CMOC's Tenke Fungurume copper and cobalt mine has suspended all exports, logistics companies were told in a notice seen by Reuters late on Saturday, complying with demands by a court-appointed administrator…A CMOC spokesman did not immediately reply to a request for comment but had said on Friday that the mine, which accounted for more than 10% of worldwide cobalt output in 2021, had not issued any instructions to stop exports…CMOC has been locked in dispute with the administrator appointed in February to run the mine for six months in response to a lawsuit by Congo state miner Gecamines, a minority stakeholder in Tenke Fungurume…In the notice to companies that transport the mine's output, a CMOC unit announced immediate suspension of access to the mine for all copper and cobalt trucks until July 24, adding that companies would be informed if exports could resume on July 25…Congo's government announced last August that it had formed a commission to reassess reserve levels, a rare instance of Congolese authorities challenging the Chinese companies that dominate its mining sector…Congo is the world’s top producer of cobalt, which is used in electric batteries, and is Africa’s leading copper miner.

When the Queensland state government sent Anita Parbhakar-Fox to the remote town of Mt Isa in the Australian outback to hunt for cobalt in copper mine waste, the geology professor had high expectations. But when she tested the samples back at her lab at the University of Queensland she was shocked. One reading showed 7,000 parts of cobalt per million — more than 200 times cobalt’s average presence in the earth’s crust. “I nearly fell off my chair when I got that piece of data,” she said, explaining that 300 ppm is enough to get miners excited. “If you’ve got 7,000 ppm, that’s pretty juicy. It was a eureka moment.” Australia’s state and federal governments are sending teams of geologists into the outback to scour mine waste for cobalt, as the country seeks to diversify from fossil fuels to become an exporter of clean energy minerals, such as cobalt, nickel and lithium…He estimated that there may be as much as 300,000 tonnes of cobalt in forgotten mine waste left by companies over the past century when metals for batteries were not in high demand. Cobalt is a key component in lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles and smartphones, and is generally found alongside copper and nickel deposits. While batteries can be made without cobalt, its inclusion significantly increases efficiency. Three quarters of EV batteries made last year contained the metal, according to the Cobalt Institute, a UK-based trade association. 

As battery makers scramble to procure cobalt, nickel and other metals to meet rising consumer demand for electric cars, governmental opposition to strip-mining the seabed for minerals is mounting…The deep ocean contains the largest estimated deposits of minerals on the planet, potentially worth trillions of dollars. But in recent weeks, Chile, Fiji, Palau and other nations have called for a moratorium on ocean mining until there is a better understanding of the environmental consequences of destroying little-explored and unique deep-sea ecosystems that play an undetermined role in the global climate. French President Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, expressed his opposition to seabed mining in June at the United Nations Ocean Conference in Lisbon, Portugal…Pradeep Singh, an ocean governance scholar at the University of Bremen in Germany who studies the seabed authority, said the push for a moratorium by ISA member states “is a turning point in the negotiations” over deep-sea mining. “These calls for a pause or moratorium certainly do question the legitimacy” of seabed mining, Singh said in an email…Google and automakers BMW, Renault, Volkswagen and Volvo have pledged not to use deep-sea metals for the time being, and 623 marine scientists and policy experts have signed a petition advocating a pause in seabed mining…An exhaustive review of all available research on areas of the deep sea targeted for exploitation released in March concluded that a lack of scientific knowledge about those ecosystems precludes effective management of mining. The authors of the paper published in the journal Marine Policy included leading prominent scientists and four members of the ISA committee that writes mining regulations.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will call on Tuesday for deeper trade ties among allies to fortify their supply chains, combat inflation and thwart China's "unfair trade practices" and efforts to dominate key raw materials and technologies markets…"We cannot allow countries like China to use their market position in key raw materials, technologies or products to disrupt our economy and exercise unwanted geopolitical leverage," Yellen will say, according to excerpts released by the Treasury Department…Instead, Yellen will say, the United States and allies like South Korea should focus on "friend-shoring", or diversifying their supply chains to rely more on trusted trading partners, strengthening economic resilience and lowering risks…Western powers have raced to end their over-dependence on China as a key supplier since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed the fragility of global supply chains and laid bare gaps in domestic capacities in key sectors…Yellen will say the pandemic and Russia's war in Ukraine - actions Moscow calls "a special military operation" - made clear the necessity of addressing supply chain vulnerabilities and working to reduce logjams and shortages that have driven prices higher around the world…Friend-shoring offered the United States and its allies a way to preserve the best features of the rules-based global order, while addressing unfair Chinese trade practices and ensuring access to vital inputs and products - from medicine to semiconductors and electric vehicle batteries, she will say.