The Case for a Strategic Lithium Reserve

What if we treated lithium like oil? A commodity so valuable to the functioning of the American economy that the U.S. government has to step in not only to make it available, but also to make sure its price stays in a “sweet spot” for production and consumption?

That was what industry stalwart Howard Klein, founder and chief executive of the advisory firm RK Equities, had in mind when he came up with his idea for a strategic lithium reserve, modeled on the existing Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Klein published a 10-page white paper on the idea Monday, outlining an expansive way to leverage private companies and capital markets to develop a non-Chinese lithium industry without the risk and concentrated expense of selecting specific projects and companies.

The lithium challenge, Klein and other industry analysts and executives have long said, is that China’s whip hand over the industry allows it to manipulate prices up and down in order to throttle non-Chinese production. When investment in lithium ramps up outside of China, Chinese production ramps up too, choking off future investment by crashing prices.

Recognizing the dangers stemming from dysfunction in the global lithium market constitutes a rare area of agreement between both parties in Washington and across the Biden and Trump administrations. Last year, a Biden State Department official told reporters that China “engage[s] in predatory pricing” and will “lower the price until competition disappears.”

A bipartisan investigation released last month by the House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party found that “the PRC engaged in a whole‐of‐government effort to dominate global lithium production,” and that “starting in 2021, the PRC government engaged in a coordinated effort to artificially depress global lithium prices that had the effect of preventing the emergence of an America‐focused supply chain.”

Klein thinks he’s figured out a way to deal with this problem

“They manipulated and they crushed prices through oversupply to prevent us from having our own supply chains,” he told me.

It’s not just that China can keep prices low through overproduction, it’s also that the country’s enormous market power can make prices volatile, Klein said, which scares off private sector investment in mining and processing. “You have two years, up two years down, two years up, two years down,” he told me. “That’s the problem we’re trying to solve.

His proposal is to establish “a large, rules-based buffer of lithium carbonate — purchased when prices are depressed due to Chinese oversupply, and released during price spikes, shortages, or export restrictions.”

This reserve, he said, would be more than just a stockpile from which lithium could be released as needed. It would also help to shape the market for lithium, keeping prices roughly in the range of $20,000 per ton (when prices fall below that, the reserve would buy) and $40,000 to $50,000 per ton, when the reserve would sell. The idea is to keep the price of lithium carbonate — which can be processed as a material for batteries with a wide range of defense (e.g. drones) and transportation (e.g. electric vehicles) applications — within a range that’s reasonable for investors and businesses to plan around.

“Lithium has swung from like $6,000 [per ton] to $80,000, back down to $9,000, and now it’s at $11,000 or $12,000,” Klein told me. “But $11,000 or $12,000 is not a high enough price for a company to build a plan that’s going to take three to five years. They need $20,000 to $25,000 now as a minimum for them to make a $2 billion dollar investment.” When prices for lithium get up to “$50,000, $60,000, or $70,000, then it becomes a problem because battery makers can’t make money.”

Both the Biden and Trump administrations have taken more active steps to secure a U.S. or allied supply chain for valuable inputs, including rare earth metals. But Klein’s proposed reserve looks to balance government intervention with a diverse, private-sector led industry.

The reserve would be more broad-based than price floor schemes, where a major buyer like the Defense Department guarantees a minimum price for the output from a mine or refining facility. This is what the federal government did in its deal with MP Materials, the rare earths miner and refiner, which secured a multifaceted deal with the federal government earlier this year.

Klein estimates that the cost in the first year of the strategic lithium reserve could be a few billion dollars — on the scale of the nearly $2.3 billion loan provided by the Department of Energy for the Thacker Pass mine in Nevada, which also saw the federal government take an equity stake in the miner, Lithium Americas.

Ideally, Klein told me, “there’s a competition of projects that are being presented to prospective funders of those projects, and I want private market actors to decide, should we build more Thacker Passes or should we do the Smackover?” referring to a geologic formation centered in Arkansas with potentially millions of tons of lithium reserves.

Klein told me that he’s trying to circulate the proposal among industry and policy officials. His hoped is that as the government attempts to come up with a solution to Chinese dominance of the lithium industry, “people are talking about this idea and they’re saying, Oh, that’s actually a pretty good idea.”