India Is Negotiating for 5 More Lithium Blocks in Argentina, on Top of the 5 It Already Holds

What happened

Union Mines Minister G. Kishan Reddy said on September 11, 2026, that India is negotiating for five additional lithium blocks in Argentina, on top of the five blocks the state-run Khanij Bidesh India Limited (KABIL) already holds there. KABIL, a joint venture of National Aluminium Company (NALCO), Hindustan Copper Limited and Mineral Exploration and Consultancy Limited, first signed an agreement with Argentina's Catamarca Minera y Energetica (CAMYEN) in January 2024 to explore five brine lithium blocks -- Cortadera-I, Cortadera-VII, Cortadera-VIII, Cortadera-VI and Cateo-2022-01810132 -- spanning about 15,703 hectares in Catamarca province, part of South America's so-called Lithium Triangle. KABIL received Argentine government clearance in April 2026 to begin deep exploration, including borehole drilling, and plans to invest roughly Rs 200 crore in the work, with production targeted for around 2029. Reddy said India is separately in talks with Australia and Chile for additional lithium blocks, and urged Indian private companies to pursue overseas mineral exploration to feed raw material back into India's battery manufacturing base.

The details

India's lithium strategy runs almost entirely through overseas acquisition, because the country's own confirmed domestic reserves remain small and largely unexploited. That's the backdrop against which KABIL's Argentina push has to be read. The joint venture -- built from three existing state mining and metals companies, NALCO, Hindustan Copper and MECL, rather than a new standalone entity -- signed its first Argentine agreement back in January 2024, well before lithium prices went through their 2025-2026 volatility. The five blocks it holds sit inside Argentina's Catamarca province, part of the Lithium Triangle that also spans Chile and Bolivia and holds a large share of the world's identified lithium brine resources.

What changed by September 2026 is the scale of ambition. Reddy's announcement of five additional blocks under negotiation effectively doubles India's targeted footprint in Argentina alone, and the minister paired it with parallel talks in Australia and Chile -- the other two corners of the world's dominant lithium supply base, hard-rock and brine respectively. Getting environmental clearance for deep exploration in April 2026 was the necessary precondition for the roughly Rs 200 crore KABIL now plans to spend on drilling and appraisal work, and the 2029 production target gives a rough sense of how long the path from exploration to actual lithium output really takes, even once the blocks and the money are in place.

The emphasis on encouraging private Indian companies to explore abroad independently, rather than leaving the entire task to a state joint venture, points to a wider recognition in New Delhi that KABIL alone won't move fast enough or far enough to meet India's lithium needs as EV and battery-storage manufacturing scales up domestically.

Why it matters

India has almost no proven domestic lithium supply chain of its own yet, so every tonne that eventually reaches an Indian battery factory from Argentina, Australia or Chile is a tonne India didn't have to buy on the open market at whatever price China's dominant refining position and global demand happen to set that year. Locking in equity stakes in overseas blocks now, years before production actually starts, is India's way of trying to get ahead of a resource race that China, the US and other large economies are all running at the same time.