The SMH has a look at the Bolivian lithium mining boom - The open veins of Bolivia's lithium powering the world.

On a clear day and from afar, Salar de Uyuni looks like a colossal mirage. From up close, it looks nothing less than a miracle. But it may not remain that way for long.

Along the salt lake's southern rim, industrial machines roar. Hundreds of heavy trucks are coming and going over the salty crust, wheezing like exhausted beasts, some 40 years old. Diesel fumes permeate the crisp mountain air. In their wake, the trucks leave perfect brown lines in the virginal whiteness, making the lake's scores of square kilometres look like a giant bowl of cafe latte. The workers are drilling the salt with humungous rigs, aiming for the brine beneath. Lodged under enormous quantities of magnesium and potassium lies their goal: lithium, the essential power source for all the world's gadgets, the key component to fuel the entire 21st century.

While these quantities may seem negligible in the wider scheme of things, the depths under the world's largest salt flats are claimed to contain the world's largest lithium reserves. According to some estimates, the Bolivian Andes harbour 70 per cent of the planet's lithium.

A number of studies have been done to corroborate these claims. According to the most optimistic one, as many as 140 million tons of lithium may be available in Salar de Uyuni, while the most pessimistic (US Geological Survey) foretells 'merely' nine million tons. Vast quantities of lithium have also been detected at the bottom of the world's oceans. Little wonder then that the mining industry, one of the planet's most toxic enterprises, is already turning its gaze downward into the seas. ...

The Bolivian market is opening and is attracting the attention of the Japanese, Germans, Swedes, French, Swiss, Koreans and Canadians. Sources say the American electrics giant Tesla also wants in on the action. The battery for Tesla's Model S requires as many as 63 kilograms of lithium carbonate, which is enough to power approximately 10,000 cell phone batteries.

In a recent report, the Goldman Sachs investment bank has called lithium carbonate the new gasoline. Eight years from now, the world's yearly demand is expected to total 470,000 tons. A 1 per cent increase in electric vehicle production could increase lithium demand by more than 40 per cent of current global production, the report boldly states.

While the Australian mining boom is now receding in the rear view mirror, one mining sector that is still attracting enthusiastic investment is the lithium mining industry.

Western Australia currently produces about 30% of the world's lithium supplies, and 20 new companies are scrambling about the state trying to take advantage of the boom in "white oil". WA Business News has an article on the evolving market for the metal, looking at producers in Australia and South America - A Window opens for lithium hopefuls.

The investment frenzy may have already reached a peak locally however, with some investment columnists warning there aren't any bargains left in the sector - Ten years on, lithium may as well be uranium and This 'new gasoline' could burn eager investors.

The Economist also has a look at the soaring demand for lithium, with some interesting tales from Chile as the jostling begins to supply the expanding battery market for electric vehicles and home energy storage - An increasingly precious metal.

SQM, Chile’s biggest lithium producer, is the kind of company you might find in an industrial-espionage thriller. Its headquarters in the military district of Santiago bears no name. The man who for years ran the business, Julio Ponce, is the former son-in-law of the late dictator, Augusto Pinochet. He quit as chairman in 2015, during an investigation into SQM for alleged tax evasion. (The company is co-operating with the inquiry.) Last month it emerged that CITIC, a Chinese state-controlled firm, may bid for part of Mr Ponce’s controlling stake in SQM, as part of China’s bid to secure supplies of a vital raw material.

The focus of CITIC’s interest appears to lie on a lunar-like landscape of encrusted salt in Chile’s Atacama desert. It is a brine deposit washed off the Andes millions of years ago, containing about a fifth of the world’s known lithium resources. (Even more are in adjacent Bolivia but they are mostly untapped). Just weeks before, CITIC had bought a stake in a Hong Kong electric-vehicle maker that uses lithium-ion batteries, indicating its growing interest in clean-energy technologies.

