Codelco–SQM Launch 35-Year ‘NovaAndino’ Lithium Joint Venture

Resource deals rarely happen in a vacuum. When Salvador Allende nationalised Chile’s ‘Big Copper’ in 1971, the state seized assets outright; today’s government uses a softer model, echoing Mexico’s 2013 oil reform—majority state control, minority private expertise. The pact rides a broader 2020s wave of battery-metal nationalism (Indonesia’s nickel bans 2020, Zimbabwe’s lithium export halt 2022) as countries seek leverage over the energy transition. Locking in control until 2060 signals Santiago’s bid to regain the top-producer title lost to Australia in 2017 and to influence global lithium pricing much as Codelco once shaped copper. Yet critics note the absence of an open tender and the opaque Morgan Stanley advisory contract—risks that long plagued other state ventures in the 1980s. Over a 100-year horizon the deal’s significance hinges on two uncertainties: whether lithium brine extraction survives intensifying water-scarcity scrutiny and whether lithium itself remains the dominant storage medium. If both hold, NovaAndino could become to lithium what Codelco became to copper; if not, this agreement may resemble late-stage investments in whale oil on the eve of kerosene (1860s)—strategic today, obsolete tomorrow.