Episode 234: Brine Fundamentals

Hi, it's Joel Laury. Welcome to another episode of the Global Lithium Podcast. Today is episode 234. This episode has a title of Brian Fundamentals. I have two guests who have long records in the Brian industry, Murray Brooker, and Ozzy, who's a Brian guy who would have thought. And Clint Motivek, they're both associated with Zalandas. Murray's been around the industry longer. He's worked for, well you'll hear in his backstory. He's got a very broad background. And I just try to cover some of the Lithium, Brian 101 topics that come up more and more as the cycle heats up. And I have more interactions with investors who don't have a background in Lithium that are asking fundamental questions. And some people that have been involved in the prior cycles, and are just trying to refresh their knowledge. And there just seems to be many more misconceptions about Brian than Hard Rock in this episode attempts to clear some of those up. Without further ado, Murray and Clint. Murray, Clint, welcome to the Global Lithium Podcast. As we always do with the new guest, we start off with the back stories. Murray, if you could give us your life story compressed into two minutes or less, that'd be great. Thanks, Joe. Great to go to beyond. Well, I'm an Australian based geologist and hydrogeologist. I started off life as a geologist working in Australia, ended up in Chile and Argentina working on Hard Rock, Copa principally. And then when the world became a much tougher place for geologists, I went and got myself some hydrogeology qualifications because you can't ever do without water. And that led me into Lithium back in 2010 for what was then our recovery, working at Ola Royals, Calchari, Selina's grand base. And that's where I've been working ever since on Lithium Brian projects. Mainly in Argentina, but also Chile and other places around the world where people come up with opportunities, which is remarkably diverse. But the real game is in Chile and Argentina and question mark Bolivia and the course what we see now happening in in the States and Canada. I find interesting that you are based in the country of Hard Rock, but you're a Brian guy. It's good to know that Australia's got more diversity than people expect in terms of Lithium expertise. People have been here in Zalanda's on this podcast for a long time, but I think a lot of people really don't know the breadth of what you guys do. So why don't you give a brief background on that? Yeah, upstream Lithium Brian services in a nutshell. So Zalanda's doesn't do DLE and doesn't own land, but provides services specifically to Lithium Brian developers. And we don't do anything else. So we're obsessed with Brian and we deal with the bulk of the upstream industry. Names that people would have heard of, you know, Murray Mention's or a Cobre and Galaxy before they became all Kim, you know, all Kim and Lavin before it became Arcadia and then and Rio after that. But most of the names that we work for, investors haven't heard of them yet. Maybe they haven't made a discovery yet. So it's our people that are on the ground helping people with their Brian projects. So you are working with the unknown names before their public even sometimes when somebody's just out exploring. You begin at the beginning, I guess is probably a good way to put it. Yeah, and we've been at it for a while now. So and you've got one of the one of the veterans of the industry of Murray on the call. So I'm actually kind of keen to hear what you've got to say, Murray. Well, so am I and I think the audience will be too because I have a much more hard rock focused audience in general, just because 32% of the audience of this podcast is Australian and even though it's been downloaded in 197 countries, the Aussies and the Canadians seem to be well Canada's number three and the US is a laggard even though the country's 10 times size of Australia. I still don't have its big an audience in my home country, but such as life. If we look at lithium resources in general, there's more Brian than hard rock. And if we look at the lowest point of the cost curve, it's Brian. Why has it taken the Brian projects, especially the the better ones in South America that have been out there for a while, but still not in production? What are the main issues? You want me to take that one, Murray? Yeah, let's get your spin on it. Let's get both. Yeah, 100%. It's a new industry, primarily. So there are people coming into it, generally come from a previous background of hard rock, maybe their specialty chemical expert, maybe their midstream oil and gas. So the people coming in to run these projects are coming in with an approach from a different industry. Usually there's not many old hands at this industry. Mistakes do get majoring the process of development. And then on top of that, the actual process of development is a complicated one. It'd be like combining a hard rock, mining process and an oil and gas process together. And that that requires a multidisciplinary team and many, many stages and steps to get it from first discovery all the way to production. Murray, you have any. Yeah. It's really kind of a mixture of contributing factors really. I mean, what we're looking at is the Australians and the Canadians are unbelievably good at getting out there, drilling, drilling the crap out of something and producing a resource. So I mean, it's just like that is efficient as you possibly can. And when you're working in a jurisdiction like Western Australia, where the permitting is very streamlined, you know, and you're using RC drilling, which is what you'll use for the majority of your resource drill out. You can you're just incredibly productive. You can just drill hundreds of meters a day per rig. And so you can drill out your deposit in less than