Nevada: America's Leader in Lithium Supply

0:07 Good afternoon, good evening, or good morning, depending on where in the world you're signing in from. So we're all the way from California to Singapore today, so that's quite an international audience. Thank you so much for joining us. Today's panel discussion is about Nevada and its lead in the race to provide America's lithium supply. It's great to have you all with me today. I wanted to do a really quick round of introductions. So real quick, starting with Dr. Bill, I'd love you to just give your name, role, and your company and then we can get into the meat of this discussion. Dr. Bell, I'll start with you. Okay, thanks, Romeo. I'm Bill Willoughby. I'm the CEO of Century Lithium Corp.

0:43 Throw it to Stephen. How you doing, everyone? I'm Steve Renschler, CEO of Nevada Lithium Resources. Greg, if you don't mind. Hello everyone, I'm Greg Reimer, I'm the President and CEO of Surge Battery Metals.

1:00 Let's start with Tim. Good morning, I'm Tim Crowley. I'm the Vice President of External Affairs for Lithium Americans. And Robert, and finally Amanda. Good morning everyone. I am Rob Valerian, the Administrator for the Nevada Division of Minerals.

1:19 Hi everyone, my name is Amanda Flachini. I am the International Business Development Director at the Governor's Office of Economic Development here in Nevada. Nice to see you all. Awesome, well It's really great to have all of you with me today. Before we get into the protein of today's discussion, I do have a bit of housekeeping to do. First, I'll say today's event will be recorded and available for replay in the late afternoon. So you can watch for that in your inbox. Today's event is also interactive. So feel free

1:43 to pose a question in the chat box in the bottom right of your screen anytime during today's event. Really on-topic questions, I might break into their pre-existing questions and ask the speakers. Otherwise, we'll try and tackle a couple at the end. Now, I will say if questions are specific to an individual security or off-topic from today's conversation, still feel free to pose them. I'm just going to make sure they get passed to the correct organization's team and they'll get back to you as soon as possible.

2:08 That's enough out of me. I know you're not here to hear from me. Let's get into the conversation. So Amanda, I'm going to throw this one to you first. In the context of the global lithium supply chain, curious for your perspective and the governor's office's perspective on what role Nevada plays and how is the state preparing to meet the presumed increasing demand for lithium driven part by EVs, part by renewable energy sectors and more. I'll throw it to you first.

2:35 Awesome, thank you, Romeo. Yeah, so I'll kind of just start really quick. So the beginning of 2023 was just essentially the beginning of the current governor's administration, he was elected in the end of 22. We actually had a five-year strategic plan come out through our office which really highlighted sort of a electric, innovative, and connected future for the state, really kind of Kind of playing off of our historical mining industry here

3:04 but obviously to where we're kind of known for being the Capital a lithium capital of the US as of right now. So we are the only active we have the only active lithium mine and Silver Peak, Nevada and as you'll hear from other folks on the call today that there's quite a few other lithium projects in certain stages really really taking off here in the state. So from that plan though that's been really sort of the driving force to kind of putting Nevada on the map, especially in relation to lithium production, as well as related to, I think you mentioned, electric vehicle production. But not just in electric vehicle production, but I think we're really focused on, like you said, renewable energy sector. I think a lot of policies in the last few years have really been driving that and driving the position that we're in to sort of be that lithium production, battery manufacturing sort of capital of the U.S. So that's something that we're really poised to build out. I think from the five-year strategic plan, there's been a lot of analysis and looking at the different verticals of the lithium battery supply chain here in the state.

4:22 Through our office, we've kind of identified 7 different verticals, all the way from extraction to recycling. And so It's definitely, we're the only state right now that's been able to have, we have a private industry in each one of those verticals and multiple of those. So

4:40 I definitely say that we're putting a lot of our energy into building out the lithium supply chain in the state because of this five-year strategic plan. Looking at, again, policies have really been driving that. Also too, from a federal perspective, you look at the IRA, you look at the bipartisan infrastructure law, a lot of those federal funding mechanisms have really played a huge part in bolstering the lithium industry here in the state. Awesome, thank you. Robert, I'm going to throw it to you for your perspective on what role Nevada plays in your view in meeting America's lithium demand? Yeah, that's great. So realistically looking at a global scale, there's 3 really main types of lithium deposits.

5:25 There's the sponge vein mines, which are not really generally found in Nevada. Then you have brine and clay. So there's 2 really pathways depending on the type of deposit you're looking at for permitting within the state of Nevada. Clay deposits have been generally,

5:42 their regulatory framework has been identified for a long period of time. We treat that as the same as what you would go for a basically any other commodity such as gold, silver, copper, anything else. And you're going to follow the existing framework that's been in place since really the late 80s in the state of Nevada. You're going to be working with the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, mainly the Bureau of Mining Regulation Reclamation Branch, as well as the Federal Land Managers and the BLM,

6:08 mainly in the state of Nevada. This is going to be done in tandem. That's where we're going to look out for getting it through there. The brine deposit is going to be a different pathway. This one is relatively new. This is generally looking at new DLE technology directly from extraction technologies coming out how this can be permitted. Our agency specifically has developed a dissolved mineral resource expiration regulations, which allows a company to do expiration for brine up to 5 acre feet of brine pumping in an individual basin before a water right is required. Once you go past that 5 acre feet, if you want to go past that, you're going to look and see to get a water right in that basin. So the state of Nevada is very fortunate to have both clay and brine deposits.

6:54 We are seeing a lot of exploration within the state of Nevada. There's a lot of new companies coming online that are quickly developing resources through exploration in either both brine or clay and sometimes a combination of the 2. Nevada's geology is really unique. We have amazing mineral endowment and we're really just scratching the surface of the lithium potential within the state of Nevada already. Currently, we already have just an early just exploration over 113 million metric tons of lithium identified in resources through these exploration processes. Of course, each one of those is an individual company that may have a different cutoff grade depending on brine or clay, but there is a significant amount of lithium potential within the state of Nevada.

7:43 Awesome, appreciate that. So Let's jump to the private sector now, to the top row of my screen. Speaking of clay deposits, Dr. Bill, I'll ask you to come off mute and speak to what you think the role Nevada plays in meeting America's lithium demand.

8:01 Mute button should just be on the bottom of your screen there. Good. Okay. Well, Robert just said, huge amount of resources in Nevada, and particularly in lithium clays, that puts Nevada well beyond any other country, say like Bolivia, which is supposed to have big solar deposits and a lot of resources in brine. So we're definitely in, have the resources that we can carry out a major move in the country in terms of domestic supply. In that regard, it's not just having the resources, it's what can you do with it. Our deposit in particular is easy to mine, it's right at the surface.