The sleeping giant of lithium production is Bolivia, which by most estimates possesses the largest reserves of the metal. Evo Morales has announced a $1 billion investment push to kick start production, expanding links with Chinese companies to both extract the material and produce lithium ion batteries in the country - Bolivia’s lithium boom: dream or nightmare?.

Lithium production will clearly need to expand given the pre-sales for the Tesla 3 are now approaching 4000,000 vehicles and projected sales would consume all of world's lithium production at current levels - Rising Lithium Prices Threaten to Short-Circuit EV Market. The Chevrolet Bolt is also due out on the market this year, putting further pressure on supplies.

One way to boost production is to improve the efficiency of extraction processes. CleanTechnica has an article on improvements on extracting lithium from brine - New Method Of Extracting Lithium From Natural Brine Yields 99.9% Purity.

Technology Review has a look at Bolivia, where the Andes contains "a vast salt flat that may shape the future of transportation" - The Lithium Rush

Nearly four kilometers above sea level in the Bolivian Andes lies the Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat. But there is more to this ­surreal, moonlike landscape than meets the eye. Flowing in salt-water ­channels beneath the surface is the world's largest supply of lithium--and, possibly, the future of transportation. Lithium is the key ingredient in the lithium-ion batteries that will power the electric vehicles that will soon be rolling off production lines worldwide. Demand for the metal is expected to double in the next 10 years, and Bolivia, with an untapped resource estimated at nine million tons by the U.S. Geological Survey, is being called a potential "Saudi Arabia of lithium."

The BBC reports that shrinking glaciers have the residents of La Paz worried - Glacier threat to Bolivia capital.

Fears are growing for the future of water supplies in one of Latin America's fastest-growing urban areas - Bolivia's sprawling capital of La Paz and its twin El Alto.

Scientists monitoring the glaciers high in the Andes mountains - a key source of water - say the ice is showing signs of shrinking faster than previously forecast.

Faced with a booming population and a combination of glacial retreat and reduced rainfall, the governor of the La Paz region is even contemplating moving people to other parts of Bolivia.

Water is already in short supply among the poorest communities and has become a cause of tension.

AFP reports that Bolivian President Evo Morales has enacted a new constitution which further redistributes control of the countries resources to indigenous people - Morales enacts new Bolivian constitution

President Evo Morales on Saturday proclaimed the start of "communitarian socialism" in Bolivia as he enacted a new constitution that empowers the country's indigenous majority and allows him to seek reelection.

The move is the centerpiece of Morales' promise to "re-found Bolivia," South America's poorest country, and overturn a centuries-old political and social order inherited from Spanish colonial times.

Morales, the first indigenous president since Bolivia declared independence from Spain in 1825, told an enthusiastic crowd of supporters that right-wing opposition groups have been trying to oust and even kill him ever since he took office in 2006.

"Now I can say: you can take me out of the (government) palace, you can kill me ... mission accomplished for a united Bolivia!" he told the crowd in the working-class town of El Alto, a bastion of Morales support, just outside the capital La Paz. "Only the wisdom of our people, of our social forces have let us identify and defeat external agents, defeat US imperialism," he told the cheering crowd.

He noted that the new constitution bans foreign military bases in Bolivia, and made reference to the expulsion in September of US ambassador Philip Goldberg -- allegedly for organizing a plot against him -- and later all agents of the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

The sweeping constitutional changes allow 36 indigenous communities and groups to win the right to territory, language and their own "community" justice, and enacts agrarian reform measures by limiting the size of landholdings.

The IHT reports that Morales is heading to Russia to sign a gas deal with Gazprom - Bolivia leader to visit Russia, sign Gazprom deal.

Bolivia's vice minister of energy says President Evo Morales is heading to Moscow this month to sign a $3 billion deal with Russia's Gazprom energy giant. ... Donaire said Wednesday the pact covers development of Bolivia's natural gas industry, creation of a regional gas institute and updates to an earlier deal that also involves France's Total SA.

Reuters reports that Bolivia enjoyed high oil and gas prices in 2008 - Bolivia natgas, mineral exports up 42.6 pct in '08. I suspect there will be a large reversal this year.

