Lithium-focused researcher decoding critical mineral extraction, battery production, storage, and recycling, while occasionally exploring EV op-eds.
United States
Joined September 2008
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Backed by a team with decades in the energy industry, with experience running and launching large-scale commercial facilities, along with a technology proven out at commercial scale for the production of lithium carbonate from recycled batteries, R3 Lithium is pushing to become the largest supplier of battery-grade lithium carbonate from secondary sources in the United States.
I interviewed R3 Lithium’s CEO, Linh Austin, who outlined the company’s goals, their strategy to achieve them, and why R3 Lithium is very different company from the one that came before it.
criticalmb.com/p/r3-lithium-…
Mith retweeted
It's kind of wild but I'm hearing stories that OpenAI might be selling to Google.
Game breaking if true.
Mith retweeted
WEEKEND LISTEN
Latest Rock Stock Recap @RKEquityRocks
👇👇
Critical minerals are getting crushed, and lithium is caught in the selloff. But why are prices falling as inventories draw down?
@matt_fernley sees potential for up to 100% upside in lithium prices from here.
What's the market missing?
He answers at 48:23 👇
(00:00) Critical Minerals Carnage, Lithium Bright Spots
(02:45) Lithium Sentiment from LME Week and SMM
(07:30) Why Lithium Demand Forecasts Keep Missing
(11:46) Why Critical Minerals Stocks Are Getting Hammered
(16:29) Fund Flows, Rates and Midterm Risks
(21:35) Higher Capital Costs Test Speculative Miners
(26:16) Rare Earths Look Oversold
(30:40) Project Vault Won't Fix Price Volatility
(36:59) Rare Earth Processing: The Missing Middle
(39:02) Energy Transition Versus National Security
(42:06) Tesla and Asian Battery Makers Signal Strong Demand
(48:23) Why Chinese Speculators Are Selling Lithium
(54:40) Lithium Africa and Upcoming Earnings
Mith retweeted
Critical minerals are getting crushed, and lithium is caught in the selloff. But why are prices falling as inventories draw down?
@matt_fernley sees potential for up to 100% upside in lithium prices from here.
What's the market missing?
He answers at 48:23 👇
(00:00) Critical Minerals Carnage, Lithium Bright Spots
(02:45) Lithium Sentiment from LME Week and SMM
(07:30) Why Lithium Demand Forecasts Keep Missing
(11:46) Why Critical Minerals Stocks Are Getting Hammered
(16:29) Fund Flows, Rates and Midterm Risks
(21:35) Higher Capital Costs Test Speculative Miners
(26:16) Rare Earths Look Oversold
(30:40) Project Vault Won't Fix Price Volatility
(36:59) Rare Earth Processing: The Missing Middle
(39:02) Energy Transition Versus National Security
(42:06) Tesla and Asian Battery Makers Signal Strong Demand
(48:23) Why Chinese Speculators Are Selling Lithium
(54:40) Lithium Africa and Upcoming Earnings
Mith retweeted
“Battery fires are like shark attacks: frightening events that loom cinematically large in the American psyche and almost never actually happen.” As US grid batteries surge, risk of fires plummets @CanaryMediaInc canarymedia.com/articles/bat… #energy #BESS #batteries
Mith retweeted
It would be helpful to disambiguate these two claims, both true imo:
1. BAAJA treats new data much centers worse than other grid users, making them pay the full cost of the upgrades they trigger *and* a full share of the existing grid (and states can the elect to charge them even more on top). This redounds to the benefit of all other grid users.
2. BAAJA makes it easier to build about anything that needs a federal permit and/or new power, and data centers benefit from that the same way factories, housing, transit projects etc do.
Mith retweeted
"The Trump Administration is removing all barriers clearing the way for the Senate’s permitting reform bill to pass," a White House official told me
Mith retweeted
Our CEO Sam Pigott joined industry peers at the @GoldmanSachs Global Metals and Mining Conference to discuss brine and hard-rock supply and where the next wave of lithium production will come from. Thank you to Paul Young for moderating a great discussion.
$LAR #LithiumArgentina #CriticalMinerals
Mith retweeted
"As leaders who have served six presidents in economic policy and national security, we believe Congress has a generational opportunity to strengthen our nation’s industrial capacity in the face of unprecedented competition from China.
We call on Congress to pass the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 and send it to President Trump’s desk."
-Janet YELLEN, Michael R. POMPEO, Steven T. MNUCHIN, Leon E. PANETTA, Timothy F. GEITHNER, Henry M. PAULSON, Jr., Robert E. RUBIN, Stephen MIRAN, Jared BERNSTEIN, Tyler GOODSPEED, Jason FURMAN, Glenn HUBBARD, Laura D’Andrea TYSON, Michael J. BOSKIN, Jeffrey ZIENTS, Jake SULLIVAN, Brian DEESE, Larry KUDLOW, Allan B. HUBBARD.