8:47 What do you do with it when you get it out of the ground? You need to process it. We've spent a lot of time, we have a pilot plant down in the Amaragos Valley that we've been working on for 2 and a half years now, and that's a key part is how can you get that lithium processed, how can you make a product out of it. To finish off that thought, with lithium clay as opposed to say hard rock, you're looking at a process which encompasses both the mining and lithium extraction and also the recovery the same way that you would in Bryan, where you're trying to get to a battery product. Where the key point in Nevada lithium is that it's end to end. We mine it, and our goal is to wind up at the end of the day with either a battery grade lithium carbonate or hydroxide

9:37 so that's where we fit in and as far as where do we fit in in the country of Silver peak is a nominal amount of lithium carbonate that's produced there. I think it's around 5,000 tons a year of lithium carbonate. World demand the last year was around a million tons, so you look at Soil Peaks A, it's 0.5%. That's pretty nominal. Tim's Thacker Pass project is going to come in and produce 40 to 80,000. That's very significant.

10:07 And that's our goal with all the other lithium clay deposits in Nevada is to get to that level of being able to support domestic supply in the US. Awesome. Speaking of Tim, I'll shoot it to you directly from Reno for your perspective on this question. Yeah, thank you, Romeo. So Lithium Americas is building the Thacker Pass project, as Bill mentioned, and it is a large deposit. It's one of the largest in the world, and we're really advanced in moving this project forward. We're fortunate to be building this in Nevada. Of course, Mother Nature dictated where the deposit is, and it's a special deposit. But the state of Nevada is also a very great place to be developing. And not only is it my home state, but

10:58 it has a business climate that is great to work in. There's a support system that helps you pull these projects together. There's a regulatory regime that is thorough, ensures that you're doing it right. And by the way, we've enjoyed some support from the state of Nevada to move our project forward. So it's an ideal place to be.

11:29 Traditionally, Nevada's had a very narrow economy, And so in an effort to broaden that economy, diversify the economy, a lot of battery, the whole supply chain, as Amanda mentioned, is moving to Nevada, and that just adds another layer of benefit to working and thriving in this state. It's got a workforce that is looking for some additional opportunities, and it's also just a very high standard of living. So workforce development is a tough thing. It's a tough thing all over the country, but getting the workers that we need, if we can't get them locally, which is our first choice, we don't believe that we're gonna struggle too much to bring in and import the workers we need both to build Thacker Pass, which will take about 2,000 people at its peak, and to run it once we're up and running in a few years.

12:27 And that'll be a workforce of around 300 people. They're going to come here and love it just like I do. And it's just a it's a really special place. Awesome. Thanks, Stephen. I'll throw it to you for your perspective. Yeah, you know, it's so interesting what, what a few years time can make in terms of the outlooks for certain aspects of the lithium industry in particular. And the reason I say that, and I always try to put into context for people, is that we're in the very, very early innings of a ballgame.

12:58 That's essentially the rules have been changed because of things like the IRA and, you know, not allowed to have Chinese content and certain things. It's a very, very distorted marketplace. But only 3 years ago, very few people thought the clays would be economic, that they would be able to contribute to overall global supply in a meaningful way. And obviously, Nevada is, is geologically endowed with these massive deposits.

13:26 And frankly, I've been telling people my thoughts were that Nevada was going to be the centerpiece of the US lithium industry, essentially going forward, once we sort of got past the direct lithium extraction is the panacea for all, you know, for all producers, and we're just going to get these lithium brines out of old oil wells and things like that. I was most impressed about a year ago when the governor of Nevada went to Canada to basically get insight from the Canadian government as to how to extract maximum value from the lithium

13:59 supply chain. So from my point of view, even with the storied industry of gold and silver production, I mean, Nevada is I think still what the fourth largest gold producer as a country is measured by a country in the world. But clearly looking ahead, I think, to how to best maximize the value for their taxpayers, et cetera, and obviously for the security of the country. There's a tremendous, I think,

14:25 there's a tremendous amount of originality, imagination, whatever you want to call it, that I think can come to play in Nevada as a consequence of the fact that about 85% of the land is owned federally. And I know most people look at that as a problem. And I look at it a little bit differently. And in particular, I think because of infrastructure that's going to be needed for these massive projects. So you know, in all the way I look about it is perhaps the battery plants are gonna be a little bit closer to where the cars are assembled, perhaps in the Southeast of the US, you know, perhaps obviously in the Midwest, as Detroit makes its transition, obviously we have Tesla not far away, but from a supply perspective, I think that there's just no doubt that though you will have other parts of the US contributing, Nevada is gonna be the centerpiece. And this is where the bulk of the production is going to is going to occur.

15:19 Appreciate that, Steven. Greg, I'll let you wrap up this question. Yeah, I agree with with what Steven just said, and really what, what my colleagues have said beforehand. I mean, you know, we're in a in a global market here. There's no question about that, but all the companies on this call and the state of Nevada are gonna play a key role in the Made in America battery supply chain. And Nevada itself is an excellent mining jurisdiction and has a long storied history of successful mining operations and supporting mining generally. So I think that again I agree with Stephen that we're gonna play a key role in Nevada in that Made in America battery supply chain.

16:02 Awesome. Amanda, I'm gonna throw it to you for the next one, because I think you've probably got the broadest view on this, but curious and some investors wrote in to ask this question as well. That's how our partnerships and collaborations between private sector, government and academia being leveraged to drive innovation and growth in the sector?

16:22 Awesome. Yeah. So this is actually kind of exciting to talk about. So I'd say in the last probably 3 years, The state of Nevada, we've worked really closely with our university partners as well as private industry. We actually have been working, I'll kind of split it up from north to south. So right now, UNLV and Desert Research Institute here in the state, they've actually, they're a part of a tri-state consortium with Arizona State University, as well as University of Utah and quite a few other entities. But it's basically, they have been awarded a National Science Foundation Award for its Southwest Sustainability Innovation Engine. It's about $160 million federal funding injection into the Southwest for 3 different types of research and development and projects in the carbon capture, water technology, and renewable energy space.

17:23 So being able to kind of work in tandem or at least sort of create a nice pipeline for new innovative technologies in those sectors. It's been really, really important. But also to UNR, actually, they've been working, our office has been working really closely with UNR and I think over 70 different entities, part of a consortium for the tech hub through the Economic Development Administration through the Department of Commerce. We were just awarded a phase 2 designation which really focuses on workforce development.

17:58 And I'll actually get into that as well, sort of from, I think it was, can't remember who mentioned it, but our trade mission to Canada last year was really important in the workforce piece when it comes to mining. But in addition to that, through the tech hub, there's also another federal initiative that UNR is working on. They're in the middle of application process for another National Science Foundation engine which would really address, it would create a funding mechanism for us to really build out more of the lithium supply chain here in the state. And the Tech Hub and the NSF Engine Award, that's kind of being housed under, we're calling this the Recharge Nevada Initiative, to really sort of, again, there's a lot of entities in here and we're trying to house it under 1 easy initiative. So anyway, that being said, yeah, the last 3 years, we've really been seeing higher ed, state, as well as private industry work together

18:57 to not only apply for these grants, but also be awarded them. And so it's kind of exciting. I will say that I'll kind of pivot back to the trade mission to Canada last year with the governor. We actually had some really great outcomes less than a year from the trade mission. This summer, we actually, this has been an ongoing effort, I'd say even before the trade mission, but I think this is what sealed. There's a really great company out of Ontario, Northern Ontario called Norcat. And they have one of, I think, the only underground, like, actual, like, mining training facilities in the world. And they just signed a partnership with Great Basin College up in Elko. And Tim, you could probably speak a little bit about that as well, because private industry has been really involved in that partnership.

