Refinery was to have “taken advantage” of Portugal’s lithium reserves
Energy giant GALP has decided to abandon the Aurora project for a lithium refinery in Setúbal after its original partner Northvolt withdrew for financial reasons.
The company tried without success to find another partner, it said in a statement to the Portuguese Securities Market Commission (CMVM).
“Initially, there was a 50/50 partnership between GALP and Northvolt, but the latter informed GALP in early 2024 of its decision to stop investing in Aurora,” said the statement.
Since then, “GALP has been trying to identify new international partners, but without success,” the statement went on, recalling that “Aurora has been working since 2021 to establish a lithium conversion plant in Setúbal to supply the battery industry, taking advantage of Portugal’s lithium reserves.”
According to GALP, “despite significant efforts, which included assembling a qualified team, carrying out engineering studies, preparing licensing processes and seeking incentives and funding, the current context and the impossibility of relying on an international partner make it impossible to proceed with the project”.
The current context is a bit of a mixed bag: last month, for example, GALP’s chief executive officer Filipe Silva said that the company would not rush into a final investment decision on constructing a lithium refinery in Portugal until it had “adequate return” guarantees for the project, which it didn’t consider was the situation.
Elsewhere, it is becoming increasingly clear that the appetite for electric vehicles is not growing as fast as Europe’s political elite would like. There are also real concerns that these ‘green vehicles’ in terms of emissions, require an enormous amount of un-environmentally friendly activity (like mining) and general ‘plundering’ (for rare earth minerals), before one weighs up other ‘disadvantages’ which eat into the narrative that they are the future for general mobility.
Northvolt meantime has filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States, albeit its Swedish factory is still operating – while how this decision might affect that various lithium mining operations planned for this country (against the wishes of local communities and often municipalities) has not yet been quantified. ND
Source material: LUSA
