Recently the Government of India entered into an agreement for a lithium exploration and mining project with which one among the following countries?
- (a)Brazil
- (b)Australia
- (c)Argentina
- (d)Chile
Correct — C, Argentina. On 15 January 2024, Khanij Bidesh India Ltd — KABIL, the joint venture set up by three Indian public sector mineral companies to acquire strategic mineral assets abroad — signed an agreement with CAMYEN SE, a state enterprise of the Argentine province of Catamarca. KABIL obtained exploration and exclusive rights over five lithium brine blocks covering roughly 15,700 hectares, with the right to move to commercial production if lithium is proved, and committed an investment of about Rs 200 crore. It was India's first lithium exploration and mining project abroad by a government company, and it was signed three months before this paper.
- (a)Brazil — Brazil is a significant mineral partner for India in other commodities, but it is not part of the South American lithium brine belt in the way its neighbours are, and no such agreement was signed with it.
- (b)Australia — The most dangerous distractor, because Australia is the world's largest producer of hard-rock lithium and India does have mineral cooperation with it. The agreement the stem refers to, however, is with Argentina.
- (d)Chile — Chile sits in the same Lithium Triangle and is among the largest lithium producers, which makes it the near-miss answer; the blocks KABIL took are on the Argentine side of that region.
Lithium comes to market by two very different routes. Hard-rock mining extracts it from spodumene ore, the Australian model. Brine extraction pumps lithium-rich water from beneath salt flats and concentrates it by evaporation, which is the model of the Lithium Triangle spread across Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. India has almost no producing lithium of its own — inferred resources were reported in Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir in 2023 — while its battery and electric vehicle plans need assured supply, so acquiring assets abroad became policy. KABIL exists for exactly that purpose.
Three of the four options are genuinely lithium-relevant, so the item cannot be solved by eliminating implausible countries; it has to be answered from the news. The useful discipline is to tie the agreement to its Indian entity: KABIL is the acquiring company and Catamarca is the province, and remembering either of those pins the country down. Note also what the agreement is and is not. It is an exploration agreement with a route to production, not a supply contract — production from these blocks is expected only towards the end of the decade — so it does not make India lithium-secure today, and India continues to import lithium and lithium-ion cells.
- KABIL — Khanij Bidesh India Ltd — signed the agreement with CAMYEN SE of Catamarca province, Argentina, on 15 January 2024.
- Five lithium brine blocks totalling about 15,700 hectares, with exploration and exclusive rights and a route to exploitation.
- The committed investment is about Rs 200 crore, and it is India's first overseas lithium project by a government company.
- Argentina lies in the Lithium Triangle with Bolivia and Chile, where lithium is recovered from brine beneath salt flats rather than from hard rock.
- Choosing the world's largest lithium producer instead of the country actually named in the agreement.
- Treating an exploration agreement as a supply guarantee.
- Assuming an inferred resource in India means India is now a lithium producer.
As a country-recall item on a named agreement, or as a pairs item matching countries to the resources they are rich in. Learn the entity, the country and the date together.
Consider the following pairs: Country : Resource-rich in I. Botswana : Diamond II. Chile : Lithium III. Indonesia : Nickel How many of the above pairs are correctly matched?
- (a) Only one
- (b) Only two
- (c) All three
- (d) None
Answer(c) All three
The same map of who holds which mineral, tested a year later. Note that Chile appearing there as a lithium-rich country is exactly why Chile is the near-miss option here — being rich in a mineral is not the same as being the country India signed with.
In the context of electric vehicle batteries, consider the following elements: I. Cobalt II. Graphite III. Lithium IV. Nickel How many of the above usually make up battery cathodes?
- (a) Only one
- (b) Only two
- (c) Only three
- (d) All the four
Answer(c) Only three
Explains the demand side of this card. Lithium, cobalt and nickel go into the cathode of an electric vehicle battery — which is the reason India is acquiring lithium blocks abroad in the first place.
- practice — not a real PYQ
KABIL, in the news in connection with overseas mineral assets, is a joint venture set up to
- (a)refine crude oil abroad
- (b)acquire strategic mineral assets overseas for India
- (c)manufacture electric vehicle batteries
- (d)regulate mining leases within India
Answer(b) acquire strategic mineral assets overseas for India — Khanij Bidesh India Ltd was formed by Indian public sector mineral companies for that purpose.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The 'Lithium Triangle' comprises which three countries?
- (a)Brazil, Peru and Ecuador
- (b)Argentina, Bolivia and Chile
- (c)Chile, Peru and Colombia
- (d)Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay
Answer(b) Argentina, Bolivia and Chile — where lithium is recovered from brine beneath high-altitude salt flats.