong is one of at least 30 critical mineral mines or processing plants globally that have been launched or reopened outside China over the last four years, according to a Reuters review of projects announced by governments and companies. These include projects developing lithium in Australia, rare earths in the United States and tungsten in Britain.
The scale of the plans illustrates the pressure felt by countries across the world to secure supplies of critical minerals regarded as essential for the green energy transition, from lithium in EV batteries to magnesium in laptops and neodymium found in wind turbines.
Overall demand for such rare minerals is expected to increase four-fold by 2040, the International Energy Agency said last year. For those used in electric vehicles and battery storage, demand is projected to grow 30-fold, it added.
Many countries view their minerals drive as a matter of national security because China controls the mining, processing or refining of many of these resources.
The Asian powerhouse is the largest supplier of critical minerals to the United States and Europe, according to a study by the China Geological Survey in 2019. Of the 35 minerals the United States has classified as critical, China is the largest supplier of 13, including rare earth elements essential for clean-energy technologies, the study found. China is the largest source of 21 key minerals for the European Union, such as antimony used in batteries, it said.
“In the critical raw material restaurant, China is sitting eating its dessert, and the rest of the world is in the taxi reading the menu,” said Julian Kettle, senior vice president for metals and mining at consultancy Wood MacKenzie.
The stakes are particularly high for South Korea, home of major chipmakers like Samsung Electronics. The country is the world’s largest consumer of tungsten per capita and relies on China for 95% of its imports of the metal, which is prized for its unrivalled strength and its resistance to heat.
China controls over 80% of global tungsten supplies, according to CRU Group, London-based commodity analysts.
The mine at Sangdong, a once bustling town of 30,000 residents that’s now home to just 1,000, holds one of the world’s largest tungsten deposits and could produce 10% of global supply when it opens next year, according to its owner.
Lewis Black, CEO of Almonty Korea’s Canadian-based parent Almonty Industries, told Reuters that it planned to offer about half of the operation’s processed output to the domestic market in South Korea as an alternative to Chinese supply.
“It’s easy to buy from China and China is the largest trading partner of South Korea but they know they’re over-dependent,” Black said. “You have to have a plan B right now.”
Sangdong’s tungsten, discovered in 1916 during the Japanese colonial era, was once a backbone of the South Korean economy, accounting for 70% of the country’s export earnings in the 1960s when it was largely used in metal-cutting tools.
The mine was closed in 1994 due to cheaper supply of the mineral from China, which made it commercially unviable, but now Almonty is betting that demand, and prices will continue to rise driven by the digital and green revolutions as well as a growing desire by countries to diversify their supply sources.
European prices of 88.5% minimum paratungstate – the key raw material ingredient in tungsten products – are trading around $346 per tonne, up more than 25% from a year ago and close to their highest levels in five years, according to pricing agency Asian Metal.
The Sangdong mine is being modernised, with vast tunnels being dug underground, while work has also started on a tungsten crushing and grinding plant.
“We should keep running this kind of mine so that new technologies can be handed over to the next generations,” said Kang Dong-hoon, a manager in Sangdong, where a “Pride of Korea” sign is displayed on a wall of the mine office.
“We have been lost in the mining industry for 30 years. If we lose this chance, then there will be no more.”
Almonty Industries has signed a 15-year deal to sell tungsten to Pennsylvania-based Global Tungsten & Powders, a supplier to the U.S. military, which variously uses the metal in artillery shell tips, rockets and satellite antennae.
Yet there are no guarantees of long-term success for the mining group, which is investing about $100 million in the Sangdong project. Such ventures may still struggle to compete with China and there are concerns among some industry experts that developed countries will not follow through on commitments to diversify supply chains for critical minerals.
Seoul set up an Economic Security Key Items Taskforce after a supply crisis last November when Beijing tightened exports of urea solution, which many South Korean diesel vehicles are required by law to use to cut emissions. Nearly 97% of South Korea’s urea came from China at the time and shortages prompted panic-buying at filling stations across the country.
The Korean Mine Rehabilitation and Resources Corporation (KOMIR), a government agency responsible for national resource security, told Reuters it had committed to subsidise about 37% of Sangdong’s tunnelling costs and would consider further support to mitigate any potential environmental damage.
Incoming President Yoon Seok-yeol pledged in January to reduce mineral dependence on “a certain country”, and last month announced a new resource strategy that will allow the government to share stockpiling information with the private sector.
South Korea is not alone.
The United States, European Union and Japan have all launched or updated national critical mineral supply strategies over the last two years, laying out broad plans to invest in more diversified supply lines to reduce their reliance on China.
Mineral supply chains have also become a feature of diplomatic missions.
Last year, Canada and the European Union launched a strategic partnership on raw materials to reduce dependence on China, while South Korea recently signed collaboration deals with Australia and Indonesia on mineral supply chains.
“Supply-chain diplomacy will be prioritised by many governments in the coming years as accessing critical raw materials for the green and digital transition has become a top priority,” said Henning Gloystein, director of energy and climate resources at the Eurasia Group consultancy.
In November, China’s top economic planner said it would step up exploration of strategic mineral resources including rare earths, tungsten and copper.
Investment globally of $200 billion in additional mining and smelter capacity is needed to meet critical mineral supply demand by 2030, 10 times what is being committed currently, Kettle said.
Yet projects have faced resistance from communities who don’t want a mine or smelter near their homes.
In January, for example, pressure from environmentalists prompted Serbia to revoke Rio Tinto’s lithium exploration licence while U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration cancelled two leases for Antofagasta’s copper and nickel mines in Minnesota. read more
In Sangdong, some residents are doubtful that the mine will improve their lives.
“Many of us in this town didn’t believe the mine would really come back,” said Kim Kwang-gil, 75, who for decades lived off the tungsten he panned from a stream flowing down from the mine when it operated.
“The mine doesn’t need as many people as before, because everything is done by machines.”
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Reporting by Ju-min Park and Joe Brock; Additional reporting by Beijing Newsroom and Gavin Maguire; Editing by Kevin Krolicki and Pravin Char
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.