Portugal expects to launch a tender for lithium exploration licences next year, the new secretary of state for energy said on Tuesday, confirming the general outlines of a plan devised under his predecessor, although with a slight delay.
In September, Joao Galamba’s predecessor Jorge Seguro Sanches said he wanted to launch the tender before the end of 2018 as part of a plan to make Portugal Europe’s top supplier of the metal for electric car batteries and meet an expected surge in global demand for lithium.