Bolivian exports rose by 42.6 percent in 2008 to a record $6.84 billion on the back of strong prices for natural gas and minerals, the Andean country's top revenue earners, the government said on Wednesday.

The value of Bolivian exports grew strongly during the first nine months of 2008, but growth slowed in the fourth quarter due to the global financial crisis, the National Statistics Institute, or INE, said in a report.

Leftist Bolivian President Evo Morales is striving to increase state revenues from the country's natural resources and has raised taxes on energy and mining companies since taking office in early 2006. He has also nationalized several energy and mining firms as well as the country's largest telecommunications company.

Bolivian exports have been increasing since 2001, when exports from the impoverished South American country totaled $1.23 billion. Imports rose by 44.25 percent in 2008 to $4.99 billion, helping Bolivia achieve a trade surplus last year, the INE said in a separate report.

Sales of fossil fuels and minerals accounted for 72.4 percent of total exports, the INE said, and sales of natural gas and other fuels represented nearly 50 percent of exports.

Bloomberg reports that Venezuela is also investing in Bolivian energy projects - Bolivia’s Gas Investors to Spend $530 Million in 2009.

Bolivia’s energy minister said the country expects to boost oil and natural-gas investment to $530 million this year as ventures with Russia and Venezuela fill a void left by private investors.

Gazprom OAO, Russia’s natural-gas exporter, agreed to develop deposits in Bolivia’s gas-rich eastern lowlands, Bolivian Hydrocarbon and Energy Minister Saul Avalos said in an interview Feb. 4 at his La Paz office. Venezuela and Bolivia’s state oil companies plan to invest $240 million to explore in Bolivia. “The amount of investment this year is higher than before the nationalization,” Avalos said.

Investment in the Andean nation dropped almost 80 percent since President Evo Morales bought out refining assets and raised taxes to nationalize the gas and oil industries in October 2006. Investment fell to $120 million in 2006, Morales’s first year in office, from a peak of $580.8 million in 1999.

The energy industry had forecasted $332 million of energy investments in 2008. Bolivia has the second-biggest natural-gas reserves in South America after Venezuela.

Keith Johnson at The WSJ has a post on the "peak lithium" question - Peak Lithium: Will Supply Fears Drive Alternative Batteries?.

Saudis like to say that the stone age didn’t end for a lack of stones. But could a lack of lithium end the electric car age before it begins?

“Peak lithium” is back in focus, as the New York Times looks at Bolivia’s quest to cash in on the world’s biggest reserves of lithium, a key component in batteries. Simply put, global automakers and battery makers need to ensure a steady supply of lithium to power the expected electric-car revolution, but Bolivia’s populist government and its embrace of resource nationalism raises a lot of concerns about access to the country’s mineral wealth. TIME recently did a big takeout on Bolvia’s lithium, too.

Concerns about global supplies of lithium are a lot like the debate over peak oil. Some experts believe the huge increase in electric cars will actually strain the world’s lithium supplies in a few years; as with peak oil, “above-ground” factors like Bolivia’s politics may be just as critical as geology. Other experts figure lithium supplies are ample and exploding demand will just juice more lithium exploration, as happened with oil.

Either way, though, as hybrid and electric vehicles take a bigger share of the market, that threatens to push up lithium prices. That would make batteries, the costliest part of electric cars, even pricier, further threatening the economics of the electric-car revolution. (Ford on Tuesday announced its lithium-ion battery supplier.)A recent report by Lux Research called lithium availability the “ultimate limit” on electric cars’ future.

So what’s the alternative? Skip lithium altogether. Just as thin-film solar-power companies gained in appeal when global polysilicon supplies were tight, batteries that use materials other than lithium are gaining attention now. “Forward-thinking automakers will aggressively pursue alternative chemistries. As auto manufacturers come to terms with limited lithium supplies, they will increasingly consider alternative chemistries like zinc-air or other batteries made from more abundant elements,” Lux said in the report.

