South Korea’s top mining company made its case on Saturday to be allowed to tap Bolivia’s vast reserves of lithium, the soft metal used to produce batteries for electric or hybrid cars.
“If the Bolivian government gives us the opportunity to get involved with Uyuni’s lithium mines, we are always ready to do so,” Sun Kong, a top executive at the state-run Korea Resources Corporation (KORES), told La Razon newspaper.
Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni houses some 140 million tonnes of lithium, attracting interest from French and Japanese companies.
Sun said his company would not only be interested in processing the lithium but also hoped to be involved in extraction, adding that KORES has specialized mining capability.
Earlier this month Bolivian President Evo Morales said his country is looking for “partners” and not “owners” for its natural resources, including its vast lithium reserves.
“We need investments,” and “companies who respect Bolivian regulations ... who don’t come to play politics” or “conspire against the government,” he said.
“We are interested in exploiting the brine and lithium, and we want to start negotiations, not just with Spanish companies,” the leftwing leader said on an official visit to Madrid.
Mining groups from across the world are pressing for permission to get at the lightweight metal, which is considered “gray gold” in Bolivia, one of the poorest in South America.
Meanwhile, Korea Electric Power Corp, supplier of almost all of South Korea’s electricity, said it will spend 2.8 trillion won (US$2.4 billion) on green technology, in an effort to promote environment-friendly energy policies.
The money will be spent on eight areas of technology, including development of carbon capture and storage and low-emission power systems, the company said in an e-mailed statement in Seoul yesterday.
South Korea, Asia’s third-biggest crude oil importer, said in July it plans to invest 107 trillion won over the next five years in improving energy efficiency.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
RSS