19:46 And they actually just were awarded as well, almost a million dollar win award, we call it, through our Workforce Development Director here at GO-ED. It's a grant for sort of building out this workforce development project through Great Basin and NorCat. So yeah, there's been quite a bit of ramping up of those relationships from private and public sector here in the state in the last few years.

20:12 Awesome, thanks. And Tim, like Amanda said, you did mention earlier that you had some support from the state. Love to hear from you on your perspective on public private partnerships and engagement with academia in Nevada, Lithium. Yeah, thanks, Romeo. We couldn't build this project by ourselves. We need help and we haven't hesitated to reach out and get the help that we need. And it comes in a whole variety of forms. At the federal level, the federal government has done a tremendous amount to de-risk very risky propositions.

20:47 And that's inspired a lot of investment in the lithium and critical minerals world. At the state level they've also worked very hard to de-risk these types of projects And just to put a little bit of context around those risks, what we're trying to build here are expensive projects, but projects that really struggle for no fault of their own, but to tell their investors when there will be a return on investment, because we simply don't know. The permitting process is long, and there's no really finite end to it, because you may have a timeline that's defined, but then it rolls almost in every case into an appeals process and that doesn't have a timeline that's defined. And in our case, we're through that appeals process, but it took 2 and a half years.

21:42 So that increases risk

21:45 and it makes it challenging for people who want to invest. So having support from the governments to say, yeah, we need you, we need you from a national security standpoint, we need you from a material standpoint, we need you to change our economy to an electric economy.

22:03 Those things matter. And then you get into more granular issues like workforce development, like Amanda was talking about. That's a big deal. We're known as being a mining company. And Indeed, we will have a mine and we are going to mine an ore that has lithium in it. But we're predominantly a chemical company. We're going to take that ore and we're going to turn it into a high purity, battery grade lithium chemical. And that's all going to be done on the same footprint. It's all in that whole supply chain from where we bring it out of the ground, turn it into a chemical, and then sell it, in our case, to General Motors. It's all going to be done domestically. But to the workforce, to say, look, we need a bunch of miners to come do this is a flawed message. We need really trained chemical processing operators.

22:54 And and so we are working, as Amanda mentioned, with Great Basin College. They have campuses in Winnemucca, which is closer to our operation. And they're working with NORCAT together, the 3 of us, are really defining or putting specifications around what our needs are. And to the state's credit, they went out and got a grant that said, okay, we're going to meet your needs and we're going to start training your workforce. We go into real construction. We're on schedule to do that later this year. And it's going to take us 3 years to go to get this thing built. So we have time to train the workforce. We need to operate it. That's not going to happen tomorrow, but it's going to happen pretty soon. It's not a lot of time to screw around, and the state is stepping up in a big, big way.

23:45 That's great. Dr. Bill, I'll throw it to you for your perspective on public private partnerships in the state. Well,

23:53 yeah, say where we're at in Esmeralda County, we just finished a feasibility study, we're nowhere down the permitting road that Tim and Dr. Pass has accomplished. And that's great that they're forging the way for us on that. We work a lot through the governor's office with Southwest Central Economic Development Authority. They're located down in Pahrump. And They've been a great help just being a supporter. Sometimes you like to have that positive voice to say, hey, you can do this. And that's, you know, we support you and we're gonna talk to you about housing and various issues that we have that we're thinking about, such as infrastructure. So that's been really beneficial.

24:35 On the university side, academia, we have 1 director who's closely affiliated with Colorado School of Mines, so we've done some of our research work through there. We also had some industry collaboration. We had Coke Industries helping us out with our ion exchange process down at the pilot plant for about a year. All those things come together. So we are working hard to innovate and create something that's really new for the country. As Tim said, it's making chemicals, making process, and how do we get there? It's a pretty exciting time, tough time on lithium for where the prices have gone, but there'll be a bounce back and we'll be there. I appreciate that. Stephen, I'll throw it to you for your take.

25:22 In the particular case of lithium, it's very interesting because, I think to echo what Tim just mentioned, lithium companies are essentially chemical companies when you think about it. The geology is very interesting, particularly in Nevada, because it's never been needed previously because the salars and then this progamine came along, etc. And whereas we were told, oh, you know, you could never basically get the lithium out of the ground. I think that's being proven more and more that's simply not the case. The research facilities are really instrumental. The collaboration with them is very, very helpful. Just sort of from primary geology in terms of identification of some of these minerals. In our particular case, we've just encountered with new drilling a different type of mineralization that is relatively similar to a neighbor of ours and relatively similar to something that's over in Serbia that Rio Tinto is currently looking at. It's just very strange.

26:18 And then you have the, you know, once you identify what it is, it's these complex chemical processes that are needed to turn it into a battery-grade material, be it hydroxide or carbonate. So I think fundamentally from an academia perspective, these are very, very helpful collaborations. At the state level, again, going back to the fact that Nevada has got this storied history of mining and its inhabitants understand it, local communities, obviously up to the state office, the value is there. Whether or not we're gonna make in Nevada a tremendous pivot, perhaps to lithium, and perhaps it could supplant gold and silver over time, I don't know. But what I think is gonna be really the most useful is the interface between the state and the federal government. Now, some of my colleagues are farther along with their projects than we are at Nevada Lithium.

27:10 But the fact is, is from everybody I've talked to with federal government, and I look at the allocation of money that's coming out,

27:17 It's one of those issues where the government is trying to pick winners and to have construction loan guarantees and things like that is all great. If you're trying to essentially minimize risk to taxpayer dollars, which the government administrators clearly say is one of their main goals. And obviously that needs to be one of the goals. But I think this harkens back to one of the earlier questions, which is we're trying to build out a secure

27:45 supply from essentially the dirt all the way to the battery. And if you're doing that, in my perspective, what we need to do is change the federal government's mindset in terms of allocations of dollars to more of a portfolio approach. And this harkens back to my background in a different life, which is the necessity here is not to pick the winner. The necessity is to pick enough winners to make sure that you get that secure supply chain. And from my perspective, the state understands that. Again, it goes back to the fact there's so many gold and silver mines out there. They understand more about, you know, private development of assets.

28:21 So what I'm looking forward to is more collaboration with the state and its ultimate interface to the federal government as we of course continue to attempt that interface at the federal level on our own. But I think you're going to start to see a change. And these billions of dollars that you hear that are basically in the government's coffers ready to come help build the supply chain out won't necessarily be for such advanced technologies or technologies that can be commercialized in a relatively recent

28:51 time frame in the not too distant future. It's going to be more about the acknowledgement that companies like ours and some of my peers on this panel simply need a couple million dollars a year to continue to keep the drills running to figure out if you even have a viable project. And that's going to take a bit of a mindset change. But as I said, 3 years ago, people didn't even think the clays were going to contribute much of anything to global supply because they didn't think they were going to be needed. So that's my perspective. I appreciate that very much, Stephen. And Greg, I'll ask you to come off mute and give your take on this. Well, All of the companies on this call are further along in their development than our company and we've benefited greatly from the work that they've done moving their projects ahead.