a year and have it in feasibility study and have all that knocked off in, you know, let's say two, three years and then be building the thing. And and the advantage with hard rock, of course, is you're kind of separating the splodger mean into the concentrate, but then it's not your responsibility unless you're building a lithium plant. It's it's going off to China where they're expert at producing lithium chemicals, but that's not your bit. So you've basically built your project as a traditional hard rock mining project and bang, it's done. You know, we've seen all the difficulties that come were trying to build these chemical plants outside of a person and in WDW in general. It's, you know, the chemical part of this business is not an easy part of not an easy route to follow. So in a sense, you know, hard rock is part of the equation that it's being dealt with when you flip over Brian, you're not only drilling out of the deposit, but you're also, you know, dealing with the production side of things to produce lithium chemicals and that kind of adds to the complexity in the time frame. But but then if we break down the lithium brine, so I did a bit more the drilling, it's really slow. It's, you know, unconsolidated material, difficult to get samples, takes takes time. You know, so how do we how do we move that faster? We we basically hit it really hard with multiple drill rigs and that's not necessarily happened to the extent that it could have been the past, but it's certainly something that that that moves that forward faster, permitting permitting in Latin American countries is a way slower than Western Australia and that has been a real kind of break on things to some some degree, getting drilling permits, things like that just takes a lot, lot longer than it has in Western Australia. So those those are some of the key contributing factors and then you've got the the chemical processing side. So I'd say that's probably the critical differences and all of those can be sped up to some degree that the government permitting is is something we would really like to see happening a lot faster than it does and part of that is driven by the government resources available. and culture, so that would be a big win to compress that sort of things further. Well, we've seen, I think, from my perspective, some progress in Argentina in terms of trying to have the government not be a barrier. Do you agree with that and how have you seen that play out? Yeah, I think it has got better. I think there's much more of an acceptance that the lithium industry is going to be really important for the Northern provinces in terms of job tax receipts for the government. So I think that there is a positive attitude to it, to what's it happening, but I think it could still be spit out considerably and kind of become a more of a template type exercise. I mean, it already is to some extent, but I think it could be further gains there and it would be nice to see that. Since you were involved with Orocobre from the early days, it seems like that project was actually faster than Cachari was in terms of getting it built and getting it into production. Orocobre had some issues with product quality, but they also were dealing with a government who is trying to block imports, trying to manage things. I was actually advising Toyota Sushio back in those days, so I remember that. If you take the Orocobre experience or what we saw with Cachari, and Cachari also was hamstrung by COVID with a lot of the build being through COVID, but when you look at those two projects now and then look at something like the project's real Tino has. Part of the issue with the change in getting Brian moving faster is the fact that now you have some big balance sheets in. It used to be financing, it used to be probably the biggest problem. Do you see the next cycle as meaningfully compressing the time or are there just things in terms of putting a Brian project together from the resource side from the chemical side that are going to make it a five to seven year slog no matter what you do? Yeah, I'm going to think there's definitely scope to compress things. The Orocobre experience was that the company was very nimble. They managed to get Toyota Sushio involved, and that was an enormous plus in terms of providing confidence for them and things. And they got financed. I mean, I like to use this little analogy of the Indiana Jones movie where he's basically just scraped through this big rolling rock that seals off an entrance to something and he reaches through and grabs his hat. And then, you know, if you're on the other side of that rolling rock, you're locked out. And that's really what happened back in the early days of lithium. Orocobre got financed working with Toyota Sushio and lithium Argentina got stuck on the other side along with everyone else. And that massive financed deficit that took like four years for people, you know, as much as four years for people to get rolling again. So, you know, the financing in this business when it's been mainly juniors has been very much a handbrake on things. And really had major impact on the development of the industry at different times. And then we're just the funding cycles, the ups and downs and the lithium pricing that that's been very destructive for for, you know, for bringing lithium to market. And it really hasn't got any better. But as you say now, the now there's been this massive industry consolidation and we've got the reos of the world involved. But, you know, they have their own kind of timeframe way of moving things forward on internal processes and. And you know, that that's going to ensure a good result but not necessarily a fast result. So I think, you know, internal financing was a massive reduction in productivity for the juniors. And as we've