Morgan Bazilian, director of the Payne Institute for Public Policy at Colorado School of Mines, was recently featured in the Houston Chronicle discussing transparency in the mineral markets.
From the article:
Renewable energy generators and electric vehicle makers are spurring demand for minerals like lithium, cobalt and nickel for battery storage. But there are no transparent mineral trading sites like there are for petroleum products.
"It's not like oil," Morgan Bazilian, professor of public policy at the Colorado School of Mines, told dozens of energy executives at a session on minerals at CERAWeek by IHS Markit. Some of the minerals are controlled by just a handful of operators, and prices, supplies and demand are hard to determine.