29:44 But I do want to continue on with the theme that Tim and Stephen talked about in terms of the chemical engineering, whereas lithium clay mining is mining, yes, but it's chemical engineering

29:57 in order to, of course, extract the lithium. And as I see things developing, I think that governments can play a role in consolidating the knowledge that we have all learned as we go down the continuum. Notwithstanding that our plays are different and at the end of the day, we're not going to have the same processes but there's good knowledge that we can use and supporting what Stephen said that there's got to be a consolidator role on that chemical engineering side as we go through trying to figure this stuff out. Our company's just at the beginning processes of dealing with that. And, you know, we've used some resources at local universities in Reno in order to assist us. So, you know, I think that academia has a significant role to play not only in assistance, but in kind of consolidating the resource knowledge and the extraction knowledge in order to support us more generally.

31:00 I appreciate that. And Robert, I'll end with you here. What are you seeing as trends in terms of public-private partnerships in the state? So within the state, we're seeing a lot of early exploration companies really come into the state and asking the questions early of where they need to go. A lot of this new claim issues on federal lands are being identified early in the process. There isn't much case law set in stone for what types of claim deposit or what types of claims need to be filed on these. And so having those early conversations and then creating those local community impacts and so having the conversations like everybody here from

31:39 industry has done right there instantly contacting the local communities working with local economic development authorities as well as working with go at to be able to identify federal funding opportunities within the state or within the federal agencies to come down and help assist with this early expiration phase. One of the biggest things that we're seeing within the state is there are new technologies being proposed. As regulators, we have to look at these new technologies and how to apply them to existing regulations. And so having the companies come to us early and often when they're trying to permit a new technology is going to be vital for them to have that opportunity to get in front of the permitors. If it's a new technology and never been tested before, such as what's being done in Nevada by SLB down in Clayton Valley where they are developing and building out a brand new direct lithium extraction process, right? It is a new process, it's gonna take time, but the governor's office has done a lot of work to be able to increase the ability to hire staff within the state of Nevada to be able to get these permits pushed through and be able to get them done weighted in an efficient manner.

32:49 I appreciate that. I'm going to stick with you actually for the next one, Robert. And that's a broad question, so take it whatever direction you'd like. But curious, and this ties in some questions from the chat as well. What do you see as the biggest challenges, but obviously also opportunities for Nevada in

33:03 maintaining its currently leading role in lithium production over the next decade?

33:07 I mean the biggest challenge and opportunities are kind of 1 and the same for it. So the challenge is going to be permitting. Just like I was saying, It is not a quick process to permit the mining operation. Tim could talk about the gray hairs that he has acquired over the last nearly decade of permitting the mine that is now just finally up and running. But with that said, the Biden-Harris administration did an evaluation of the mining law reform. During that evaluation, they looked at all the permitting processes within the United States. They also looked overseas. They looked really hard into Canada, Australia, and other partners like that. And what they ended up finding is actually the BLM Nevada partnership that was created a long time ago and is still continues today is actually the gold standard for permitting.

33:54 So although the permitting process is never going to be a super fast process, Nevada does have the best permitting process. Now we're seeing a lot more bills coming out. So we have both bills in the Senate

34:05 with Manchin and Barrasso, and then we have the House bill with Congressman Amnide out of Nevada looking to do mining permitting reform. And these are going to be really important to be able to, 1, streamline the permitting process to eliminate the duplication that does exist in it, but still be able to provide the necessary environmental protections while permitting,

34:24 as well as to clarify some of the recent rulings that were made out there on mining claims, and the process of mining claims and validity of mining claims are going to be real important in the future for being able to help streamline the process, keeping that on the top. Awesome. Appreciate that. Amanda, I'll throw it to you for the same question. Just look at the next decade, what are the biggest challenges you see? So I think this particular issue is a challenge, but also an opportunity. I'm going to go back to the workhorse development piece. I think Tim kind of expanded on that in a really, really positive way where, you know, where they're at in the process and they're looking, you know, they're going to be looking for chemical engineers, right, for the processing of the lithium.

35:11 I think that it's really aligning your workforce development with what industry is needing, right? So it's those partnerships with private industry, higher ed, even higher ed just I think just education period I'm just looking at the whole pipeline from K through 12 to higher ed so that being said though I think that yeah you know and again I'll go back to workforce development partnerships. In addition to the NorCat 1 with Great Basin College, we're actually still working with a couple other colleges from the trade mission to Canada last year, 1 out of Montreal and then 1 also in addition to out of Ontario, all in the mining sector. So it's really sort of leveraging those partnerships, those international partnerships, mining-heavy regions.

36:06 The state of Nevada is very focused strategically on Canada, southern cone countries in South America, as well as Australia. So it's really, again, trying to leverage those partnerships from a government and higher ed stance, but also just kind of, again, it's relationship building and seeing where the gaps are. I think here in the state, through the Tech Hub designation as well and the consortium of just

36:36 dozens of different entities. It's really just creating those communication pathways and understanding, okay, where are the gaps and what's the timeline of filling those gaps and where are we pulling from. So I think that, again, it's a current challenge, but I think there's a lot of opportunity for growth there and we're kind of, we're on that path. So I'm optimistic to see the workforce really build out in this industry.

37:00 Awesome, appreciate that. Tim, I'll throw it to you. What keeps you up at night? What keeps you excited? Well, it's been building these projects is hard. And so the things that keep us up at night have evolved And it was hard going through exploration and figuring out where we wanted to put our plan of operations and designing the project. Engagement is something that doesn't keep me up at night, but it's a big obligation that can be very enjoyable, but it's absolutely essential. You need to keep people informed of what you're doing, what your plans are, where you're going. And that takes a lot of time, takes a lot of energy, but the return on that is so important and rewarding.

37:49 We did go through an appeals process that was tough and we're on the backside of that, we've gotten through it. And we got through it really unscathed because we're doing this project right and we're building a quality project. So today it's housing, we've been we've addressed that, we're building a housing facility in Winnemucca for our people,

38:10 it's workforce development as we've talked about quite a bit and I remiss if I don't mention my alma mater, the University of Nevada, helping with that. It's not just great base in college, but the University of Nevada has been an exceptional partner to us to figure out how to get young people excited about really rewarding jobs as chemical engineers predominantly in this industry. These are jobs that are not at all stagnant. They're problem-solving jobs in an industry that's going to evolve and be exciting for many, many decades to come. And by the way, pay a very, very handsome salary that will allow young people to build families. And so That's where our focus is today.