got through to, you know, to now be the major companies, I think it's, it's, you know, a gangfeng and the Chinese companies that are moving really quite quickly. Whereas the other major companies, I think, are, you know, moving in a more measured way that will not have the same pace. So is it fair to say that when you get a real involved, the money's there. So trade the financing problem for the bureaucracy problem. I think there's elements of that. You know, with, with any of these large companies. I mean, you know, you'll get that BHP was, you know, major copper projects in different parts of the world and things. And, you know, they, they, they look at these things in a lot of detail in terms of the, you know, the, you know, the value proposition and that all takes its time. So let's take a step back and look at what makes a great Brian project versus an also ran. Take us through the key characteristics, whether you're talking about lithium content, impurity content, the balance between the two available water, those sorts of things. What are the top three or four elements of a great lithium project? In hard rock, of course, great as king, but in Brian, there's many attributes. So size of the deposit, of course, permeability, arguably more important than grade. Water access is often overlooked impurities, power and transport. There's a major issue in many of these spots permitting social license, wetlands as well. So all of these things need to be assessed. So it's not, it's not always a simple, as simple as grade. And there's a little bit of education that goes on for, for the market as they come in and have a particular land package. And going through the process of really understanding how valuable is it? What do we really have in the ground here and is it worthy of a PFS? One of the big areas you see in the market is that a junior will come in and try and push on an asset that isn't really worthy of being at a PFS in the first place. How do you determine how much drilling does it take? How much investment does it take to get to the point where you say, this is PFS worthy or declaring the resource worthy or we just move on to the next thing. Yeah, that's the right way to think of it is what stage is the project now and what stage does it deserve to be at? If you're looking at an Argentina, the how many of these assets are worthy of a PFS and how quickly can we get them there? So that there are plenty of known assets out there that are worthy and it does get a bit painful sometimes dealing with the upstream market and our customers and trying to take them through the process of realizing that perhaps they should be spending that time. Perhaps they should be spending their money somewhere else, which is quite a common thing. I'm not sure what you'd say to all that, Mary. Let's find out. Yeah, I mean, we really got a whole bunch of contributing factors. So, you know, DLE is kind of being the elephant in the room in terms of what does that do to the market? What does that do to the number of buying projects out there and I don't know if you want to drill down on that now. Let's leave DLE for a little later, but you got a great thought there and let me just ask people love to talk on the hard rock side about it, recoveries improving recoveries. If you look at the best Brian asset in the world, there, I would say the out of comma for the life of the out of comma to date, the recovery rate's been around 50% or a little higher. One, how important is that and how important is it going to be going forward when most of these assets that you're developing don't have the characteristics of lithium content or some of the other advantages that the out of comma has. How important is recovery and as the world goes to needing took 70 years to get to a million tons of lithium industry existed for 70 years before we got to a million tons. the second million tons is coming in. about three years and the third million tons is coming very quick after that. So put some context around what has to be improved to if it turns into a DLE discussion that's fine too, but I think there's I think there's really more to it than that. One way to talk about this is to step back and look at the whole bride industry. So there's two two hundred sixty seven I think it is projects we track and at any given time. That'll be active or inactive at the moment there's about sixty five we consider active, which means there's it's more than an exact you know poorly paid executive going around and raising money. Which is a brave thing to do and many people do it as the market up swings more of that. Those projects become active so that's like the whole pipeline of the upstream bride industry. Inside of all that you've got the producers and some of them as you say is sitting on assets that aren't recovering all their lithium. So will they instigate advance pre treatment or slash DLE whatever you want to call it into a hybrid type model and get more out of it what they've got. And then inside of that two hundred sixty projects a lot of them are in jurisdictions where they are saying that they have to use DLE. And whether or not that gets put in brackets and as a hybrid type model as well. So that's kind of the overall picture of the market. And then I guess I think you're leaning towards how important is that type of process and going to be. You don't have to go back even 20 years for the thought to be that there really never needs to be. Ombre Marto wasn't even needed. All you need is the out of comma in green bushes for the two sides. And if you go to 2016 at the beginning of 2016 green bushes was the only hard rock asset operating because mouth catlin it started and stopped so we have a huge problem in terms of now you need probably dozens of reasonable size Brian projects. And if you look