North American Lithium Boom Arrives

The North American lithium boom is upon us, and it’s about time. 

For more than three decades, starting around the time when you were marveling at Sony’s Discman portable CD player and its amazing reusable battery, a single nation was virtually synonymous with lithium battery production: China. 

The effort goes all the way back to Deng Xiaoping, who famously stated that China would be for ‘energy metals’ what Saudi Arabia is for oil. 

27 years after his death, the plans for which he so prophetically laid the foundations for have all manifested into reality. 

Today, China controls almost 70% of the world’s lithium refinement and battery production. 

At the opposite end of the spectrum, they are buying up untapped or underexploited lithium properties across the world to complete their vertical integration of the most important class of consumer tech hardware in existence today. 

North American Lithium Production: The New Kid On The Block

Centuries from now, the lithium-ion battery and its off-shoots will be known as the energy storage medium of the 21st century. 

Unfortunately the US, the land of consumers that we are, has allowed the Chinese run with the lithium ball because we knew it meant plenty of cheap lithium-ion batteries in our CD players, flips phones and 10lb laptop computers. 

They knew we would get hooked, and we let them feed our addiction while our own ability to produce lithium batteries collapsed. 

For 30 years, it’s been working out better than anything the Chinese Communist Party of the early 90s could have imagined.

Almost 4 billion wireless devices shipped last year alone, and the EV market is going to overtake ICE by the end of the decade.

Despite the explosion in lithium demand, as of last year the US owned just 4% of the world’s lithium reserves and produced less than 2% of the world’s battery grade lithium. 

Even Elon Musk, who once proclaimed that his batteries will be a bigger product than his cars, is helpless in the quest for energy independence until domestic production ramps up.

All of that is now about to change. 

North American Lithium Gets A Shot In The Arm From An Ancient Volcano

With last summer’s discovery of the world’s biggest single lithium deposit at the McDermitt Caldera on the Oregon/Nevada border, the entire global balance of power in the lithium market is about to shift. 

Formed millions of years ago during an eruption of what’s now known as the Yellowstone Supervolcano, the caldera is an enormuous pot of rare and valuable metals.

With estimates of the deposit’s contents ranging from 20 to 40 million tons – enough to cover present global demand for decades – this incredible natural resource is now in the hands of a mining company on a mission. 

A recent $2.4B loan from the Biden administration to initiate production at this unique geological site was among the biggest industry news of the year so far, and what comes next will be pivotal. 

The problem, outside of the Chinese rivalry, is that lithium demand is growing so fast, full scale shortages are almost guaranteed unless major progress is made with new production. 

So getting this thing up and running isn’t so much a matter of choice, but a necessity. 

There Is Historical Precedent For The North American Lithium Boom

In the process, the work at the McDermitt Caldera will kick off a resource boom the likes of which hasn’t been seen on the North American continent since the discovery of oil at Spindletop, outside of Beaumont Texas more than 120 years ago.  

That bull market minted dynasties which still exist today, holding the strings of some of the world’s major energy empires.

It will happen again, and it’s already starting.

Like I said in the beginning, you’re only going to get one shot at making this looming bull market work for you. 

The company that owns all this lithium is still trading at pennies on the dollar considering the value of the resource it’s sitting on. 

The smart investors are already nibbling away. 

Soon enough, the retail crowds will show up like a caravan of red-eyed black friday shoppers. 

Don’t be one of them. 

Get the whole story on the Mcdermitt Caldera, what makes it special, and why so few investors know about the company that just got a $2.4B check from the Biden administration.

Fortune favors the bold,

Alex Koyfman

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His flagship service, Microcap Insider, provides market-beating insights into some of the fastest moving, highest profit-potential companies available for public trading on the U.S. and Canadian exchanges. With more than 5 years of track record to back it up, Microcap Insider is the choice for the growth-minded investor. Alex contributes his thoughts and insights regularly to Energy and Capital. To learn more about Alex, click here.