39:02 We are gonna go into a much more robust, fast construction. And that's not a process I've been through before. So I stay up at night wondering, well, what are the next challenges? Because they're not gonna go away. It's hard to do these projects. And so there'll be more to come. Makes sense. They're unknown unknowns, as they say. Dr. Bill, I'll throw it to you for what do you see as biggest challenges in the next decade? Well, to add to the challenges of permitting, which we work with the Bureau of Land Management in our project and it's very well laid out what the steps that we're going through. We've done a lot of our baseline work through them and that part we're pretty happy where we're at and not where our location but I'd add to the one of the challenges just financing even in Greg are definitely back in the resource definition reserve resource and reserve phase Which we came out of and that's a really hard process unto itself. Just getting through the studies and the technical work that you have to do, looking for the flaws in your thinking and trying to bring that all together, and at the same time trying to elevate your project to the next level through the PDA, through PFS, and on finally to the feasibility study.

40:22 Now we're at the point where we're looking ahead and we see detailed engineering coming up. We see a lot of cash that we want to spend in the areas of permitting and just continue to work with the communities. So financing is definitely on our mind. So how do you go about that financing? Well, there's government channels as we all know, through loan programs and perhaps grants. But there's also just where the lithium market is at today. You know, we've seen the precipitous drop in the price of lithium over the last year from $80,000 down to about $10,000 a ton for lithium carbonate equivalent. And That's a real big jolt to the investing community and to the people that back the small projects to bring them forward.

41:10 So I would just say as going forward, prices are a challenge. That's a market that we have to be, even though we're looking long-term down the road at projects, it's right in front of us and hits us. If we don't have that price support on our share prices, if we don't have that marketability, that slows us down in our thinking. So that's another big challenge for us. Financing certainly a good one. Stephen, I'll throw it to you for the next decade. The financing challenge is something that ironically, Nevada also is gonna suffer along with all the rest of the juniors, simply because, you know, we can all talk about permitting challenges, and I am not trying to minimize the onerous aspects of certainly the federal permitting process. You build it into your timelines.

42:02 But the thing is, you don't get to that point until you're a couple of years down the road, at least a couple of years, right? As has been alluded to here earlier, you have to define your resource, you have preliminary economic assessment, you have your preliminary feasibility study. And what people who are not intimately involved with the investment side of this business tend to forget is that we're all non-revenue producers. You know, we have one way to basically get money. And I would argue that juniors don't have access to, to the types of funds that are necessary to advance the projects from the government. Again, because every tranche that I see basically says that it's not for mine development. And again, back to an earlier point, we're trying to change that mindset because the federal government does have dollars that could be put to work. But Nevada's gonna suffer with the rest of us with essentially the fact that the lithium industry is in its nascent form. This is an immature industry. So you have this crazy volatility because you have expectations of being able to generate supplies on a global basis of, say, perhaps it was somewhere around a million tons last year of lithium carbon equivalent to in 5 or 6 years, 3 million tons or 2 and a half million tons, whatever the deal is, that's a tremendous compounded annual growth rate that I would argue is simply not possible. And what that does when you have these kinds of wide misses, and then you have narrow overproduction on a supply-demand basis, you just get prices that are going crazy, up and down and up and down. And it makes the financing

43:34 tremendously hard to deal with. So to get your next tranche of financing for your next round of drilling is really something that you just you almost have to grab the money when you can when it's offered to you simply that you can continue to live another day. That doesn't give you the best investment results. And of course, investors are involved with this to get the best investment results. So it's a long-term outlook. By the same token, the opportunity for Nevada, I think, is tremendous. Obviously, we've all started with the geological endowment. And now I think it's pretty much everybody thinks it's mainstream that these crazy sedimentary deposits are going to provide a major source of supply for the US going forward. I look at the opportunities for Nevada and for people who've never been there and perhaps think that everything looks like Las Vegas, it's not.

44:23 Nevada is a massive state in America's Southwest, that has got tremendous expanses between population centers, that makes it simpler to develop an infrastructure. And in fact, there there is infrastructure, the Union Pacific Railroads, you know, go along the south and the north. It's it's opportunities for private and public types of development projects, things that other countries have done very well. Canada, I think looks at these types of things, whether it's in Quebec, or in the BC coal fields, or the Powder River Basin, in the US where you've got multiple tracks for trains and hauling large tonnages, in that case coal. What I think is gonna happen, although all of these sedimentary deposits are very different, and I'll go on a limb, I think that's where you're gonna get most of the production.

45:13 They're all gonna need sort of standard types of things, reagents in big scale. I don't think the product's going to be going out in a big scale because we're all going to try to make a finished battery-grade lithium carbonate or hydroxide for sure. But to me, if we look ahead and Nevada looks ahead and tries to get these partnerships together. So whether it's localized energy hubs through solar, and my understanding is that's where there's a tremendous amount of permitting that's going on. We're lucky we have power lines right overhead, but we're going to need more as time goes by, I guarantee it. But use the fact that the federal government owns 85% of the land in Nevada. So railway right-of-ways work with infrastructure companies or companies that will simply want to get a rate of return on tolling over generations. And that's the kind of projects we're talking about. In my particular case, we're looking at something that, you know, on paper might have a 4 year mine life simply because the economics become de minimis afterwards if you want to try to measure it, but we have every intent of being here in a hundred years. So by taking the long view approach and coupling that with the history of mining in the state, I think the opportunity for Nevada is tremendous.

46:24 Appreciate that, Steven. Greg, I'll throw it to you to wrap this question up before I got some individual questions for everybody. Sure, sure. I would just underscore what my colleagues have said about permitting and financing and Robert's right in his comments at the beginning of this question. Nevada has a well laid out, well understood kind of permitting process that we can follow. And we're in the middle of our exploration plan of operations permitting process and, you know, we've got some great people at the Bureau of Land Management that are working hard on that permit. Other speakers have talked about resources and skills. And I think the one thing that we forget about in this discussion is the resources and skills on the government side.

47:11 And we've got to support the government folks and the administrations in order to develop those resources. So when we need our permits and we're working through the permit process, there are resources on the other side that can that can do that and get us through the process a lot, a lot quicker. I appreciate that, Greg. So now I've got one question kind of for each of you and then I'll throw it to some of the audience questions that we have been able to tackle so far. Robert, I'm going to start with you here. Could you provide an overview of the regulatory framework and support mechanisms that the Nevada Division of Minerals has in place just to facilitate the projects that are going on in the state right now? Yeah, so you know the regulatory framework has been discussed here quite often of it's with the BLM and Division of Environmental Protection has been well laid out for a long period of time, But one of the things that the division has been able to do recently is we are being able to provide all of the ongoing and existing data on the online user-friendly format and our open data site.

48:11 So it's called ndomdata.com and What this allows is for people to come in and just do some preliminary research of mining claims, existing plans and operations, notice level activity, and even down to right of ways for solar power lines, everything else that can have a potential impact to the industry or potential use on industry. We try to maintain and keep up with all the ongoing land resource issues such as withdrawal for the Navy or sage grouts or solar PIS. Those types of situations where there's a lot of impact to the potential minerals industry. We're trying to make sure we're updating this database in our open data site as much as possible, including to sometimes weekly for certain aspects of it to where if there is gonna be impacts that were unseen in the beginning of an expiration or a development project, you'll be able to see where they are, resources of where to get to the data and information, as well as hopefully contacts of how to start that process, communication with potential federal land managers and others on these ongoing items within the state.