at who's really producing right now it's still less than both hands in South America. There's a bit of a gap in the market in Argentina at the moment too so you'd be aware of it but exon sold out of back in water down in the south. Which what that meant is that a lot of the most active participants in the upstream Brian market are oil and gas companies. And they're typically quite good operators especially in Argentina. And they're being pulled down into that gap of capital. I'm not sure why exon sold out maybe as a top level type decision to get their money out of Argentina while they can. But that sort of half pulled equinole out as well. But what that means is that sort of shift in the capital markets pulls a lot of the capital out of the Brian market in the north of Argentina. So those active upstream players were the place that the smallest land parcel holders would sell their land to. So I'm talking right at the upstream and that part of the market's gone or much more depressed than normal. And then overlay with that though that the situation in Argentina is improving significantly. And it's the best it's ever been since we've been there. And so new capital is finding its way into the market. So there's going to I think there's going to be a lot of activity on the transaction side. Both at the small end so the discoveries that have already been made in the last cycle and then taking them through to PFS. And potentially at the bigger end as well. With the most specialized team of lithium-brime professionals in the world. So land is dedicated to providing exceptional customer service. And support throughout every stage of lithium-brime field development and production. From the Atacama to Ambrimuerto to the USA and Canada. go to zalandas.com for more information that's zel a nd easy dot com. Well, let me ask this a different way and you know we were going to try not to get too company focused here. But if you take a big entity like real 10L and they have multiple assets now. And whether you believe Ambrimuerto has been doing DLE for 27 years or or you think it's a hybrid situation. But how important do you think it is now the balance between what level of recovery are we going to get? How much water do we have? There's a lot of countervailing forces here that it seems like a linear programming exercise is to. Where do you put your money first? I found it very curious that Rincon was the asset they were real is going to focus on just based on the quality of Ambrimuerto, the quality of salivated. And yet they're working on all three. It's probably the simplest way to ask it. What has to happen to get the most lithium out of the puna in the most efficient way? You know if that's DLE let's talk about DLE. Another way to ask it is how would those resources across those three countries be developed if they were sitting in the middle of Australia? Then that wouldn't be done the same. There wouldn't be many hard rock deposits being explored for either because the world wouldn't have a lithium shortage. But you wouldn't go to better, greater site, I imagine. You would go to chloride and ship that, ship a product and get it refined elsewhere. How realistic do you think that is? So that's your question. What needs to happen for that? Yeah, I mean that's a great question. But it's fine for Golan to do that with a very small quantity. But Gangphen for 10 years took out Akama Brian and produced in China. But Corpo stopped all that. But if you're looking at the kind of movement of an intermediate product from the puna to another place to develop it that's outside of Argentina, you're talking about a massive movement of liquid that would be very hard to be supported by the infrastructure in Argentina today. We're just throwing a lot of things out here. Murray, what are your thoughts on that? In terms of what makes the most sense going forward? Is it making lower grade carbonate that gets upgraded? Is it making a chloride that is a feedstock? Or. Yeah, I'm thinking. We're seeing a whole bunch of alternatives being tried by different people. I mean, what to become very apparent from the early stages in the industry is producing battery quality lithium carbonate up at altitude in a highly windy environment where we're looking at PPM level impurities in the product being highly undesirable. It's just a tough operating environment for equipment, for people, it's expensive or I've brought it up there. So there's definitely a view that if we can get that quality step out of the puna, then that enables us to control that better. You know, people have been looking at, okay, well, let's just produce technical grade and then either sell it or refine it elsewhere. You know, of course, the lithium hydroxide plant that or a coal grid was involved in being kind of part of that cycle, then we're looking at chloride being an option. So people, I think the key observation here is the quality step with the later processing being somewhere else other than the puna. And I think all of them continue to see people pursue that, but whether in terms of wholesale export of lithium chloride out of the country or whatever, I think that's highly unlikely for, you know, both logistical and political reasons. I think that that gets tricky. Whether we see someone come in as a kind of central clearinghouse for lithium chloride that people are producing from multiple projects, I don't know. I haven't seen any sign of that happening, but maybe that that's a possibility for at least for smaller projects. It goes back to your earlier question, how do you make Brian quicker, faster? The pushing towards a better, very great product from the beginning of a project slows a lot of things down. Well, at the end of the day, the final product. for 95% of this has to be battery grade. Whether it's leaves