NEWS: 19 FORMER ECONOMIC AND NATIONAL SECURITY LEADERS ENDORSE THE BIPARTISAN PERMITTING REFORM BILL
Today, a group of former Cabinet members and White House principals across seven Democratic and Republican administrations sent a letter calling on Congress to pass BAAJA. Here are the signatories:
Janet YELLEN, Michael R. POMPEO, Steven T. MNUCHIN, Leon E. PANETTA, Timothy F. GEITHNER, Henry M. PAULSON, Jr., Robert E. RUBIN, Stephen MIRAN, Jared BERNSTEIN, Tyler GOODSPEED, Jason FURMAN, Glenn HUBBARD, Laura D’Andrea TYSON, Michael J. BOSKIN, Jeffrey ZIENTS, Jake SULLIVAN, Brian DEESE, Larry KUDLOW, Allan B. HUBBARD
Key highlights from the letter:
1. “We are not building infrastructure fast enough to remain globally competitive… The median time for a new power plant to move from an interconnection request to commercial operation has more than doubled, from less than two years for projects built between 2000 and 2007 to more than four years for projects built between 2018 and 2024.
2. China has built more high-voltage transmission in the last fifteen years than the U.S. has built in all of its history... In 2024, China accounted for 31.5% of global knowledge- and technology-intensive manufacturing value added, compared with 20.7% for the United States.
3. Federally funded or permitted projects require NEPA review, but private projects often do not, creating a threat of failure precisely where the government is trying to be proactive, strategic, and engaged.
4. A project that spends years awaiting approval must continue carrying development and financing costs while remaining exposed to rising input costs. The IEA reports that prices for utility-scale transformers increased 26% in 2024, while lead times for some transformers have stretched as long as six years.
5. Mining projects also face tremendous uncertainty: a 2026 study by researchers at the Colorado School of Mines found that permitting for modern mining projects takes an average of 5.5 years, rising to 8.9 years for contested projects. The U.S. currently has the second-longest mine development timeline in the world.
6. The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act is the most significant bipartisan legislative effort that Congress has undertaken in decades to tackle these challenges.
7. BAAJA addresses key constraints stifling American industry by requiring interregional transmission planning, strengthening the federal backstop for nationally significant transmission lines, and creating a faster, more predictable process for connecting new generation to the grid.
8. BAAJA also makes permits more durable by imposing tighter timelines for litigation and limiting frivolous lawsuits that can halt projects indefinitely, while preserving community input and judicial review of substantive agency decisions.”
The letter was organized by @arnabdatta321 on behalf of @IFP and covered exclusively by the WSJ this morning.
Mith retweeted
NEWS: 19 FORMER ECONOMIC AND NATIONAL SECURITY LEADERS ENDORSE THE BIPARTISAN PERMITTING REFORM BILL
Today, a group of former Cabinet members and White House principals across seven Democratic and Republican administrations sent a letter calling on Congress to pass BAAJA. Here are the signatories:
Janet YELLEN, Michael R. POMPEO, Steven T. MNUCHIN, Leon E. PANETTA, Timothy F. GEITHNER, Henry M. PAULSON, Jr., Robert E. RUBIN, Stephen MIRAN, Jared BERNSTEIN, Tyler GOODSPEED, Jason FURMAN, Glenn HUBBARD, Laura D’Andrea TYSON, Michael J. BOSKIN, Jeffrey ZIENTS, Jake SULLIVAN, Brian DEESE, Larry KUDLOW, Allan B. HUBBARD
Key highlights from the letter:
1. “We are not building infrastructure fast enough to remain globally competitive… The median time for a new power plant to move from an interconnection request to commercial operation has more than doubled, from less than two years for projects built between 2000 and 2007 to more than four years for projects built between 2018 and 2024.
2. China has built more high-voltage transmission in the last fifteen years than the U.S. has built in all of its history... In 2024, China accounted for 31.5% of global knowledge- and technology-intensive manufacturing value added, compared with 20.7% for the United States.
3. Federally funded or permitted projects require NEPA review, but private projects often do not, creating a threat of failure precisely where the government is trying to be proactive, strategic, and engaged.
4. A project that spends years awaiting approval must continue carrying development and financing costs while remaining exposed to rising input costs. The IEA reports that prices for utility-scale transformers increased 26% in 2024, while lead times for some transformers have stretched as long as six years.
5. Mining projects also face tremendous uncertainty: a 2026 study by researchers at the Colorado School of Mines found that permitting for modern mining projects takes an average of 5.5 years, rising to 8.9 years for contested projects. The U.S. currently has the second-longest mine development timeline in the world.
6. The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act is the most significant bipartisan legislative effort that Congress has undertaken in decades to tackle these challenges.
7. BAAJA addresses key constraints stifling American industry by requiring interregional transmission planning, strengthening the federal backstop for nationally significant transmission lines, and creating a faster, more predictable process for connecting new generation to the grid.
