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http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/201...-timis-warzone-investment-opportunity-awaits/
Attention Frank Timis! Warzone investment opportunity awaits
Posted by Izabella Kaminska on Jun 14 10:00.
International commodity explorers – send for your tin hats and Kevlar vests.
The New York Times reported on Sunday that the US has discovered nearly $1,000bn in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan.
(Which makes an Anglo-American military presence in the area somewhat handy – we think).
To be precise, the key abundant minerals are said to be iron ore and copper, but also lithium – the core material used to make battery powered devices, from mobile phones to electric cars.
As the NYT expands, the lithium reserves alone could potentially set Afghanistan apart other resource wealthy neighbours:
The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.
According to the news report the deposits were discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. Although — more worryingly to international commodity explorers the world over — the reserves are said to be scattered throughout key Taliban strongholds.
The backstory on how the data actually came to be released, meanwhile, reads like the plot of a Dan Brown novel.
To summarise: during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1990s the Russians conducted a number of promising geological surveys of the country. In the chaos of war, however, their findings, maps and charts were completely forgotten about.
But a bunch of American geologists stumbled across the lost data in 2004 – after coming across a mysterious sealed compartment situated in the bedrock casing of the ancient Buddhas of Bamyan.
Using the charts the Americans set out to follow the clues and corroborate the data. By 2007 , their efforts had led to”the most comprehensive geologic survey of Afghanistan ever conducted”.
But even this data was ignored for another two years, says the NYT:
… the results gathered dust for two more years, ignored by officials in both the American and Afghan governments. In 2009, a Pentagon task force that had created business development programs in Iraq was transferred to Afghanistan, and came upon the geological data. Until then, no one besides the geologists had bothered to look at the information — and no one had sought to translate the technical data to measure the potential economic value of the mineral deposits.
How that information will be used by both the allied forces and/or the Taliban could make for an interesting turn of events in Afghanistan this year.
But what we really want to know is if the above might tempt commodity entrepreneur extraordinaire Frank Timis into the battery business?
Related links:
Afghanistan to Delay Awarding Concessions for Mineral Deposits – WSJ
Mining Indaba 2010 – Reflections on Day 1 – FT Alphaville
This entry was posted by Izabella Kaminska on Monday, June 14th, 2010 at 10:00 and is filed under Capital markets, Commodities. Tagged with afghanistan, Copper, iron, lithium, minerals, us.
Attention Frank Timis! Warzone investment opportunity awaits
Posted by Izabella Kaminska on Jun 14 10:00.
International commodity explorers – send for your tin hats and Kevlar vests.
The New York Times reported on Sunday that the US has discovered nearly $1,000bn in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan.
(Which makes an Anglo-American military presence in the area somewhat handy – we think).
To be precise, the key abundant minerals are said to be iron ore and copper, but also lithium – the core material used to make battery powered devices, from mobile phones to electric cars.
As the NYT expands, the lithium reserves alone could potentially set Afghanistan apart other resource wealthy neighbours:
The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.
According to the news report the deposits were discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. Although — more worryingly to international commodity explorers the world over — the reserves are said to be scattered throughout key Taliban strongholds.
The backstory on how the data actually came to be released, meanwhile, reads like the plot of a Dan Brown novel.
To summarise: during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1990s the Russians conducted a number of promising geological surveys of the country. In the chaos of war, however, their findings, maps and charts were completely forgotten about.
But a bunch of American geologists stumbled across the lost data in 2004 – after coming across a mysterious sealed compartment situated in the bedrock casing of the ancient Buddhas of Bamyan.
Using the charts the Americans set out to follow the clues and corroborate the data. By 2007 , their efforts had led to”the most comprehensive geologic survey of Afghanistan ever conducted”.
But even this data was ignored for another two years, says the NYT:
… the results gathered dust for two more years, ignored by officials in both the American and Afghan governments. In 2009, a Pentagon task force that had created business development programs in Iraq was transferred to Afghanistan, and came upon the geological data. Until then, no one besides the geologists had bothered to look at the information — and no one had sought to translate the technical data to measure the potential economic value of the mineral deposits.
How that information will be used by both the allied forces and/or the Taliban could make for an interesting turn of events in Afghanistan this year.
But what we really want to know is if the above might tempt commodity entrepreneur extraordinaire Frank Timis into the battery business?
Related links:
Afghanistan to Delay Awarding Concessions for Mineral Deposits – WSJ
Mining Indaba 2010 – Reflections on Day 1 – FT Alphaville
This entry was posted by Izabella Kaminska on Monday, June 14th, 2010 at 10:00 and is filed under Capital markets, Commodities. Tagged with afghanistan, Copper, iron, lithium, minerals, us.