Argentina is tech grade or we have so many scenarios now, some of what SQM does in the out of commas comes out as lithium sulfate and goes to China for a conversion. You've got two companies in Argentina doing chloride that will be exported, but you have a kind of market government that really wants to see it be a final chemical. So, I mean, there's a lot of moving parts here, but Murray, as you look at it from a technical perspective and this may be too far upstream for you, I don't know, but there has been talk by multiple parties about having a unified production facility for multiple chloride products. My experience with that going back to my days at FMC lithium when that was tried a couple of times, it was pretty difficult to manage. His things change is there are more technical prowess out there to do that, but if you had say a 20,000 ton plant with chloride finish, slar brine from three different places with different impurity profiles, is that gonna be a problem? - Well, not being a chemist, I guess I can't be definitive about that, but I mean, I think it's something that you would imagine pops up on the radar as an option really going back to my previous response of getting the processing out of a putty, just to be able to control the quality and things better. So I think it's definitely something that's on the table. The problem is generally companies don't want to seed control of their production route. And so you'd have to have things very well contractually tied up so that the person who's building the plant is financially solid, viewed as completely reliable. And so the companies that are signing up for those agreements are not, don't see that as taking a risk or adding to their risk profile. And I don't see the like, the reattento going and doing that. So it's like who's gonna step in and fill that gap? So I think the confidence thing there would be the big thing. I mean, if one of the producers is prepared to do that sort of thing, then that's like toll treating and gold. I mean, it's quite a common scenario really, particularly when prices go up, then it enables smaller producers to get going. And so you see this sort of toll treatment option, when you look at the next five to 70 years, what do you think the most critical things to watch are in terms of seeing the progress of brine based production, whether it's a technical grade carbonate or an intermediate, but just overall, what has to happen for Argentina to realize its potential? - Yeah, surely, I mean, it matters. - Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, if we touch on Chile, very briefly to start, I mean, it's really the thing that's been holding Chile back is permitting and the government. You know, the root to production there has been, you know, the impediment to things happening in Chile, otherwise Chile would have got a large chunk of the investment pie that has really, you know, entirely flowed to Argentina. So, I mean, in Argentina, there's the brine deposits which are in the further east part of the, if you like, the belt. And these ones are the deposits which have the better, better metrics on the traditional measures. So if we look at many Centalistium ratio, you know, they tend to have, you know, values of less than six or less than three. So we're looking at the Aubrey Werter, the Ola Roscalcari's, and then, you know, into projects like Centenario, PPG with Gangfeng and Lara. So those are projects that fit the kind of more traditional metrics and pond operations. But then when we go higher up into the Andes, we might still be at a similar altitude but we get into the volcanic belt. And that's where we've got, you know, volcanoes around. We've got a lot more magnesium and we start getting a lot more calcium. And that just kind of kills the historically accepted, you know, pond processing method. And those thoughts, salar, are kind of whenever going anywhere. But then along comes, you know, the, the promise of DLE and getting around those traditional chemistry, balances, and then that opens up this whole other area. So that's, that's kind of the key to getting more volume out is, is really unlocking the western part of the Argentine kind of salar. And then if you, if you flip over to Chile, it's the same deal. A lot of those salar are up in the volcanic belt. Same deal, you've got lots of magnesium in there. And so that's, that's the key constraint. And, and, you know, with that technology, you can kind of jump around the chemistry and, and get started. So that, that's what is going to unlock, you know, a lot of volume that historically just wasn't available to play with. Questions for both of you. I mean, let's get into the DLE thing. I mean, we've been talking about DLE now for the better part of a decade. And if you look at the amount of production from pure DLE, it's still tiny. What will change that is one success going to change that? Or do you fall back to the DLE's bespoke? And even if Aramette starts to operate seamlessly, that solution might not fit for somebody else. And, and then how much do the, it does the other front, front end of what you do before you start the DLE process, come into play there to pre-treatments. I always wonder if part of the problem with DLE starts with the name. It sounds so sexy and good. It's such a good name that it means that even processes that are technically a DLE get assumed to be one. It should rightly be named high-risk component of the flow sheet, but that's not. I don't think you're marketing skills or showing there. You know, a lot of capital arbitrage that gets pulled into the sector. And really it's a water treatment process that is typically bespoke at each location. The sales cycle is extremely long for a technology company inside the flow sheet. So it's a difficult market to operate in. It's quite