49:24 Awesome, thanks. Man, I got a question for you, and that's how is the governor's office, your specific Office of Economic Development, working to attract international investment and partnerships in the sector? And generally beyond that, what strategies do you have in place to ensure the state remains a global leader in lithium production? Yeah, so a few things I have kind of mentioned some of them. I will say that this last year, we've been a little bit more bullish on trying to do more outreach internationally to different regions. I think I mentioned it earlier that are obviously resource mining rich countries. A lot of our sort of international focus again is, you know, you look at Canada and they have a rich mining history.

50:15 And so it's really just kind of identifying our international partners in the industry and really creating or procuring better relationships and best practice sharing and sort of just, again, creating MOU partnerships, things like that. The other thing I wanted to mention was, you know, looking at, looking at our, our current, current landscape, I think that there's a lot of cohesion, even with the state agencies, with the Feds. I think we've been obviously taking a lot of guidance from the federal government's sort of guidance on, you know, different funding mechanisms to really build out these supply chains. One thing that I kind of like to say recently that, and Nevada is kind of famous for this, like we historically have not been super keen on trying to go after federal dollars for private industry, you know, development here in the state. But I try to tell folks, You know, it's your tax dollars going to the federal government It's our job to maybe go try to go back and bring some of that back to the state And build out and try to you know, increase our economic development here So if the money's there we want to be able to pipeline that back to 2 projects here that we see as very critical for obviously energy security, national security.

51:37 And so that's something that I know Rob and I, we've talked a lot about with different mining companies that, hey, there are still federal funding opportunities for you guys to go after, trying to kind of guide those companies in that direction. But also too, I have to give credit to our federal delegates in the state. As Rob mentioned, Congressman Amadé, he's got a bill in the house right now that would help streamline the permitting process. And so I think it's, there's a concerted effort on the local, state, and federal level to really kind of bolster again this industry that we want to see grow and continue to grow. Finally, I'll just kind of end with, the outreach that I mentioned from our office, we're very focused on, again, leveraging international partnerships and from the technology side too. So we actually, we've been engaging quite a bit with our South Korean partners, especially sort of on the research and development side. I think that's a really key piece that we're trying to build out, especially from a higher ed standpoint, and just making those connections.

52:51 And so far this last year, we've seen a lot of advancement in that. So in order to see responsible mining for the future, sustainable mining, we have to kind of have those new technologies enter the state as well. So that's kind of the wrap on that. I appreciate it. Thank you. Tim, I'll throw it to you. Thacker Pass Project, obviously one of the largest lithium resources in North America. Curious if you're able to share what the next steps are in advancing the project towards production. I think it's great we got lithium companies throughout every stage. You guys are probably towards the end. So just curious what the next steps are. Yeah, thank you. We have been working at this a long time, and maybe this is a little bit repetitive, but it's worth repeating.

53:37 We've been at it for well more than a decade, and it takes a long time to get to where we are in developing Docker PaaS. But some of that is, we wanted to move faster, but some of it has been to our advantage in that we've taken the time we need to do stakeholder engagement right. We've worked with the regulators to get our project permitted right. And that's evidenced by getting through the appeals process really in a very healthy state. It's because the Department of Interior knows that they're going to be highly scrutinized. And so they go, they did in our case and in all of all cases in the state of Nevada. They do it methodically and thoroughly and prepare for people to ask the tough questions.

54:25 We're through that. We're through the appeals. We've worked really hard at our tech center here in Reno to make sure that we understand the ore very well. We have to be, to be successful, we have to be efficient. And that process of efficiency and optimizing our process never ends. We'll always work to get better and better. And there've been a couple Peter asked about the clays. We have 2 different clays at Thacker Pass, Smegtite and Illite, and they do behave differently. And so we understand how they behave differently because we've analyzed it and continue to analyze it every single day and how do we blend those together. So we know that we were past that. Financing has been really difficult and we're on the very end of wrapping up our financing for an expensive project. It'll cost $3 billion to build AgriPaths and the money is there.

55:24 We're grateful to the Department of Energy for giving us a conditional loan that hopefully we're on schedule to close in the coming months. And General Motors and our other shareholders who have stepped up and have confidence in what we're doing. So assuming that we get through, we will get through financing in the very near term. The next step is to build our project. And it's it's not just building a mine, as I mentioned, 90% of our CapEx is building is a very highly sophisticated manufacturing facility. And we've got one of the best construction management companies on the planet, Inbectil, driving that, finishing doing the engineering and the construction management.

56:11 We've partnered with a company called Sawtooth Mining to do the mining for us so that we can stay in our lane and really focus on the chemical processing. We've already purchased housing for as many as almost 2,000 workers in the, and they'll live in the community of Winnemucca where they'll be fed and live in comfortable quarters and transportation to the site to and from is taken care of by us. So they can just focus on doing this job safely and doing it right. So we're gonna continue building that facility. It's one of the first things we need to do. So that's a long-winded way of saying we're at execution mode time. And it's so rewarding because our workforce, we have exceptional people at Lithium Americas. That's the heart of our company and they've been coming to work for more than a decade in many cases because they believe in our project, they're excited about our project, and now we're going to put it into action and execute this thing.

57:16 Awesome, let's look forward to there. Moving backwards in development phase, Dr. Bill, I'll throw it to you. I know Century Lithium's recently renamed Angel Island Mine is kind of in the advanced stage of development. Could you discuss the significance of the project for domestic lithium supply? Curious if you can compare the project and deposit to others in the U.S. Sure. Well, earlier it was said that, by Stephen, that you have to look at all the options and look at the different ways that we can advance our technology and bring things forward. With our project, we've done that. We're located in a chloride basin, so we have sodium chloride brine around us, right next door to Albemarle and Silver Peak. So we've incorporated that thinking into our process design. We've gone with our chloride leach.

58:07 It's a, for us, a fairly simple process to get from that stage through filtration of our tailings all the way to doing direct lithium extraction, so-called. It's really just absorption ion exchange to produce a purified concentrated lithium solution, a bit of reverse osmosis in there. We found it's pretty easy to make lithium carbonate for our process. So we're quite encouraged by all the technology and advancement that we've done. As far as being an opportunity for us, we're in this basin where we've got the saltwater, we've been very conscious of water conservation, how we use that water and really it's brine. So it's kind of a dirty process water, but we've been using that as part of the entire sequence. We're also in a location where there's a lot of renewable energy development happening. That's a great opportunity, particularly in solar. We have a major power corridor, which is coming right by our door and that's a big benefit.

59:05 So as far as other advanced projects in Nevada, there's Thacker Pass and Ryan Ears Rhyolite Ridge. We haven't started permitting, well the final permitting part, we've done our baseline work, but we still have to get financial commitments and move forward that way. So there's a long road for us ahead. We're at a good point to do that. In terms of other deposits in the US, other projects, Well, let's see, we have on the East Coast, there's Hard Rock Lithium. Hard Rock, you produce a spodumene concentrate that has to have a conversion plant. Conversion plants are billion-dollar endeavors all unto themselves. Virtually, they're building the refinery to get to the final lithium product. There's a couple conversion plants that are planned. There's Tesla down in Texas and Alba Marl's planning 1, Piedmont's planning 2. That'll give us about a hundred and 50,000 tons a year of lithium product that way.