Toyota started researching a zinc-air battery, initially out of safety concerns (lithium-ion batteries sometimes explode). Germay’s RWE recently poured more research money into zinc-air batteries, too. Zinc-air and other metal-air batteries sidestep the lithium supply issue.

But if alternative batteries are still in the lab, that’s because they face a host of hurdles lithium-ion and nickel-metal hydrate batteries don’t share. Most importantly, zinc-air batteries aren’t rechargable and have a short lifespan—crucial negatives for the auto market. Some alternative batteries suffer from other shortcomings, too, including weight. That will leave lithium and existing nickel-metal batteries to share the global market in coming years, Lux figures.

One commenter at the WSJ referred to this article at AutoBlogGreen which quotes some industry PR saying all is fine - Got lithium? Lots.

When companies need to know about future market conditions for various commodities, they hire a firm with the expertise to evaluate the situation and report back. For instance, as Mitsubishi was mulling the possible future of electric cars equipped with lithium ion batteries, they hired TRU Group to do an analysis on future battery options. Usually, ordinary folks don't get to see the results of this kind of work, but in the case here, we can. In a rare move, Mitsubishi has allowed their consultants to release some of the findings about the global markets for lithium through to 2020 and that's just what they did at the IM Lithium Supply & Markets Conference Santiago 2009.

The results are comforting to those worried about a sudden upsurge in the production of electric cars using lithium ion batteries, especially over the next few years. Because of the sudden recession, there is actually an oversupply of the mineral right now and this should continue until about 2013. It doesn't seem as though there will be a "peak lithium" after that either. Although brine deposits, like those in Bolivia and China, may offer the easiest and cheapest supplies to extract, a moderate price rise would support mining here in America, where we appear to have quite a bit.

The same commenter referred to a recent lithium conference in South America. One presenter was Keith Evans, who had this to day:

In my presentation at the Santiago conference to which reference has been made earlier, I tabulated lithium resources totaling approximately 30.0 million tonnes equivalent to approximately 160,0 million tonnes of lithium carbonate-the primary feedstock for the lithium chemicals used in lithium-ion batteries. Presentations subsequent to mine increased the tonnage and other estimates by SQM and in a paper to which I made reference had somewhat higher figures.

Of my total, 17.6 million tonnes occur in Salar-type continental brines as are found in Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, China and Tibet, 7.65 million tonnes in pegmatites, 1.7 million tonnes in geothermal and oil field brines, 2.0 million tonnes in the clay mineral Hectorite and 0.85 million tonnes in a newly discovered boron/lithium mineral named Jadarite.

Of the brines the largest resource is in the Salar de Atacama, Chile, (the world’s current leading source of lithium) with 6.9 million tonnes.

The Salar de Uyuni is the second largest brine source. This occurrence receives massive publicity but, in fact, contains only 18% of the world’s resources. It is not the “Saudi Arabia of Lithium” and the large scale use of lithium ion batteries is not in any way dependent upon its development. It could possibly become a significant source of supply but in all respects it is inferior to the Salar de Atacama and some other salares.

Pegmatites are widely distributed throughout the world and suggestions have been made that switching to spodumene as a source for chemical production would result in a major increase in prices. Most Chinese production currently is from spodumene at costs estimated at about $2.00/lb using domestic ores and concentrates imported from Western Australia. A former North Carolina producer estimates that production from there currently would be at about $2.50/lb for carbonate.

These are higher than Chilean costs but if a massive demand materializes they can be readily absorbed by the battery industry where lithium costs represent 3-5% of the total battery cost. At current carbonate prices a vehicle requiring, for example, 6.6/lbs in a hybrid would contain lithium costing $20 in a battery selling for many thousands of dollars.

Regarding the statement concerning “untested technologies for lithium recoveries” Western Lithium appear confident that their hectorite project will be viable as does Simbol Mining with its process for geothermal and other possible brines. The Jadarite deposit in Serbia appears to be a uniquely attractive resource.
Of the various sources a question mark must remain on the viability of recovery from Smackover Formation oil field brines but in my tabulation it represents only 2.5% of the listed resources.

