The deadly riots that broke out earlier this month in the French territory of New Caledonia are pushing up the price of nickel, a key metal needed to transition off fossil fuels that has gotten more expensive as global conflicts affect the market.
As the U.S. did with Hawaii and Alaska, France fully incorporated five of its territories in the Caribbean, South America and the Indian Ocean into its political structure. Other French colonial islands, mainly in the Caribbean and South Pacific, assumed a secondary status as “overseas collectivities,” akin to America’s relationship with Puerto Rico or Guam.
called a series of “extraordinary confrontations” in New Caledonia, “marked by hostage-taking, blockades and assassinations.”The 1998 settlement that ended the conflict laid the groundwork for three separate votes on the island’s independence, after a 20-year transition period. The results were not immediately binding. But if New Caledonians voted all three times in favor of breaking away from France, it would likely have set the stage for independence.
Instead, Macron’s government sided with the loyalists, accepting the results and promptly introducing legislation in the French Parliament to extend full voting rights to New Caledonia residents living in the territory for at least 10 years. Those new, non-Kanak residents would likely vote against independence, dimming hopes of gaining independence at some point in the future with another vote.
“At the same time we lost Koniambo’s ferronickel, we’ve lost a potential new source in Brazil that would have serviced the U.S. and European stainless steel markets,” Gardner said.The battery-grade nickel coming from New Caledonia’s Prony project is unlikely to make its way to American battery factories, because there are no U.S. facilities to process MHP into the next-stage product needed for lithium-ion packs.