Dwayne Sparkes

A couple of days have passed now and I’ve slowly recovered from reading the GS supply table. Some more ramblings on the current lithium market whilst I sip my morning coffee (managed to get this one down). Following on from my previous post regarding lepidolite production within China. The Chinese have shown that they are willing to mine spodumene at a near loss. It seems they aren’t too bothered about losses at the mining stage if it means greater control over the market. Alita with the whole Bald Hill mine debacle, were allegedly selling Spod concentrate from Bald Hill well below the current market price (70% under) to their Chinese offtake partner… See screenshotted article below. So why is China suppressing the price with low grade internal sources? I believe Its to bide time to build stakes in overseas, high quality lithium plays, predominantly Africa given the Australians and Canadians aren’t willing to play ball. Chris and Gina are well aware of this, and its most likely they are aware that the lepidolite reserves are a short term band-aid solution. As per my last post, you need roughly 84 tonnes of lepidolite ore to make 1 tonne of LCE. The contained lithium content of these low grade lepidolite mines is miniscule. The numbers below speak for themselves. ‘414 Mine’ has 130Mt @ 0.38% li2O. Contained lithium = 0.0038 x 130Mt = 0.494 Mt li2O. That’s roughly 1.22Mt of LCE. Compare that to Kathleen Valley. 156 Mt @ 1.4%. Contained lithium = 0.014 * 156Mt = 2.184 Mt li20. That’s roughly 5.4Mt of LCE So the ‘414 Mine’ is around 20% of Kathleen Valley in terms of contained lithium…😅 Also its not just about size, its how quickly can you get it out of the ground. $LTR for example is going to be a 4mtpa operation for 700,000kta SC6. You’ll need a 14.7mtpa operation to get the equivalent output from lepidolite grading 0.38% (414 Mine grade). And that's just the initial beneficiation stage...🤯 What we are seeing now is very similar to what happened with Iron ore. The Chinese attempted to use low quality, internal iron ore in order to manipulate the price. This turned out to be unsustainable and the price of Iron ore increased overtime. I believe we are seeing this again with in the form of Lepidolite. Its almost déjà vu in fact, the iron ore price plummeted 70-75% to a low of $37 a tonne in Dec 2015. Goldman Sachs' predicted the iron ore price to touch $35 a tonne in 2017 & 2018. The opposite happened and the price went ballistic. See chart below. Happy Friday everyone and cheers for reading.

@respeculator @RennickGBR we might not have the choice soon buddy, may have to back our own exploration 😂 bye bye capital

Pretty clear from their investor presentation that Santos $STO.AX is chosing to return capital and invest in PNG and the US rather than Australia despite holding some decent Assets... i wonder why 🤔🤔

@mattrkirkman @RennickGBR We will kill the golden goose

@sparkes_dwayne @RennickGBR Point is they paid tax. At no risk of losses to the tax payer. End Point risk to reward is on the company's taking that risk. Tax payers shouldn't foot the bill.

The taxation regime of gas and oil exploration in this country is not understood which has led to an enormous amount of misinformation. Here are the facts: 1. Oil and gas companies pay 30 cents tax on their profits just like every other company in Australia. That means that Australians already have 30% ownership. 2. Oil and gas companies pay a super profit tax on their profits known as the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax. The PRRT has collected very little revenue to date for two reasons a) there has been an enormous amount of capital invested in getting these projects up resulting in large depreciation offsets and b) the gas was foolishly sold forward at very cheap prices when the projects were given the go ahead. A lot of these contracts will roll off over the next decade resulting in larger profits and a larger tax for taxpayers. 3. 70-80% of gas and oil exploration in Australia is unsuccessful. Offshore gas exploration is not a multi million dollar business- it’s a multi billion dollar business. The idea that taxpayers should fund 30% of offshore oil and gas exploration is absurd. The last person to come up with that idea was Gough Whitlam. Needless to say no banks would lend against such a proposition. Peoplefirstparty.au has always had a policy to abolish the PRRT and replace it with a 5-10% royalty on Sales. Combined with the 30% company tax that will guarantee that Australians share in over 40% of the profits of any offshore oil and gas project. That’s an excellent return given taxpayers incur no risk. I’ve done up a table in comments showing the share Australians will receive based on operating profit margin before tax. David Pocock, the Greens and One Nation are all wrong on this. The formers 25% export tax will wipe out most of the profits made eliminating the incentive to further explore for gas. One Nation offering to fund 30% of exploration costs for mostly foreign owned companies will expose taxpayers to billions of dollars in subsidies with no guarantee of return. Australia desperately needs sensible economic reform. Unfortunately none of the parties in Canberra have a clue how to make this happen.

