Posted on 06/14/2010 9:53:21 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The lithium deposits are expected to exceed those of Bolivia, the world's largest current producer of lithium. Bolivia contains over 9 million tons of extractable lithium, according to recent estimates. Lithium prices currently are at around $6,700 USD per ton and have doubled over the last few years. That places the net value of the lithium deposits alone at around $60B-$100B USD. An internal Pentagon memo states that Afghanistan may become the "Saudi Arabia of lithium."
The iron deposits are estimated to be worth $420.9B USD and the copper deposits are estimated to be worth $274B USD. A full breakdown (with the notable absence of lithium) is available here.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailytech.com ...
Liberals everywhere are rejoicing...if they could just fine a Thorozine deposit, they'd be elated!
It was supposed to be a war for oil, if we could find any oil there. But I suppose you have to improvise.
This ties to the Global Warming Drive to go to electric vehicles.
We should get every penny back that we have spent on this dusty rat-hole in the middle of the world’s worst gang-banger cultures.
They can’t repay American blood, but they damn sure better repay American treasure.
The problem is that Afghanistan, especially under Karzai, is also one of the most corrupt governments on Earth - worse than China, Mexico, Brazil, any of the former Soviet Republics or even Nigeria.
I say the US should take it. A small price really, considering what we’ve done for those chappies.
This was reported back in 2007. The country can’t even produce CEMENT, how in the heck is it going to get some minerals out of the ground?
PS: Nobody seems to know where the 1 TRILLION dollar value came from other than out of the thin air.
Hold On !
Something stinks:
Wow! Talk about a game changer. The story goes on to outline Afghanistan’s apparently vast underground resources, which include large copper and iron reserves as well as hitherto undiscovered reserves lithium and other rare minerals.
Read a little more carefully, though, and you realize that there’s less to this scoop than meets the eye. For one thing, the findings on which the story was based are online and have been since 2007, courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey. More information is available on the Afghan mining ministry’s website, including a report by the British Geological Survey (and there’s more here). You can also take a look at the USGS’s documentation of the airborne part of the survey here, including the full set of aerial photographs.
Nowhere have I found that $1 trillion figure mentioned...
They should have waited until more taliban are dead before making this public. They’ll only want to gain control even more now.
And who’s going to be a miner there while bullets are flying everywhere and improvised devices exploding? It’s going to be a long, long time before the minerals get mined.
See the comments at the Daily Tech website for the article.
Course Petraeus just told Karzai... I think.
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What? ...we’re surveying while we kill terrorist?
How much free oil did we get after we saved iraq’s ass from Saddam Hussein?
China Willing to Spend Big on Afghan Commerce
A delegation from the state-owned Chinese company, China Metallurgical Group Corporation, visited the site of a copper mine in Aynak, a former al-Qaeda stronghold southeast of Kabul, in 2007.
Bullchips. It’s all made up to give Obama an alibi for not pulling out sooner. He doesn’t want to be accused of losing Afghanistan, but he needs cover with his wingnut base for missing his self-imposed deadline for surrender.
Sure there’s a gallizion brazillian dollars worth of minerals, but extraction costs are twice as large. There is more gold in a cubic mile of seawater than in Fort Knox, but no one is mining Boston Harbor.
“lithium”
“Liberals everywhere are rejoicing...if they could just fine a Thorozine deposit, they’d be elated!”
http://www.digitalnaturopath.com/data/Lithium.html
Cool.
I was running low.
This is the new Green economy: No War for Lithium Batteries!
In before “Pandora” reference. /sarc
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