8. BAAJA also makes permits more durable by imposing tighter timelines for litigation and limiting frivolous lawsuits that can halt projects indefinitely, while preserving community input and judicial review of substantive agency decisions.”
The letter was organized by @arnabdatta321 on behalf of @IFP and covered exclusively by the WSJ this morning.
Mith retweeted
Our first drill results from Norrabees I at the Springbok Project include 7.5 m at 1.97% Li₂O, including 6.0 m at 2.27% Li₂O, with individual samples up to 4.11% Li₂O.
CEO Dr. Tom Benson sat down with @RKEquityRocks to walk through the results. Three rigs are drilling, channel sampling is underway across 21 pegmatites, and more results are on the way.
▶️ Watch the interview: youtube.com/watch?v=8wbyEDdy…
$LAF.V #LithiumAfrica #CriticalMinerals #Springbok
Mith retweeted
Enacting the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act is a critical step toward building secure domestic supply chains and reducing America’s reliance on foreign adversaries for the minerals and materials vital to our economic and national security. Critical minerals companies are making substantial investments to strengthen the domestic supply chain, supporting our national defense, our energy future, and the growth of the American economy. But they are doing so on permitting timelines that are too often unpredictable. BAAJA brings needed coordination, predictability, and accountability to federal reviews and authorizations.
ACMA applauds @SenatorHeinrich, @SenWhitehouse, @SenCapito, and @SenMikeLee for their tireless, bipartisan work on this bill. We look forward to working with Democrats and Republicans in the House to swiftly pass BAAJA and send it to the President’s desk.
Mith retweeted
OMG! Not the condiment-spice merger!!!!!!
Mith retweeted
The entire point of the certainty provisions in BAAJA is they *DO NOT* rely on a non-binding promise from the admin
Rep Casten's view relies on a popular misconception about how the admin abuses permits: 🧵
– Lots of folks believe the Trump administration is literally ignoring the law to block renewables --> therefore, no change to the law can fix the abuse.
– But this is an exaggeration. The administration is not ignoring courts (or they wouldn't be bothering to ask courts to overturn permits).
– What the admin is doing is using authorities latent in existing law to abuse projects (e.g. refusing to issue permits, using pretexts to revoke permits, etc.).
– The admin's tactics work where the law doesn't provide clear limits on agency behavior and/or doesn't give sponsors & courts the ability to enforce the law effectively.
– This is a big difference because it means a new law (e.g. BAAJA) can fix the problem by tightening existing authorities, banning misuse, and creating new remedies for courts to enforce the law.
And BAAJA does exactly that! The bill establishes:
1. Extremely tight limits on agency behavior (limits revocations, requires timeline permit decisions).
2. Creates bold new remedies for project sponsors and courts to enforce the law.
– If the admin tried their current tactics under BAAJA's protections they'd be under siege by lawsuits; project sponsors would have more incentive to sue, be more likely to win, and courts would have far larger remedies to correct abuse.
xitter.cf/SiegelScribe/status/21…
“Asking me as a legislator to vote in favor of something based on a non-binding promise made by Donald Trump. I can’t even process that thought,” @RepCasten told me. “We need to be very careful to not say that we know definitively whether this bill will be good or bad.”
Many of us were wondering, but I think @matt_fernley is the only one who asked the question.
batimes.com.ar/news/economy/…
Mith retweeted
I litigated National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) cases at DOJ for ~10 years. One little known & strange fact about the Act is that the relevant section -- Section 106 -- is only 2 sentences long.
The process that Tribes and preservationists benefit from comes from regulations issued by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) interpreting those 2 sentences.
But ACHP voted to scale back the regulations few months ago to:
- Disqualify any place without "tangible human improvements" such as sacred bodies of water, landscape features, or trees/forests;
- Make consulting Tribes optional until the *after* agency has written its analysis;
- Remove references to Tribal sovereignty and ancestral lands entirely;
- etc.
BAAJA would:
- Write Tribes into the text of Section 106 for the first time, at each step of review;
- Define places of traditional religious or cultural importance in statute to include any "identifiable geographic location or feature," overriding ACHP's proposed rule's improvement requirement;
- Require consultation to start no later than NEPA review does;
- etc.
BAAJA narrows Section 106's scope, too. It requires visual impacts to be "significant," adds deadlines, & also limits what courts can order.
But its text would also limit the changes ACHP can make in rulemaking, protecting at least some of the parts of the Sec. 106 process that Tribes and preservationists value.
It's not for me to speak for Tribes or preservation groups as to what they do or should value or object to in the bill. But I do think a close reading of its text shows that (like many compromise bills) this one has parts favorable and unfavorable to both sides on this topic.
Mith retweeted
The headline buries the lede - price volatility is a given until these small markets mature. Most of the material will come from or through China until we can get adequate capacity up and running. ft.com/content/dbd6e14c-2d47… via @ft
