Bahrain’s oil minister warns of limited lithium sources

By Handan Kazanci, Murat Temizer and Muhsin B. Tiryakioglu

ISTANBUL (AA) - Bahrain’s oil minister warned Thursday the limited lithium reserves will not meet the surging demand from rising electric car production - its main usage area.

“The global production of lithium is not more than 35,000 tons,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa Sheikh said on the sidelines of the World Petroleum Congress, of which Anadolu Agency is the global communication partner.

“People fail to see that it is going to be an enormous limiting factor for electric vehicles to really overcome,” Al Khalifa said.

“An electric car like a Tesla can consume around 60 kilograms of lithium [in the production of one car],” he added.

“If you are going to produce a Tesla, the current production limits you at a maximum of 600,000 cars,” he said adding that lithium is not just solely focused on electric vehicles, but is a major component of battery production.

- Bahrain needs to increase gas sources

The oil minister said the country is heavily reliant on gas as their primary source of energy.

“We need to continuously increase our sources of gas. We are building an LNG terminal and at the same time increasing domestic gas, and we are looking more to different resources,” he said.

Bahrain is looking for potential partners with newly available technologies to develop hydrocarbon resources that in the past were too expensive to produce.

“Because of a reduction in investments, a serious supply issue looms in the next four or five years,” he said.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Bahrain is the smallest oil producer in the Gulf Cooperation Council.

“To meet the country’s increasing natural gas demand, Bahrain plans to construct a 145 billion cubic feet per year floating liquefied natural gas import facility by 2018,” according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.