Two China Lithium Mines Attract Skyhigh Bids for Exploration Rights

What’s new: Southwest China’s Sichuan province has witnessed a scramble for exploration rights for two local lithium mines, with the highest bid for each soaring to hundreds of times higher than the starting price.

As of Friday evening, the bid for a five-year exploration right to the Jiada Lithium Mine in Barkam reached 3.1 billion yuan ($428 million), nearly 1,000 times higher than the starting price of 3.19 million yuan, in an auction that began on July 21, according to data from the province’s Government Affairs Service and Public Resources Exchange Service Center.