Monday, February 11, 2019

Ha! "The cobalt implosion..."

I can't tell from the twitter timestamp whether the tweeter had the thought before or after yours truly but I think it was close.
And just so you know, the tweeter, Neil Hume, is the FT's natural resources editor, and was, in part responsible for our being confident enough to go public with the cobalt trade. His confrère, Henry Sanderson's reporting was also an impetus.*
HT: thanks to a friend for relaying the tweet.

*Why the CIA Reads The Financial Times (and you should too) Tesla and Cobalt

May 26, 2016
A couple weeks ago we posted a seemingly innocuous piece with a boring headline: "'Freeport Sinks On Sale of Africa Copper Mine To Chinese' (FCX; LUN.TO)".

I figured there were at best two thousand people in the whole world who knew or cared about the back story and real import of what was going on so I'd just drop it as an Easter egg for the cognoscenti and other assorted electric vehicle/conflict mineral/African warlord/Elon Musk/extractive industry/Génocidaire hunter/U.S. political corruption watchers to find.

Well now that cat's out of the bag.

Big kudos to the FT's Henry Sanderson for recognizing one hell of a story and a small request for the Financial Times: Can you tell us what the old ENRC is up to these days?

From The Financial Times, May 25:
China plays long game on cobalt and electric batteries...
LME
https://d3fy651gv2fhd3.cloudfront.net/charts/commodity-cobalt.png?s=cobalt&v=201902090600a1&d1=20140101&d2=20191231