The short supply of industrial grade lithium is causing prices to spike, which could snarl a push by governments to ramp up the use of electric vehicles.

Lithium is used to power rechargeable car batteries, among other uses, but a recent bear market and supply chain issues have prices rising. So far that has benefited only a small group of companies while inconveniencing many others, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The problem isn’t the supply, but the the high cost of converting the metal into industrial use. That process has pushed prices up about 240% for the year, according to research firm and price provider Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

The Global X Lithium & Battery Tech ETF (LIT) – Get Global X Lithium & Battery Tech ETF Report is up more than 40% year to date.

Chile has the world’s largest lithium reserves by a large margin. Its estimated 9.2 million metric tons is nearly double the 4.7 million metric tons that second place producer Australia has…read more.

California is by far the most ambitious U.S. state when it comes to things like emission standards, EV sales, and renewable energy. California is shutting down its nuclear power plants to double down on wind and solar.

It is also importing more oil from the Amazon rainforest than any country in the world.

Ecuador accounted for a little over 24 percent of California’s oil imports as of 2020. That equaled 55,219 barrels daily, according to the California Energy Commission. Interestingly, this is a substantial increase from the previous year, when Ecuador accounted for 18.22 percent of California’s oil imports, and from the year before, when Ecuador accounted for 14 percent.

This oil from Ecuador, according to a recent investigation by NBC News, comes from the Amazon rainforest—an area that is the target of massive conservation efforts and yet remains one of the most exploited parts of the world because of its natural resource wealth.

Ecuador is home to the Yasuni National Park, which contains some of the most diverse ecosystems globally, including two uncontacted indigenous tribes. For these tribes, the government even approved a so-called Intangible Zone—a border not to be crossed in order to protect these tribes. But that was before 2019. Two years ago, the government of Ecuador approved a plan to open up Yasuni National Park to oil and gas drilling…read more.

On an industrial park about an hour’s drive toward the South China Sea coast from Ho Chi Minh City sit giant mounds of raw metal shrouded in black tarpaulin. Stretching a kilometer in length, the much-coveted hoard could be worth about $5 billion at current prices.

In the esoteric world of aluminum, those in the know say the stockpile in Vietnam is the biggest they have ever seen — and that’s in an industry that spends a lot of time building stockpiles while analysts spend a lot of time trying to locate them. But as far as the increasingly under-supplied market is concerned, it’s one that may never be seen again.

Why it’s unlikely to move anytime soon involves Vietnam’s customs authorities. How its existence has become so significant, meanwhile, opens a window on a ubiquitous, yet erratic commodity at a time when makers of everything from car parts to beer cans are competing for more of it as they emerge from the coronavirus pandemic and China throttles supply.

While there used to be millions of tons of aluminum at ports from Detroit and New Orleans in the U.S. to Rotterdam in Europe and Malaysia’s Port Klang, market watchers say the stockpile 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Vietnam’s biggest city is likely the only notable one left.

To put it in perspective, it’s equivalent to the entire annual consumption of India, the world’s second-most populous country, said Duncan Hobbs, a London-based analyst at commodities trader Concord Resources who has been covering metals markets for 25 years.

“We’re seeing the deepest deficit in the world market in at least 20 years, and this stockpile would not only fill that deficit, but it would leave you with something leftover as well,” he said…read more.