@usuallyYJLee Amazing work mate 👏

Hi friends, I gave a full-length presentation on #lithium at the Ignite Conference in Singapore last month. #Electric cars, trucks, BESS, mining equipment, ships, eVTOLs, drones, aircraft, etc. Enjoy! youtu.be/BLpgyuaQwQE?t=1

That’s not my point. That was just an example to say all exploration isn't equal. I’m saying the framing of exploration risk is too broad. Even offshore, it’s not always a multi billion dollar roulette spin and its not as risky as what some make out. For example, Amplitude in the Otway Basin has had 29 exploration wells and 16 gas discoveries. A 55% discovery rate. For geophysical supported targets (seismic etc.), Amplitude reported a 94% success rate. Seismic data has really changed the game recently in gas exploration. Our current politicians don't understand this. Even if the chance to make a discovery was 25%, you'd still take that in a heartbeat if you crunch the numbers. This is why we need geophysicists, geologists and engineers making the decision as to which projects to back/explore for with taxpayers money.

@sparkes_dwayne That’s onshore not offshore - royalties are charged by the state government not the commonwealth - nothing to do with Federal Government policy.

@MatthewSco50098 @BrendanFalk we are claiming tanks

@sparkes_dwayne @BrendanFalk You can claim google maps and RC Drilling. You can't claim tanks. That was all on the poms though there is evidence that Monash may have been the first to use them effectively

Yeah Australia only invented wifi, cochlear implants, black box flight recorders, the pacemaker... This chip startup probably nothing

@ALeighMP Nobody cares. Now do what we are paying you to do and get back to work.

UTA100: 100km, 4000m of elevation, a few thousand stairs, and fabulous volunteers. Huge thanks to everyone who made it such a terrific event. Finished in 15hrs. #auspolrunners

@KellyAlspals At the current Chinese futures price, yes. Although my second calc is a lot less

@sparkes_dwayne $7,000 USD per tonne of lithium for sulfuric acid ?

With sulfur prices this high, the costs of processing lithium clays, oxide ores (copper, nickel, REEs) is going to BLOW OUT. The smelting of sulphide ores produces sulphuric acid as a byproduct. The processing of oxide ores consumes sulphuric acid. #LAC's Lithium America's Thacker Pass for example is going to do 40,000 tonnes per year of carbonate in phase 1. They've stated a 2250t/day sulphuric acid plant, which is 821,250 tonnes of acid per year. So each tonne of carbonate could require 20.5 tonne of sulphuric acid per tonne of Li₂CO₃. That's about 6.8 tonnes of sulphur. Using the Chinese futures price of US$1050t, that's US$7140t worth of sulphur per tonne of Li₂CO₃. #LAC will most likely source their sulphur internally. American fertiliser companies during Q1 paid US$488/t for molten sulfur, which is $3318 per tonne of Li₂CO₃. I'd imagine its higher now looking at the Chinese price. Spodumene uses 50-60% less acid. Food for thought. I love spod.

@gps_dhami Thank you mate, I’ll be sure to take a look

@sparkes_dwayne Thanks for your response! Since I love reading your 'coffee posts' and love your technical deep-dives, you may wanna take a look at their DFS certified, patent-pending, novel extraction process and maybe call out any B.S. you may find. Cheers! @newswire/century-lithium-files-technical-report-on-the-feasibility-3b608" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">ceo.ca/@newswire/cent…

@moneyofminepod Nice one boys

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@WayneHines24470 Haha

@sparkes_dwayne Oh there is definitely risk .. "I'm altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further" youtu.be/3D8TEJtQRhw?si…

Pleased to announce our newest JV partner! He brings no cash, no drill rig, no assays, no risk - just a 47% free carry and a firm belief in fairness. Mineralisation open in all directions, especially toward Canberra.

@gps_dhami I don’t know much about it to be honest mate

@sparkes_dwayne What are your thoughts on Century Lithium's flowsheet that uses HCl produced on-site?

@Lehman_Bro @respeculator I think that’s a great idea

@sparkes_dwayne @respeculator $COB is proposing to produce Elemental Sulphur from their Broken Hill Cobalt deposit something like Sulphuric Pellets? Apparently easy to transport You know much about Elemental Sulphur or Sulphuric pellets @sparkes_dwayne ?

@MrPeterpunko I’ll admit you’ve got a good footy team though

@sparkes_dwayne There you go.. Can't come up with anything insightful so you revert to good ol' Ideology.. "Derr"-wayne is soooo fitting.. But I still believe there is hope for you.

@MrPeterpunko No leftie cares about this country mate. You’re all deluded

@sparkes_dwayne Maybe I'm socially aware & I care for the fabric of our country..

@David_Fawcett @MrPeterpunko 😝

@sparkes_dwayne @MrPeterpunko Damn you. Now I'm imagining the billboard at Macca's advertising that.

@MrPeterpunko And yet here you are, still reading and commenting.

@sparkes_dwayne I realised that you wern’t..

@MrPeterpunko You used to be a good bloke Pete, what happened?

@sparkes_dwayne No one plays the victim better than the trading & investing sector.. Can I introduce you to a wonderful world called gratitude? Take the plunge.. Your skies will never be brighter..