1:00:02 Then you look in the mid-continent, smack overpass area, you have standard lithium, you have exons moved in, albumars there, producing from, wanting to produce from a bromine lithium brine. You look at that and say, well, it's great. It's already in solution. Easy to process. Well, not that easy or somebody would be doing it already. Chemistry of that solution is important. Also, it comes with a well field that you have to develop. So in terms of comparisons, the Nevada claystones are in a very unique place. We need to look at what's involved in the infrastructure around us. But it's a great state for mining in, and we're working hard towards innovation to bring it all about.

1:00:49 Awesome, thank you. Steven, I got one for you. The Bonnie Clare project seems to be undergoing a bit of a transformation with recent results. I'm curious if you can elaborate on your current exploration plans and what these findings mean for the future of your project? Yeah, absolutely. Starting probably from going in backwards order, just in terms of, you've been asking about global supply, Nevada supply coming out. I can easily see 8 to 10 big clay projects ultimately coming out Nevada, anywhere from 35 to 50, 60,000 tons a year of lithium carbonate equivalent. This is of course over time, giving you, I don't know, somewhere around 450,000, maybe half a million tons a year of production.

1:01:36 And we think that we're going to play a major part in supplying a significant percentage of that. What's going on currently at Bonnie Clare is very, very dynamic and has got us not rethinking, but taking sort of a pause to make sure we're making the best choices. To back up for a second, many people don't know our story because of split ownership. We were in a JV a number of years ago, not able to really fully market what we had to investors or strategics. But what we have is 100% owned company now is a massive land package that's about 2 and a half hours northwest of Las Vegas. So we're not as far up as Albemarle, probably about another hour, and a lot of the other projects, obviously Thackers all the way up to the north.

1:02:27 But we're in our own basin. Basically our neighbor is the town of Beatty, a very good neighbor by the way, but they're about 30 miles away. So we're in a place where we don't have any endangered flora or fauna, anything like that. Our closest neighbor is actually Area 51, where they, of course, keep all the aliens the U.S. Government does, to give you an idea of what sort of our backdrop is. The land package is 1 and a quarter times the size of Manhattan Island, to give you an idea of what sort of our backdrop is. The patent land packages is 1 and a quarter times the size of Manhattan Island to give you an idea of what's going on. And 3 years ago, we put together a preliminary economic assessment, which was on a very, very large resource base, arguably one of the largest globally, at about 1000 parts per million ballpark type of a of a grade, nothing terribly outstanding in comparison to some of the other ones that have been there. However, it proved very economic at very low lithium prices, lithium prices that are only a little bit higher than where they currently are now.

1:03:28 And also with the net present value, tremendously leveraged to rising lithium prices. So we've continued with the drill program. And what I would say is that one of the differentiations that we have with some of our other peers is the depth at which our lithium resides. So we tend to drill very deep holes, 2,000 feet, so say 600,650 meters and deeper. And the reason I bring this up is no more than say 6 months ago from our last drill campaign, as we continued to drill deeper, we found that our mineralization was changing as our lithium grades were increasing. So with an overall grade we had previously of, say, 1,000 parts per million, we're now starting to see these massive intercepts, which I say hundreds of meters, of 3,000 parts per million, 4,000, 5,000, 6,000, these kinds of things.

1:04:23 And also where as the lithium gets deeper, the size of the intercept gets deeper. Along with that, we found that we have tremendous concentrations of boron. Boron is what Rhyolite Ridge has. Boron is what Yadar has in Serbia that Rio Tinto is looking at. The US government also calls a critical mineral. So what we're doing in a very dynamic area is finishing up a current drill program that we have going on. Part of this was to advance the statistical confidence to take us from PEA to preliminary feasibility study. I think that's a very important inflection point with regards to being able to talk to the markets and again to strategics. But now in a context of what we found with boron coming specifically into into the mix as another potential revenue component for what we have and the fact that our grades have gone up so much more than what we thought we had previously, we have to make sure that we don't sterilize this property, which simply means we don't want to be putting a plant on top of our best lithium.

1:05:31 We are in the process now of re-evaluating our resource and our PEA, which we intend to update, I'm hoping, by the end of the year before we commence into a new look at our preliminary feasibility study. Whereas previously we thought we would have on the order of 30,000 tons a year of production for 40 years. We're now looking at, I would think in all honesty, because the grade changed something much more similar to what Thacker Pass has. And whilst we are obviously trailing them by a number of years, I'm looking forward to getting into the federal permitting process relatively soon. I think we're gonna have technological aspects that we're going to need to iron out, but essentially nobody knows us. And we have a very, very small market capitalization. One of the other strengths that we do have is we have a very, very strong set in this case also of international shareholders who recognize the value of what we have at Bonny Clair and frankly are in it for the long haul. So We have a very dynamic environment and I look forward specifically to talking to our investors and the markets over the next upcoming months as we sort of unveil what our next steps are, but all very, very positive.

1:06:43 Great. Thanks, Stephen. And Greg, Given the significant findings that the Nevada North Lithium Project, how does Surge Battery Metals plan to advance the project from exploration to development? What are the upcoming milestones that investors and viewers can watch out for? Right. Our Nevada North Lithium Project is located in Northeastern Nevada in Elko County. Our Lithium Clay deposit is characterized by high grades and near surface. Unlike Stephen, we have our resource right near surface, like within 30 feet of surface. And we're only drilling down to say 5,600 feet for our resource. So we've completed our third year of drilling and we are set to announce in the next while the final results of that drilling program.

1:07:39 We filed our made and mineral resource estimate in Q1 of this year, which saw a calculation of 4.7Mt of lithium carbonate equivalent at about 2850 parts per million. With this drilling program, we plan to update our resource and we expect to announce that mid to late September. We're also in the process of going through our preliminary economic assessment. We've been working with our engineers on that for several months and we expect to have that completed by the end of the calendar year. And then finally, we filed our exploration plan of operations permit application with the Bureau of Land Management in November of last year. And we've been working through that process with them. And again, hope to have that permit by the end of this calendar year.

1:08:36 Subject to receiving that permit, our plans of course will be to drill out a resource in 2025. Our permit asks for a 250-acre disturbance, which is a big step forward from the 5 acre disturbance that we're currently operating under. So lots going on, lots of milestones, lots of exciting things for research battery metals in Nevada North. Awesome, appreciate it. Amanda, there's a question from the chat from Jonathan that I reckon is best suited for you. He asks, what plans does the state have for staffing local offices to ensure permitting process can move as swiftly as possible? So, and I'll just maybe ask a little more for the question, staffing like state offices or BLM offices, maybe I guess which offices?

