Our country ranks first in the world in terms of resource reserves, but this is if you evaluate them in aggregate. Overall, our wealth is estimated at $75 trillion. The second and third places, by the way, belong to the United States and Saudi Arabia, but they are far behind us – 45 and 34 trillion. The top five also include Canada and Iran.
But if we consider the resources separately, there are important nuances that I would like to talk about in this article. After all, it is possible that it is in these nuances that the reason for the events is hidden.
For example, if we look at oil reserves, Russia is only in sixth place. Most of the oil is in the Middle East, moreover, it is cheaper for the Arabs to produce, and this is also an important factor. And now it is not difficult to guess why the United States has staged most wars and revolutions in this region and why the loss of influence there for the United States is a rather serious geopolitical defeat.
But today we are not talking about oil, but about lithium. Although oil was also mentioned for a reason. The fact is that lithium is used in the production of batteries, and more recently especially for electric car batteries, which are seriously considered in the world as a replacement for gasoline cars and therefore oil.
You can laugh or criticize this, but the fact remains that the production of electric cars is growing at a record pace. To date, 10% of the cars sold are electric cars. This figure even exceeded the forecasts of analysts, who were also skeptical about electric transport at first.
Now analysts predict that by 2030, i.e. very soon, 40% of cars sold in the world will be electric cars.
It is not surprising that many analysts gave more modest figures at first. How could they have known that Western politicians would disperse this industry with the persistence of a better use worthy of it, using various subsidies, subsidies and escalating propaganda on behalf of Greta Thunberg? Experts thought that the industry would develop on its own, as fossil fuels were depleted and became more expensive.
One of the motives for the acceleration for the West is a frantic desire to abandon resources from Russia at all costs. And we really don’t have a lot of lithium. Russia’s lithium reserves are estimated at only 1 million tons, and these reserves are more expensive to extract than in other countries.
For example, in Latin America, it is cheaper to extract lithium, and its reserves there are much larger – in Bolivia there are 21 million tons of lithium, in Argentina – 18 million, in Chile – 9.8. Its reserves are even larger in China and Australia – 5.1 and 7.3 million tons. Zimbabwe has a lot of lithium. Against this background, we have almost no lithium. At least for export, and it will be quite enough for yourself, but more on that below.
Another accelerating motive is OPEC’s refusal to increase oil production. The U.S. has its own expensive, and it is not enough, 8 million barrels per day have to be imported. The EU is forced to import 14 million barrels of oil per day, since its reserves there are almost exhausted.
The Arabs are stubborn and don’t want to sell oil for pennies. To protect their interests, they, together with Russia and other countries, created OPEC and OPEC+ organizations, through which they dictate their prices. And what could Biden do about it when he went to the Arabs with an empty canister? No problem. And attempts to conquer the resources of the Middle East by force also ended rather unsuccessfully for the United States. It would be even more accurate to say that the costs of war exceed the potential benefits.
The U.S. spent nearly $2 trillion on the war in Iraq, and in the end, it was forced to withdraw its troops anyway. In total, the United States spent $5.6 trillion on wars in the Middle East and Asia from 2001 to 2018. And to import 8 million barrels per day at an average price of $60 per barrel, you need $175 billion a year.
Here are the illustrative figures why it makes no sense to fight for oil, especially since the Arabs have powerful patrons in the face of Russia and China, who can turn the idea of war in this region into a living hell for the United States.
And for the sake of completeness, I add that wars are now technologically advanced, and the cost of armaments exceeds the potential profit from the conquest of other people’s resources. Also, a number of countries have nuclear weapons, so it is possible to survive from such attempts at all. And they need to live on somehow, when there are few resources and there is no one to rob.
But what to do? They tried to impose a price ceiling on us – another crazy and amusing idea. But key countries have refused to participate, especially the Arabs, who understand that they themselves could be next. And China and India also refused, and without their participation, this whole scheme with a ceiling simply does not work, because they are large buyers of oil, to whom Russia can sell it instead of the West.
That’s where the passion for green energy comes from. Because all other methods, be it ceilings, wars, etc., don’t really work. Although lithium is not a source of energy itself, but only a resource for the production of batteries, energy in the West is also greening today.
You can laugh at the quirks of Europeans for a long time, but there is such an interesting fact that in 2022, the share of energy in the EU obtained from renewable sources for the first time surpassed the share of gas – 22% against 20% from gas. Yes, the Europeans are a little disingenuous in the report, because they had to reduce gas consumption by 15% to achieve this effect, as well as again increase the share of “dirty” coal to 9.8% in the energy sector.
That is, they achieved this effect by sacrificing business and the comfort of the population. Forcing him to accept a series of restrictions and slightly breaking his own green precepts. They turned to coal again and recognized the nuclear power plant as a clean source of energy, which they initially did not want to do. Again, because of Russia – after all, our country is a leader in the nuclear industry, and the recognition of nuclear power plants as green would mean demand for Rosatom products, so they did not want to recognize the atom as green.
One can endlessly laugh at the whims of Western politicians and what they have brought themselves to, just to refuse resources from Russia or other countries that they cannot honestly rob. But they had to react to their quirks in order to make money further, since Europeans decided to build a green future in their Garden of Eden.