And as another commenter, David Ahlport, noted:

Well, the Federal Government could simply just do eminent domain on the patent for large form-factor Nickel Metal Hydride Batteries, which Chevron now holds.

That, or if they combine this technology with this one. You got yourself a nearly scarcity-proof battery source:

web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/batteries-0208.html
lbl.gov/tt/techs/lbnl1719.html

The BBC reports on Bolivia's lithium gold mine - or perhaps just another resource curse - Bolivia holds key to electric car future.

High in the Andes, in a remote corner of Bolivia, lies more than half the world's reserves of a mineral that could radically reduce our reliance on dwindling fossil fuels.

Lithium carries a great promise. It could help power the fuel efficient electric or petrol-electric hybrid vehicles of the future. But, as is the case with fossil fuels, it is a limited resource.

Lithium carbonate is already in the batteries of laptop computers and mobile phones. It is used because it allows more energy to be stored in a lighter, smaller space than most alternatives.

And as the auto industry rushes to produce new fuel efficient and electric cars, it too is turning to lithium batteries as its first choice to boost the power of their new models.

GM has one in its new hybrid Volt, Toyota is testing one in its next generation hybrid Prius. Mercedes is testing an electric version of its Smart, while BMW is doing the same with its Mini. And Nissan-Renault, Mitsubishi and VW are all rushing to buy or produce enough of the batteries to power their future models.

The best of the pure electric cars can reach ranges of more than 150 kilometres per charge. More is needed But there is a problem.

Mitsubishi, which plans to release its own electric car soon, estimates that the demand for lithium will outstrip supply in less than 10 years unless new sources are found. And they have ended up in Bolivia.

"The demand for lithium won't double but increase by five times," according to Eichi Maeyama Mitsubishi's general manager in La Paz. "We will need more lithium sources - and 50% of the world's reserves of lithium exist in Bolivia, in the Salar de Uyuni," he adds, pointing out that without new production, the price of lithium will rise prohibitively.

Valuable resource

Lithium is found in rocks and sea water. But almost all the commercially exploitable reserves are found in the brine under salt flats. The world's largest reserves lie in Bolivia at the Salar de Uyuni - in the remote southern Andean plane.

But Bolivia is not a country known to be friendly to foreign industry. Its socialist president, Evo Morales, is keen to expand state control over its natural resources, a task carried out by Bolivia's minister for mining, Luis Alberto Echazu.

"We want to send a message to the industrialized countries and their companies," Mr Echazu says. "We will not repeat the historical experience since the fifteenth century: raw materials exported for the industrialisation of the west that has left us poor."

Gold, silver, tin, oil and gas have all been found and exported from here whilst the country remains the poorest in the region. For President Morales' supporters, that is reason enough not to allow in foreign mining companies to extract the lithium.

The Australian has a report on a conservative terror campaign in Bolivia aimed at seizing control of the gas fields - Morales warns on Bolivian violence. Bob Morris has some background on recent events in Bolivia.

President Evo Morales struggled to assert control over Bolivia yesterday as right-wing demonstrators set fire to a town hall and blockaded highways in four opposition-controlled provinces, causing shortages of food and petrol. At least 30 people have been killed in the Andean nation this week, Interior Minister Alfredo Rada said.

All the deaths occurred in Pando province, where Mr Morales declared martial law on Friday, dispatching troops and accusing right-wingers of killing his poor peasant supporters.

The governor of gas-rich Tarija, representing the four eastern provinces that are in rebellion against the Government, said before beginning talks with Mr Morales over the weekend that half the country was blockaded by opposition barricades along 35 highways. "Also paralysed are borders with Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay," said Governor Mario Cossio, who said he hoped to lay the groundwork for a truce. ...

Mr Morales's spokesman, Ivan Canelas, said an armed group set fire to the town hall in Filadelfia, a municipality near Cobija, early on Sunday. "There are people who want to continue sowing pain across the region," he said.

