What about the latest we have read about companies, such as Lithium Exploration Group, developing lithium from groundwaters in South America and Alberta for a fraction of the cost of mining?

In other words, should we expect to see a Non-US lithium ETF anytime soon:)? Is this real? Does the world really need more lithium?

Thanks for any input from others as well.

I have now bookmarked this site; I got here via resource Investor link.

Re-read your sentence below:

“Re-read the first part of your diatriabe Jack. Where you detail the “logistics” that the development of natural resources requires. First off, “infrastructure” is the appropriate term.”

I am detailing the infrastructure by individual components, logistics, water, and power. I left out the need for skilled labor.

I work in China with Chinese companies in mining and refining, and I can tell you that the “infrastructure’ necessary for the Afghan copper project will be an extension of China’s infrastructure and will be of minimal use to the Afghanistan of today.

Investing in Afghan mining ventures created by western promoters is foolish in the extreme. The natural market for Afghan resources is China and India. China with its common border with Afghanistan is the natural and logical source for any Afghan resource development.

i don’t care if you believe me or not. Institutional investors have little or no interest in such far out high risk ventures unless a deep pockets end user with an agenda beyond profit such as a Chinese miner, refiner, or fabricator is involved. i am telling small investors to avoid the promotional hype sure to be following on this story.

You might want to get up to speed on the history of Chilean copper production and how valuable it’s has been to its economy. That too didn’t happen overnight. Or even a couple of decades.

Copper was the country’s top industry and export commodity through 2002, and, in 2000, copper accounted for 40.5% of export earnings, which, in turn, accounted for 25% of GDP.

The expansion of the copper sector and copper exports played a key role in Chile’s economic development.

Re-read the first part of your diatriabe Jack. Where you detail the “logistics” that the development of natural resources requires. First off, “infrastructure” is the appropriate term.

Then factor in that much of Chile’s copper comes from its Atacama desert region—the driest desert in the world. How dry? Average rainfall is 1 millimeter (0.04 in) per year.

Factor in its high altitude and the fact than none of the labor at some of the world’s biggest copper mines lived anywhere near such inhospitable regions. And just like mines, people too need infrastructure to live.

None of this existed in the Atacama.

Yes, it wasn’t done overnight. But it was accomplished and over time provided the support for Chile’s economic diversification.

And it was accomplished when demand was much lower. Not during an era when the single most important economic event in our life time will be the emerge of an Asian middle class—measure in billions, not millions as what the western world experience.

Will there be enough supply? Teck’s CEO Don Lindsay recently noted: “We think that over the next ten-year period if copper demand grows even at a moderate rate, that the mining industry will not be able to keep up.”

Perhaps that’s why the Chinese already building a copper mine in Afghanistan—in a place where they first have to develop almost of the requisite infrastructure.

They certainly don’t subscribe to your “mining ventures in remote places usually fail” mantra.

Indeed anyone with a sense of history can see how patently absurd that is. Just look at the American West. What infrastructure existed in 19th century Nevada, Utah and the second largest copper producing region on the planet—Arizona.

And today’s Afghanistan may have access to technology, new processes—and capital—the Earp brothers could only dream of.

The one great shock of the cleantech revolution will be that it takes decades to convert known resources in remote locations into producing mineral properties.

The shocks will be pretty unpleasant, but sooner or later folks will once again come to understand that mining and heavy manufacturing take an immense amount of time and money.