MOSCOW, June 26. /TASS/. Russia’s future lithium sector could generate up to $20 bln per year, with the oil and gas sector accounting for more than half of this figure, consultant at Vygon Consulting Nikita Zotov suggests.
The country’s domestic production may be developed on the basis of two types of commodities: crude ore and hydro mineral, the expert said, adding that Rosatom currently drives growth in ore production, while oil and gas companies propel hydro mineral production within licensed areas at oil and gas fields under development. The main obstacles hindering the quick start of lithium production from hydro mineral material are related to the lack of geological information, which makes it difficult to estimate lithium reserves in salt brines, as well as the challenge of choosing the right technology to extract lithium from brine, which has a unique component composition as well as temperature-and-pressure conditions.
In these settings, it is important to choose the right method to process brine into lithium so as to minimize the negative impact on the environment. The key difficulty here is the limited scalability of the specific technology for brines with a different component composition.
"If all the difficulties are dealt with, the future domestic lithium sector may bring in up to $20 bln per year, with the oil and gas sector accounting for more than half of that amount, according to our estimations. This is not much if compared with the current scale of revenues in the oil and gas sector from the core business, though if several such projects are implemented simultaneously, the contribution of new businesses in companies’ cash flows may be considerable," InfoTEK analytical center quoted the expert as saying.
The launch of the new sector will have a multiplier effect on the whole Russian economy, from R&D and experimental development to sector-wide demand for engineering and chemical products, Zotov believes.