a competitive one. Thankfully, a lot of capital has been spent on DLE companies. So a lot of technology has been developed and produced. It's not a chemist either, and a chemist's kind of sneer at a mechanical engineer when you, when you, when you, on tificate about things, but advanced pre-treatment really is quite an exciting little area. So that's kind of reaching down into what you were saying before where you've got 40% losses in typical pond operations. And combining, combining some of that technology with pond operations seems to be the obvious play where you're making use of the sun, where you can. And concentrating your lithium that way, but also not getting as much, getting as many losses. So where does DLE go? When does it get serious? It gets serious when it gets used on the out of karma probably. That's when it gets really big. Yeah, it's kind of like the building wave that you can, you know, you can see on the horizon, but it hasn't got to you yet. And it's coming. There's been, you know, in the typical tech context, there's been a lot of money kind of throwing it this just like any any kind of tech boom. And, and not all of those providers and technologies. Kind of get to the next, the next stage, but I mean, we're, you know, we're basically seeing. You know, getting thing, you know, going to be using this technology on, on a commercial scale. And, and obviously, yeah, Aramette is there and, and red Tinto is going all the way at red column going hard there. So there's there is a top end of town, kind of commitment on these technologies. And. And so I think it's really kind of a question of timing. Obviously there's also a kind of ramp up and optimization of these things. But I think there's no doubt it's going to happen. It's the question is a bit around timing and also efficiency as well. I mean stated efficiency versus actual efficiency. But the kind of new wave is well under way, but it just has an all has an all landed on the beach ship. This episode is also brought to you by MLC. Whether you need technical support for engineering or setting up equipment for effective use of lime. MLC is your solutions partner. Visit lime4lithium.com to learn more. That's L.I.M.E the number four L.I.T.H.I.M. I realize that South America is your bail awake, but we probably ought to at least touch on the smack over. No D.L.E. no smack over. To me that is the most important engine behind the long term success of D.L.E. is the fact that you've got X on and Chevron people that can spend whatever money is necessary to make D.L.E. a success. And then maybe some of those learnings will make their way back to South America. I don't know, but I know. Zaland is primarily working in South America, but what are your thoughts on. One could read reasonably expect to see an asset like the smack or I'm sure you've looked at the characteristics of smack over Brian. I'd say it's fairly similar to some of the Argentina brines. Arkansas and Texas you can't build ponds. No, that's right. So that kind of really almost mandates the fact you've got to be using this technology. And the other thing is the oil and gas industry has been re-injecting wastewater for, you know, like 50 years or more. So that's a really well understood and easily permitted way to get rid of your waste product, which in this case is Brian that's waste product from petroleum anyway. So, you know, so that that kind of closed loop is pretty well established. If I comment generally on oil and gas lithium brines, the challenge tends to be the pre-treatment. And then matching that to a daily not picking your daily to early. But it seems like in the in the PFS type work we do, it seems like the risk of cost overrun and blow out extends down into the pre-treatment component. Not just your daily. Because there's often a few nasties in there that one particular daily can't handle over and above another and figuring out exactly how much it's going to cost to treat all that Brian at volume and get it into the state it needs to be so that your. The next component in the flow sheet can, you know, do what it says on the box. That's where they that seems to be where the challenges for oil and gas brines smack over projects in particular won't won't comment on that. So, like a knowledge there's really two tears there though when you're talking about smack over brines for 600 ppm and then there's the other process water that might be 60 to 70 by ppm. So, those are kind of distinct to really depends on the geography we're talking about. But, you know, I think I'm bullish on the smack over just because it's it's it's better Brian quality and it's you got three major oil companies involved. So, the capitals there and in hopefully the technical expertise is there to get it done. But, I have one other thing we were I wanted to talk about and that's the fact that and I think you've seen this in cacciareola rose it's true all over but. Brian doesn't respect borders and. You know there's a there's a lot of issues with how much you pump and what it does to the what your neighbor may be trying to produce and it's do you see that as more projects get build as being a bigger and bigger issue in Argentina and how will that be resolved I think in the smack over there already dealing with the way oil and gas does but. What about the problem of pumping your neighbor's brain. Yeah, cross-border pumping or you know like you know it's it's kind of like you know I met a scene some frontier this is like. