Send message to Author

Short abstract

This paper examines how lithium is made into a speculative resource in Portugal, tracing how geological knowledge, market expectations, state planning, and political frictions sustain extraction as a future possibility amid delay, disputes, and uncertainty.

Long abstract

Since the mid-2010s, Portugal has been represented in official reports, policy documents, and media accounts as a country with significant lithium resources. In these narratives, lithium appears as a critical mineral for the energy transition: a resource that could support electric mobility, reduce European dependence on external suppliers, revitalise rural areas, and enable a national value chain from extraction to recycling. Yet this future has not materialised in a straightforward way. Several projects have been delayed, cancelled, or left in uncertain administrative trajectories, and Portugal still has no battery-grade lithium mines or refineries.

Drawing on interviews, policy documents, media reports, and fieldwork, this paper examines how lithium is being made into a speculative resource in Portugal. It traces how geological knowledge, resource estimates, market expectations, and state planning contributed to the construction of Portugal as lithium-rich and lithium extraction as a possible transition pathway. It then examines how this promise encounters various frictions, including incomplete geological knowledge, local resistance, bureaucratic procedures, and political hesitation.

Building on literature on resource-making, speculation, and the politics of possibility, the paper argues that the apparent slowdown in Portugal’s lithium rush is not merely a suspension of resource-making. Rather, it is part of the contested process through which lithium is made, unmade, slowed down, and kept alive as a future possibility.