The gravest challenge to Mr Morales in his tenure of nearly three years as Bolivia's first indigenous president stems from his struggle with the four lowland provinces where Bolivia's natural gas riches are concentrated and where his Government has all but lost control. Right-wing saboteurs last week briefly cut the natural gas flow to Brazil, which depends on Bolivia for about half its gas consumption.

The rulers of the rich provinces are seeking greater autonomy from Mr Morales's left-wing government and are insisting he cancel the referendum due on January 25 on a new constitution that would help him to centralise power, run for a second consecutive term and transfer unused land to the landless peasants. Mr Morales says the new charter is needed to empower Bolivia's poor indigenous majority.

Mr Morales and his ally, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, expelled the US ambassadors from their countries last week to protest at what they called Washington's incitement of the right-wing protesters.

The Oz also reports that MEND militants in Nigeria's delta region have declared an "oil war" - Shell attacked in Nigerian oil war.

Militants yesterday attacked a Shell facility in Nigeria's restive southern Delta region, a day after an armed group declared an "oil war", a military official said. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), the most prominent armed group in the region, which had declared the "oil war", said it was responsible for the attack in Rivers State, claiming to have destroyed the Anglo-Dutch group's Alakiri station.

The facility was attacked and set alight just after midnight with "dynamite and other explosives", but "the attack was beaten back", Lieutenant-Colonel Moussa Sagir said. Colonel Sagir said an exchange of gunfire pitted armed men who arrived on a dozen or so speedboats against a joint military taskforce. MEND said in an email to the media that an operation code-named Hurricane Barbarossa had "razed the station to the ground". ...

MEND has changed the security paradigm in oil-rich southern Nigeria since its emergence in early 2006 - multiplying attacks, kidnappings of foreign oil workers and sabotage on land and offshore. It has caused Nigeria to lose one-quarter of its oil production, costing Lagos its place as the biggest crude oil producer in Africa, with Angola recently taking that title.

The group says that it is fighting fora larger share of Nigeria's oil revenue to go to local populations. In June, it attacked Bonga, the flagship deepwater field of Anglo-Dutch giant Royal Dutch Shell. Sited 120km from Nigeria's coast, Bonga had, until that attack, been seen as safely out of the reach of militant raids.

Jeff Vail has the next installment of his series on geolpolitical feedback loops and oil supply disruptions - Geopolitical Disruptions #2: Identifying the Feedback Loops.

This post, the second in a series on Geopolitical Feedback Loops (see part 1 here), will outline the various geopolitical feedback loops that operate to disrupt oil and resource production. I've tried to link most of these feedback loops around a common theme of ownership dispute, illustrated below. There are several examples for each feedback loop, but in the interest of time I've just listed them and linked to further information--each could be a post in its own right.

Figure 1: Does the state own oil reserves or the nation? When the two are contiguous it makes little difference, but as they become increasingly dissimilar the dispute drives conflict. While I haven't divided the feedback loops explicitly along ownership lines, this graphic may help conceptualize these processes as a single system.

GFL1: "Nation"/State Conflict

Explanation: Who owns the oil, the state or its constituent nation(s)? Throughout the 20th Century, the international order was defined by the Nation-State system that developed out of the Peace of Westphalia. As Philip Bobbitt explained in his seminal work, The Shield of Achilles, the constitutional basis of the modern Nation-State is that the State provides for its constituent Nation. For this system to work, there must be close overlap between the State and the Nation.

This, of course, has always been a fiction to some degree as States have generally cobbled together numerous national and affinity groups with less than total exclusivity and attempted to mold a "national character" out of them that is contiguous with the boundaries of the State. Today, for a variety of reasons, this order is rapidly falling apart. As a result, nations and states are increasingly in conflict over self-determination and, critically, resource control.

