Tesla Quietly Begins Construction of First U.S. Lithium Refinery in Texas

'Quietly' in a world where full planning permission had to be lodged for the specific purpose of build, and all OH&S signoffs reached. It's a highly combustible reactive metal, and there is no way that anything doing refining (which implies gangue and waste product) is going to be made without significant EPA sign-off.

Australia continues to be the significant non-Atacama source of Spondumene from Pegmatite. And we have significant discussion taking place in Australia about the sanity (or lack of it) in exporting raw materials at low marginal capex compared to investing to make product, to sell at higher value but more importantly, strategically to our advantage having feedstock onshore.

We're stupid, and mining lobbies dominate capital investment and state planning> We don't build things, we'd rather dig them up, sell them to you, and then have to buy them back for more than we sold them. Go figure.

Texas? interesting choice, unstable grid network, water shortage, tornadoes, politically unstable

Do they expect South America's lithium to all end up in Texas?

https://www.csis.org/analysis/south-americas-lithium-triangl...