South Korea’s top mining company made its case on Saturday to be allowed to tap Bolivia’s vast reserves of lithium, the soft metal used to produce batteries for electric or hybrid cars.

“If the Bolivian government gives us the opportunity to get involved with Uyuni’s lithium mines, we are always ready to do so,” Sun Kong, a top executive at the state-run Korea Resources Corporation (KORES), told La Razon newspaper.

Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni houses some 140 million tonnes of lithium, attracting interest from French and Japanese companies.

Sun said his company would not only be interested in processing the lithium but also hoped to be involved in extraction, adding that KORES has specialized mining capability.

Earlier this month Bolivian President Evo Morales said his country is looking for “partners” and not “owners” for its natural resources, including its vast lithium reserves.

“We need investments,” and “companies who respect Bolivian regulations ... who don’t come to play politics” or “conspire against the government,” he said.

“We are interested in exploiting the brine and lithium, and we want to start negotiations, not just with Spanish companies,” the leftwing leader said on an official visit to Madrid.

Mining groups from across the world are pressing for permission to get at the lightweight metal, which is considered “gray gold” in Bolivia, one of the poorest in South America.

Meanwhile, Korea Electric Power Corp, supplier of almost all of South Korea’s electricity, said it will spend 2.8 trillion won (US$2.4 billion) on green technology, in an effort to promote environment-friendly energy policies.

The money will be spent on eight areas of technology, including development of carbon capture and storage and low-emission power systems, the company said in an e-mailed statement in Seoul yesterday.

South Korea, Asia’s third-­biggest crude oil importer, said in July it plans to invest 107 trillion won over the next five years in improving energy efficiency.

Source: Taipei Times