Savannah Resources – the British company that is itching to start mining lithium in the municipality of Boticas – has announced today that recent prospecting in the municipality (all of it done against wishes of local communities) has confirmed “major quantities of lithium” in the Barroso mine area, potentially reaching more than 60 million tonnes.
This “reinforces its position as the largest lithium spodumene reserve in Europe”, says the company in a statement.
“The 40% expansion of the resource to close to 40 million tonnes gives good indicators for a possible longer project lifespan than that envisaged in the 2023 Scoping Study,” said Savannah’s CEO, Emanuel Proença, quoted in the statement.
“The benefits are clear for all stakeholders, as the project can contribute more in terms of lithium production, value generation and job creation, tax and royalty payments, as well as countless other socio-economic benefits, for a longer period of time, all within the same concession area,” he continued.
The announcement points to another occasion in which the company ‘makes announcements’ without having to show anything to back them up. This is a criticism of local people who have banded together against the mine. They claim “Savannah, these days, has become a vehicle to attract investment, more than anything else. For this real results are not needed, all they have to do is make people believe mining will go well”, Francisco Venes, of association for the Defence of Covas de Barroso told Correio da Manhã last month.
In this particular press release, Savannah alludes to a 200% increase in estimated exploration targets, taking the mine’s potential to a possible 62 million tonnes.
According to the statement, these figures mean that, as exploration work continues, there is the full potential for the Barroso lithium project to “exceed 100 million tonnes of lithium mineralisation over the years, enough to produce 47 million electric vehicles – the equivalent of eliminating the oil consumption of the entire car fleet circulating today in Portugal, France and the Netherlands combined”.
The open-pit lithium mine was granted a conditional Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in 2023, and Savannah insists that it is on track to start production in 2027.
The Barroso mine was considered a strategic project by the European Commission in March 2025 – in a decision-making process that has been heavily criticised by the UN committee overseeing the Aarthus Convention, prompting calls to “restart the whole process”, and ensure this time that it is carried out with all the necessary transparency, and respect for local communities’ ways of life.
Source material: LUSA
The struggle of the Barroso area communities is fully explained here.