When a Nation (or any other non-state group such as a religion, issue group, or affinity group--I am using the broad term "Nation" here only for simplicity) has a dispute with a controlling state over control or use of a resource such as oil, gas, etc., the importance and motivation to escalate to violence in pursuit of resource control is, at least partially, a function of the value of the resource in dispute. Because these conflicts have the tendency to increase the scarcity, and therefore value, of the resource, this type of conflict forms a positive feedback loop. In addition to this positive feedback nature, this process also expands in scope as it intensifies: resource ownership that was minimally relevant a few decades ago (e.g the Arctic, or Canada's tar sands) is now becoming an important source of conflict (this tendency towards scope-expansion also runs though many of the feedback loops identified below).

In the interest of brevity, for a more in-depth look at the fundamentals behind this feedback loop see my paper The New Map. I list this feedback loop first because I think it may be the least understood, and has the potential to mushroom into one of the largest sources of supply disruption within a decade or two. It serves as the foundation of the concept of resource ownership disputes illustrated in the headline graphic. As with all the opposing pairs illustrated above, when the two overlap perfectly (e.g. "nation" and "state" or "legal owner" and "moral owner") there is no problem, but as these opposing notions begin to diverge the foundation for sustained conflict is created.

Examples (Oil & Gas): Nigeria (Ijaw/Igbo/etc.), Iraq (Kurd, Shia, Sunni), Canada (First Nations), Iran (Awhaz, Baloch), Angola (Cabinda), Mexico (Zapatistas/EPR), Saudi Arabia (Islamists), Yemen (al-Qa'ida, tribes), Sudan/Chad (SLA, Darfur), Ethiopia (Ogaden), UK (Scotland). Other resources: Morocco (Sahrawi Rebels - Rock Phosphate), Indonesia (Iriyan Jaya - various metals), Democratic Republic of Congo (LRA - diamonds & other minerals), Israel/Palestine (aquifers & surface water), American West (surface water compacts). ...

GFL8: Export Land Model (ELM)

Explanation: Rising oil prices increase revenues for oil exporting countries. These rising revenues generally drive consumption in exporting countries (e.g. more wealth means more people can drive larger cars, more food security means rising populations, etc.), which in turn reduces exports. In some circumstances (generally where the exporter is a major player such as Saudi Arabia or Russia) declining exports may increase price enough to keep net export revenues rising--in these situations this forms a positive feedback loop. In other cases, where rising consumption results in lower overall export revenues, a negative feedback loop is created. Westexas, Khebab, and others have already done outstanding work on this topic--I have included this feedback loop at the end of this list not because it is least important (it is probably most important, at least in the near term), but because it has been most exhaustively covered previously.

Example: Real world examples of ELM in action include Indonesia, Egypt, Malaysia, and Mexico. In the near future, its impact in major exporting states like Saudi Arabia and Russia may be most significant.

Quantifiable Disruptions in Nigeria & Iraq

The EIA estimates that, as of April 2007, Nigeria had 587,000 barrles per day of production shut in by violence--primarily the Nation/State, Priavateering, Corruption, and Targeting/ROI feedback loops. However, the EIA also estimates that Nigeria has 3.2 million barrels per day of production capacity. A single attack has shut in as much as 345,000 barrels per day for a brief period, and the amount shut in at any given time is highly variable. Recently, Nigerian production has been hovering just below 2 million barrels per day, and has even dropped briefly below 1 million barrels per day, suggesting the actual shut-in figure is far higher.

In Iraq, oil production is just now nearing pre-war production levels of 2.6+ mbpd. While some officials claim Iraq could surpass 3 mbpd in 2008, critical political compromises splitting resource ownership between the federal governments and Iraq's three main ethnic/sectarian groups have not been reached. The oil shut in since the invasion (and the oil that future violence may shut in) can be attributed to various feedback loops: military adventurism driven by resource insecurity, nation/state violence, corruption, and targeting/ROI.

Conclusion

Here, I've listed the examples that I can think of for each feedback loop. If readers have additions, changes, etc., please add these in the comments. The links are not intended to be definitive sources of information about each feedback loop in action, but rather a jumping-off point for research and discussion.

The next and final post in this series will discuss the interrelationships between these feedback loops and prospects for solving, or at least mitigating, their impact.