1:09:29 It doesn't specify, but give an answer for those if you can. Yeah, sure. Well, one thing that I've recognized being in government, we're always pretty understaffed, whether it's state or federal. I will say actually, and just based on my conversation with Greg a few weeks ago about their project in northern Nevada, he was able to kind of share with me a little bit of their experience with the state BLM. I think with, and actually Rob can probably speak to this as well, if you're talking about BLM offices and staffing. I think that given the capacity that we currently have in the state, and again, back to what Rob said, we were kind of the gold standard for permitting around the world. I would say that given the capacity we have, we're doing a pretty good job with the permitting process, especially with BLM. But I actually, Rob, you might be able to kind of round off that question a little better. Yeah, no worries.

1:10:32 Yeah. So, I mean, for at the state level, right, the state of Nevada has historically been lower end for pay scale for employees compared to local other states as well as local county governments, including city. In this last legislative session, the legislature acknowledged that and actually gave us the first real cost of living increase in over a decade. We were actually going the other way and taking net losses by doing furloughs instead of cost of living increases. So when you're looking to recruit and hire an engineer to review permits, it's really hard to hire an engineer when they're literally going to be paid 40 to 50% less than if they went into private industry. So currently we have that initial cost of living increases this last legislative session. Governor Lombardo and his team are doing a statewide study on classifications for the state employees and then gonna be a compensation study to follow that. And that will hopefully produce this next legislative session. So we have the ability to actually recruit the qualified people at the pay rates needed to process these permits in an efficient manner.

1:11:37 With that said, at the federal level, the federal level has a lot of the same issues. It is difficult to continuously keep people in some of these rural locations, and I know at the DOI headquarter office, there's been lots of discussions of how to implement that. I have not been pervy to those discussions immediately, but we do know that, and I mean, Tim can say too, how many different geologists he's dealt with in 1 permitting of 1 mind at a individual office, right? It's a rotating door. So how do we fix that rotating door to where employees come in or train to do their job and then just jump off to the next one? That's a very large scale problem, a very big question to solve. But at the state of Nevada, Governor Lombardo and the legislature have taken the initial steps to really try to move forward and get us to the next level.

1:12:24 Awesome, thanks, Ben and Robert. Dr. Bill, I got one for you, not for you specifically, but I'll throw it to you first. If anybody has any additional comments, you're welcome to give them. This is from D. Kupman in the audience. He says, you know, you guys have all talked about there's a large number of different deposits, brine, spodumene, clay, etc. He'd like you to just do a quick pros and cons of different types of deposits for investors in the audience. Okay. Well, definitely on the Nevada side, the clay side, I mentioned end-to-end product. So looking to go from lithium in the ground to producing it, a lot of chemical processing involved, but to get to that end point where you're producing a battery metal and do it on-site. What are the cost advantages of doing that? Well, you're involved in something that's more like a conventional mill, milling situation, but that material's soft.

1:13:15 You have varying degrees of mineralogy, which can be leachable. As Tim mentioned, the Smectite works in the light clays, and that drives a lot of the economics behind it. You need most of these deposits in acid plant, whether you're going to go sulfuric acid or hydrochloric acid. That's a decision point in the process. Maybe even treat them thermally, but still there's an energy input. In that regard, being in Nevada with all the renewable energy, that's a great opportunity for us. Cost-wise, when I said the word acid plant, there goes the cost. That's a big chunk of your process cost. Whether you're looking at sulfuric acid or hydrochloric acid, that's one of the bigger costs that drive the whole CAPEX side.

1:14:03 But on the operating side, we have potential with ours with a byproduct, in our case sodium hydroxide, to keep the cost way down. With sulfuric acid plants you have a cogeneration power ability, so you can cut your costs that way. And also, the northern Nevada deposits are very high grade relative to ours, and they have a great benefit in that regard. And Rhyolite Ridge, excuse me, Rhyolite Ridge Ioneers project has a boron, has a byproduct, which Steven mentioned in his description of Monteclair. So that's the framework around clay deposits. When you shift over to brine deposits, chemistry is important. You're usually dealing with a lot more total dissolved solids in that solution, a lot more salts.

1:14:57 You have to think about, well, if you don't have a mill attached like we do, what are you going to do with that process solution when you're done with it? Well, you have to, it's excess and you're going to have to re-inject it. So not only do you have to worry about pumping it out, you have to re-inject it. With all these clay deposits, we're able to sit down and say, what's our mine plan? We can look out 40 years in the future and say with reliability, what that grade of material is going to come to that processing plant. If you're working on a brine deposit, yeah, it might be 400 parts per million now, but what's it going to be in 20 years or 30 years. That grade we know from various brines in the world will drop off over time. The chemical consistency will change. And you also have the well field development. So you do have the opportunity to get lithium out of the ground that's already in solution, but you have some columns that go with that, and some uncertainty around it, and a lot higher solids that you have to deal with in solution.

1:15:55 And then when we get over to the spodumene deposits, hard rock ones that are in the east and in Canada, now you're producing, by conventional hard rock mining, you're going to produce a spodumene concentrate and you have to look for where you're going to market that spodumene concentrate. Spodumene concentrates have to go to a conversion plant. North America doesn't have any, they're all in Asia. So that means putting on about shipping it over to China. We are looking with the clay deposits to do that refining here, get the end product right on site. That's a huge benefit for us. Cost wise operating side, the spodumene deposits tend to be higher, because it's hard rock mining, drilling, blasting and milling. The Brine deposits, as we know from Chile, are much lower cost, $2,000, $3,000 a ton. Lithium carbonate is not unusual, but everybody's cost in the recent time are going up. So we have to be cost conscious. And we're looking at that.

1:16:54 Appreciate that detailed run through Dr. Bell. So unfortunately, there's only time for one more question. We're way over time. But there's one question that's just such a T up for Tim, that I really got to ask it. That's Steve from the audience asks, are big motor companies making moves towards doing strategic deals with lithium companies to help them secure vital supplies? Yeah, of course, they absolutely are. The supply and demand curve is something for the viewers of this show to take a look at. Demand for lithium is soaring. And yeah, there are great new projects coming online, like all of the ones that we have talked today. But there's still a separation between supply and demand, and keeping up with the demand curve is something that simply isn't going to happen in the near term. There's going to be a separation, And some end users who need that material aren't going to be able to get it.

1:17:50 That's one of the reasons why this is such a huge issue for our national security, because if we're scrambling to get the things we need for our national defense and our standard of living, and we're relying on other countries to supply us those needs, and they have choices to make because demand isn't keeping up, we may not be on their list of a place to send the material. So yes, absolutely, the end users are locking up their future supply. In our case, that end user is General Motors and they are now our largest shareholder and they have the right to at least the first 10 years of all of our production.

1:18:37 In the beginning when we build phase 1 that's enough for about 800,000 electric vehicle batteries a year And then our intention is to double that output and get to 1.6 million electric vehicles per year. It's a great, it's a profound number for General Motors. They need more. And so that rush or that work that OEMs and users are experiencing right now, that's not gonna end. There will be more deals to be made. Awesome, everybody, thank you so much, especially for going over time and everybody in the audience. Those questions we didn't get to, like I said, I'll make sure they get to the relevant teams and you'll get an answer relatively soon. Expect the replay in your inbox this afternoon. Everyone, thank you