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know so it's look it's it's real it's something that needs to be quantified and you know we ultimately see it sort of shaking out in a similar way to the to the oil and gas. And then you know the things with you know unitization and looking at the you know the whole of reservoir picture and then who's pumping what out of the out of the milkshake so that that's going to require kind of base and models. And we're going to have contributions from all the companies that are involved and potentially an adjudicator in terms of of someone who is is making a call on on basically is taking what portion of things but you know there's good science. That that can be used to make those decisions. It's not really happening at the moment but we will see you know where it goes basically you know I think the historical tools from oil and gas I think provide a good good framework and yeah the timeframe for that really becoming important. And then we come down to a test case somewhere but at this stage is not really a significant kind of issue but you know it's done some stage it'll come onto the radar and obviously you know bigger salars it's less likely to be a significant issue small salars it. What do you think is it a Hombra Muto first yeah quite possibly because that that's really like the congested you know main street of salars whereas you know some of the other ones are like you're walking around in the industrial zone you know that's that's a pretty busy place there's a lot of activity there. I guess the thing is it's it's now majority owned by you know one company in reattento yeah that's the biggest place the negative water balance on that on that base and to write so that's it's going to put more pressure on it. Yeah so we're a long way from it seems that we're a long way from the ideal scenario now which does it does impact the smaller landholders quite a lot so if you if you have a land holding that's going to be below minimum economic size as a standalone asset you kind of relying on you know selling to your neighbor but if your neighbor's pumping. So they need to buy you so that that introduces that dynamic to and then the question is always if you do have a holding and it's not at an economic size to produce on its own what is it worth as a smaller resource just kind of an interesting question in its own right. Let's talk let's talk about small resources for a minute then because it seems like the brine rolls going two ways the big guys are doing bigger projects. And it's two phases but 60,000 charios 40 the old model was kind of around 20 to 25 but now you've also got people that wanted to develop smaller projects that have less access to capital they're talking about well let's just prove it out in steps and do a 5000 ton modular project what do you see as the future of that kind of. Lithem is not rare enough for that in my general comment it's actually quite a common thing. I'm all for modular and I think it's smart to do modular on a overall fundamentally bigger resource and do so you can move faster but I still think your your bankers in your CFO teams going to want to see the big play later to make it all with wild. And modular is just means to an end with we're going to do five 5000 ton units but the plans always for 25 or yeah he'd get to 40. Yeah even a big a play will be smart and they do. today to say a 5,000 ton plant first and then what maybe it only gets to three, but they'll do that first. Well, you have not seen that model before Rinccon. Yes, but I still think it's a smarter way to run. No, no, I'm just saying. I mean, I didn't want the listener to get the impression that that was a thing before Rinccon because it might have been a tiny pilot, but it wasn't like a three to five thousand ton exercise. Yes. Your question, I guess, was what's the future of small modular production? I think my general takeaway, it's smart on assets that can produce a lot later. And there are those are out there even that exist. So yeah, it should be done and why not? Well, let me just ask the general question of we're entering this is market related as well. We're entering a cycle where it's probably going to be a under supply situation for a longer period of time. How do you think Argentina plays into that? Because it's been really easy or in the past to go, let's just go to Africa and start digging stuff up and ship it back to China. But there's a lot of issues associated with that whether they're geopolitical or overall quality of what's coming out of Africa and Brian's going to be overall lower cost. There's a lot of it, but how do you deal with the balance that I think I think China's come to the realization that Africa is not enough and there's there's significant interest now from the the big Chinese players in fully developing Argentina. But because it's a it's a first world country with first world rules, but not as amenable to quick development as Western Australia is that it's a it's a it's a mixed bag here. So how does Brian answer the supply problem? That I mean, that's kind of where we started. I think the the Chinese companies are a part of the solution in the sense that you know, Western companies are, you know, do a lot of very detailed engineering work and go through multiple phases of engineering design and then go and build the project and the Chinese companies from what I understand, you know, do that, but they also learn as they go in terms of getting a project operating and then fine tuning in and things like that. So it seems to me from what I see on all sorts of projects, we're not just talking lithium, we're talking, you know, whether it's nickel copper, whatever the Chinese companies are moving faster to to get those projects developed and and product to market and at the same time they you know, they work with the quality side of things and fine tune things. So there's a little bit of a difference in the way the engineering approach and I think that that affects the time frame to some extent too. So I think they, you know, they're a big part of getting product to market sooner as I see it. Yeah, they're