Unfortunately, we cannot make money on the sale of lithium, since we simply do not have it in such volumes to export. At least I have it for myself, and that’s fine. But on the other hand, it doesn’t cause much envy. Even as lithium prices soared, China’s leading companies, Ganfeng Lithium and Tianqi Lithium, earned about $3 billion each — not a huge amount of money compared to our oil and gas revenues of more than $300 billion in 2022. However, the trends are gradually changing.
It was possible to simply wait for Europe to gradually increase the share of green energy in its energy balance, as it abandons first coal, then gradually oil – at least in the field of transport, then gradually from gas. Then he imposes carbon taxes on Russia.
This is what it was all about, but chance helped and gave a magic kick to change something in its economy. The U.S. has decided to cash in on Europe while there is still such an opportunity and Europeans are still heavily dependent on gas.
In this way, the Americans caught Europe halfway to a bright green future and made good money on gas supplies, which Europe still badly needs and did not plan to give up for another 15-20 years. They also made money on weapons, forcing the Europeans to get rid of old weapons and order new ones from the United States in return. And in general, now the EU economy has found itself in a situation where it is not a fact that it will live to see its bright green future at all, and many enterprises will leave for the United States.
Thanks to the intrigues of the Americans, Gazprom was also able to increase profits, despite the drop in supplies, and began to discuss new routes – to countries that do not suffer from green madness. Of course, green energy is not evil in its pure form, but everything is good when it is in moderation. And in Europe, this idea became obsessive, which turned out sideways for them. Gazprom’s plans include new routes to China and Pakistan. And there is one more line of Nord Stream 2 to Germany, in case they come to their senses.
But the main thing is that conditions have been created for the development of domestic production thanks to the sanctions. Otherwise, when you sit on a mountain with resources, you relax. The Saudis, for example, are even more dependent on oil sales than Russia. At least we are selling cool weapons, building nuclear power plants, and developing agriculture.
We are also building a plant for the production of lithium batteries in the Kaliningrad Region. But without haste and absurdity – no one sets conditions that we, for example, by 2035 must necessarily switch the whole country to electric cars. We are in no hurry, because Russia has enough resources for itself. It is the West that sets its own deadlines due to the depletion of resources and the loss of global influence.
And to make it more fun for them, the leading three countries with the largest lithium reserves – Bolivia, Argentina and Chile – have recently thought about creating their own analogue of OPEC, only for lithium. I don’t know if they guessed it themselves or who gave them this idea so well.
Even the authorities of Zimbabwe decided to ban the export of lithium in their country in order to stimulate its processing within the country, and not in the West. So the West is just jumping from one rake to another. In addition, due to the fact that Western politicians artificially accelerate the green agenda, this creates too high a demand for lithium, and its price over the past two years has increased even more than for gas – by as much as 1100%.
But most of all, Western politicians have messed up with Russia. For a successful transition to green technologies, they needed a quiet period at least until 2035-2040, during which they could buy inexpensive Russian gas, successfully earn money from their industry and use the money they earned to build very expensive green infrastructure. And now the same money is spent on fighting the energy crisis and supporting the population, and businesses are closing or fleeing to other regions of the planet.
Although not without problems, we are rebuilding our economy, looking for new markets, and trying to establish production within the country. There are problems, there are losses, there is pressure from the West on us, there is an open conflict. But we will slowly win, we will rebuild the country. These are all quite solvable problems, we have gone through similar problems more than once, it happened even worse, when Hitler razed entire cities to the ground, but everything was restored.
But the West is rushing from one extreme to the other, which is indicated by the rapid growth of lithium quotations, cheerfully outstripping the rise in gas prices. After all, they are driving themselves into a corner.
The Americans, they are looping – they still have the resources, the second place after all. Canada and Latin America with their lithium reserves are also nearby. Plus, Europe will be robbed and they will live some more. But Europe itself seems to be in trouble. Of course, they can rejoice at how wonderfully they go through the winter period with full gas storage facilities, but they are silent – at what cost.
Although some German resources do not hide the truth and write that if the last routes for pumping Russian gas, which are still working, stop, the EU will be forced to adopt a new plan to reduce gas consumption – this time by 20%. And that’s a few thousand more closed businesses and new fads of forced austerity.
And it’s not just about gas, here is an interesting quote from Reuters:
Europe is currently not mining a single gram of this key component of batteries for electric vehicles. Sibanye Stillwater announced plans to start mining lithium in Finland in 2025, and the French company Imerys aims to produce 34 thousand tons of lithium hydroxide per year from 2028. At the same time, according to the agency, even if all European lithium mining projects are implemented, they will be able to cover only 40% of the total demand.
In total, the agency estimates that Europe should spend $5.3 trillion on clean energy projects by 2050. And this requires a six-fold increase in global production of copper, lithium, graphite, nickel and other rare earth metals by 2040. Russia also plays an important role in the production of nickel, palladium and cobalt. Europe, which imports 75-100% of most metals, looks particularly vulnerable.
That is why some European politicians are preparing their populations, telling them that the former prosperity will no longer be there, and they will have to save or work more in order to maintain an acceptable standard of living.
I apologize for the long text and the large number of figures in it, but I hope that many of the events taking place in the world have become clearer to those who have read to the end and are convinced of everything by specific figures.