By Violet Li and Mei Mei Chu
SHANGHAI- China’s lithium reserves have risen from 6 percent to 16.5 percent of the global total, making it the world’s second-largest holder of lithium reserves, state media reported on Wednesday.
The world’s top consumer of the battery metal relies heavily on lithium imports, and Beijing has pushed for more domestic exploration in recent years.
Lithium is widely used in rechargeable batteries for electronic devices, electric vehicles, and renewable energy storage systems, as well as in ceramics, glass, and pharmaceutical applications.
The newly discovered mines include a 2,800-km-long spodumene mine in the Xikunsong-Pan-Ganzi region in Tibet, and some lithium salt lakes in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Xinhua News Agency said in the report.
With the discovered salt lakes, China now also hosts the world’s third-largest salt lake resources, after the lithium triangle in South America and western America, the report said.
Salt lake is a low-cost lithium source.
The most active lithium carbonate contract on the Guangzhou Futures Exchange in China stood at 77,420 yuan ($10,559.91) per ton on Wednesday, up by 0.4 percent week-on-week.
Meanwhile, China’s fuel oil imports are expected to drop in early 2025 following a hike in the product’s import tax from Jan. 1, prompting some sellers to lower prices to boost demand, several trade sources familiar with the matter said.
The rise in import duties, which comes on top of a separate policy last October to reduce tax rebates on fuel oil shipments, will further crimp margins for China’s refining sector that has been reeling from lacklustre margins since last year.
Smaller refineries, especially those without or are short of crude oil import quotas, source for fuel oil as a feedstock to produce higher-value transportation fuels. —Reuters