definitely more depth in how they deal with problems overall. I mean, that's my experience working with the Chinese players. The Brian talent pool is growing too. So I guess the biggest thing that Brian can do to win, which I think it will in the long run, don't make the same mistakes as the last cycle, it's probably a good starter, especially at the upstream where the return on investment and risk level was the highest. So that, you know, the basics that junior explorers will get wrong will be not caring about water and infrastructure enough, obviously drilling the wrong asset to start with, which we've already said talked about. Then drilling completion errors that that's a big thing in our market, not drilling deep enough upfront. So actually drilling out drilling to basement, if you can upfront is a good idea. Another error is getting locked into a daily to early. Another common error is not understanding, I guess really what a PAPFS process is at the beginning of the project. And then other factors like not factoring and re-enjection, pushing all trying to push all the way to better grade. So there's sort of multiple basic mistakes that a junior minor can kind of avoid in the next cycle, which should be pretty beneficial to the whole industry. Let me ask you one other question. Zalanda's has been involved for about a decade now. So what are the two or three most important things you've learned in dealing with the development of Brian with clients, with all the challenges of not enough money flowing to the industry and that's a pretty wide question. It is, but you're the man for the job. My biggest learning is that cross-cultural boundaries. I mean, so Zalanda's has subsidiaries in Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, the US, Australia and New Zealand. And just dealing with how people do business in each location and how to get business done. It's not as easy as you always hope it's going to be. So you're learning all those little intricacies of the different locations we work in that's been a hell of a journey. I know about you, Murray. You've been. Yeah, what's very got to say on the topic? Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, for me, the biggest disappointment of the whole lithium-bride industry has been the cycles. I mean, they're just, you know, mining is cycles. That's just the way it works, but the lithium cycles have been like, you know, people using some illicit drug. It's just like up and down. It's just that. You know, out of control, you know, it's just like wild mood swings. I mean, in the early days we saw some assets change hands at one point in the market. And then six months later, the valuation was like a third, or you know, maybe even a quarter of. So, you know, that's most days of perhaps gone, but there's just this dearth of capital. And it just created this very, you know, that very taxing environment just not being able to fund projects efficiently, very stop start. You know, a lot of stuff being done for the market, some absolutely crazy stuff, no names being named, you know, done to just get headlines. I mean, it was just, it was just, you know, like very counterproductive spins, you know, and now we're kind of coming to this big consolidation phase. But, yeah, to me, the available finance for the whole industry was just really super inefficient. Okay, before I ask Murray three rapid fire questions, are there any final comments? No, no, thank you for the podcast, Joe. I enjoy listening to it. I think she serves the industry quite well. So, that's my main takeaway. Keeps everyone keeps you. Well, this topic is going to continue to evolve. There's, after this, there's probably more questions I have than answers, but that's the good part of this. We can always come back. Okay, Murray. I don't know if you ever listened to this podcast before, but I asked some rapid fire questions at the end. So, what's your favorite all-time band? Oh, let's just say you two there. Okay, fair enough. What's the last book you read? Yeah, I think you'll want to talk to read Joe. I got to say. What's the last comic book you looked at? Oh, the last comic book I would have been a, would have been a, you know, Donald Duck thing way back when I was a kid. All right. And what's your favorite place to eat in South America? City or country you can be specific if you want. El Charua and in Salta and Pasey Agua, and she just get a Milton, Milton your mouth's tight. You just come to any better. All right, gentlemen, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Good talking to you, Joe. A good discussion, but we only really scratch the surface as important as Hard Rock has been to keeping the industry well supplied over the last decade. I still think Brian is gonna have a resurgence. There's just too much energy now around bringing more Brian into production. The balance sheets have arrived with Rio and the oil companies. And major Chinese players like Gangfan and Zijin. I think you're gonna see C-A-T-L. Focus more on getting Brian's supply. His massive demand can't be satisfied by just growing hard rock. China's done a great job of building out conversion capacity. I think you'll wind up seeing more Brian-based conversion capacity. Not only in China but in some other places. We'll continue to follow that. The upward price pressure continues. I think there'll be a good long run with volatility for sure. There are a lot of new companies out there or recently declared resources. Be careful where you put your money. Because most of the hype around new lithium assets is just that hype. There will be success stories of course. But it's easy to put your story out on YouTube these days. And in my opinion, most of the little guys that have big stories are probably not where you want to invest. Thanks again for listening.