It was 18 minutes of chaos.
At 5:42 a.m. on March 8, the price of nickel began to rise so fast that it caused a panic on the London Metal Exchange.
In just 18 minutes it climbed to over US$100,000 a ton in an unprecedented jump that caused metal operations to be suspended.
Before breaking that record, the value of the metal had already experienced a 250% increase in the last 24 hours.
The episode marked the first great metals crisis since the Russian invasion of Ukraine rocked global markets.
The shocking rise, linked to sanctions imposed by the West on Russia and speculative movements in futures contracts, made it clear that metals such as nickel, essential in the transition to a less polluting economy, have become essential in a world that is already does not rely on dependence on fossil fuels.
Russia, one of the great exporters of gas and oil, demonstrated that due to the dependence of many countries on its exports, especially European ones, fuels are a weapon of war amid the harsh economic pressures that the United States and its allies have forced the Kremlin to end the invasion of Ukraine.
“Building a future of clean energy produced in the US will help safeguard our national security”President Joe Biden said on March 31.
“We need to end our long-term dependence on China and other countries for inputs that drive the future,” said the president after announcing that he would invoke the Defense Production Law to support the local production and processing of minerals used in the manufacture of electric batteries and storage of renewable energies.
Among them, the White House pointed out, are lithium, nickel, graphite, manganese and cobalt.
Russia’s energy weapons
But there are many more. According to their own needs, each country has different minerals in its sights to better compete for a market share in the energy transition towards a more electrified economy.
Experts warn that those nations that remain anchored in the export of oil, gas and coal, run the risk of becoming increasingly less competitive.
Just look at the case of Russia, whose economic power lies largely in fossil fuels: It is the second largest gas producer in the world and the third largest oil producer.
However, in the race for the metals that will play a crucial role in future economic development, Russia has its advantages: it is the world’s second largest exporter of cobalt, the second of platinum and the third of nickel.
Although Russia has cards to play in this new scenario, what is certain, experts say, is that the extraction of super-minerals is highly concentrated in other countries.
The vast majority of the cobalt that exists in the world comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, nickel from Indonesia, lithium from Australia, copper from Chile and rare earths from China.
Experts consider at least 17 critical minerals for the energy transition of the world and, therefore, those countries with the capacity to extract or process them have a greater advantage.
Of the 17, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that the most crucial are lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, graphite and the rare earth pool.
Who dominates the production of these minerals?
By 2040, the demand for these minerals will escalate rapidly, says Tae-Yoon Kim, an analyst at the International Energy Agency (IEA) and lead author of the report “The Role of Critical Minerals in the Transition towards clean energy”.
To estimate which nations could be the most benefited from the energy transition, the expert distinguishes between those countries that are leaders in the extraction of minerals and those that are leaders in their processing.
Although the extraction is divided among several nations, there is a single country that dominates the processing of all those minerals: China.
“It is difficult to know which countries will benefit the most from the energy transition because it will depend on where they are located in the production chain,” says the expert in dialogue with BBC Mundo.
What is clear is that we are at a crucial moment. While oil marked the history of the 20th century, the minerals of the energy transition could mark the history of the 21st century.
In this sense, adds the expert, “they are the minerals of the future”.
It is not at all strange then that in the midst of the war, and with the hunger for minerals predicted for the next two decades, the United States and Europe turned on the engines of the energy transition to reduce their current and future dependence on countries such as China and Russia.
The worst headache is for the European countries that are now up against a rock and a hard place because 40% of the gas they consume comes from Russia.
“Europe is financing Putin’s whims,” Ángel Saz-Carranza, director of the Esade Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics (EsadeGeo), in Spain, told BBC Mundo in March.
The four most coveted
Although metals are necessary for electric batteries, they are also key for the storage of different types of energy, for industrial activity and, in short, for a more electrified economy where new players -state and private- will see great wealth emerge.
“If supply fails to supply an increase in demand for these metals, prices will skyrocket,” Lukas Boer, a researcher at the German Institute for Economic Research, tells BBC Mundo.
An essential factor is that mining projects to extract these metals can take more than a decade (on average 16 years) to be operational and, therefore, the scarcity is likely to be even greater in the coming decade, explains Boer, who, together with Andrea Pescatori and Martin Stuermer, published the research “The metals of the energy transition” at the end of last year.
In addition to rare earths, the study notes, the four most coveted metals will be nickel, cobalt, lithium and copperwhose prices could reach historic records for long periods of time, a trend that breaks with the usual cycles of rising and falling value in international markets.
The total value of production of these metals may increase more than fourfold between 2021 and 2040, in a net-zero emissions scenario by the middle of this century.
So much so, that the producers of these four metals alone could generate revenues similar to those of the oil sector for the next 20 years, Boer argues, depending on how an international context that is currently full of uncertainty evolves.
“These metals could be the new oil”Boer points out. And “China has become the biggest player by investing in other countries, such as cobalt production in Congo.”
China is ahead
In the new war scenario and the West’s need to reduce its energy dependence, there are countries that can supply part of the demand that is needed to speed up the transition.
Kwasi Ampofo, head of metals and mining at the BloombergNEF research center, argues that China is in a very good position to benefit from the change.
“China could be the biggest winner if it decides to route Russia’s metal production through its refineries and then sell it to other countries,” he tells BBC Mundo.
Other countries have been moving the pieces on the board. In the case of nickel, Indonesia has been expanding its production capacity in the last two years, he adds, and may continue to increase it to cover Russia’s shortfall.
In fact, nickel is the metal most exposed to any supply disruption in Russia, a country that generates around 9% of global production.
“Any disruption through sanctions or production reduction will have a significant impact on the price,” Ampofo argues, especially as demand for nickel for electric batteries will increase significantly this year.
On the other hand, if there are disruptions to production of platinum group metals (PGM), South African producers can fill the gap with additional supply, it says.
In the battle to control the production of the metals of the future, there are spaces where China has put the accelerator: although more than two thirds of all world production is in Congo, Chinese companies they own or finance most of the country’s largest mines.
In this scenario, if the West does not advance faster, it risks losing the race.