The tree huggers will drive their electric vehicles to the protests that aim to shut down the production of the batteries for the cars they want us all to drive.

Thanks for the link to the very informative article in “The Bolivia Brief” substack.

For those who might be curious, it’s worth noting that the Bolivian deposits are utterly different from those recently described in the USGS report on the Appalachian reserves.

In Bolivia, lithium is found in brine under the surface of salt flats. The brine is pumped out, and the lithium extracted. The substack article provides a detailed description of the political obstacles to this seemingly simple process.

Plagued by operational inefficiencies, unsteady energy access, and high magnesium-to-lithium ratios, these plants have increased extraction in recent years but consistently produce far below their 15,000-ton capacity, totaling only about 1,500 tons of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) annually, over the last five years (according to YLB figures). Neighbors Chile and Argentina produced nearly 300,000 tons and 34,000 tons of LCE in 2025, respectively.

With its decline in natural gas production—-thanks, Evo—there is hope of increased revenue from increased lithium production, but those hopes are more hopes than actuality. The article says that lithium prices have crashed, from $90k/ton to $10-20k /ton.

https://boliviabrief.substack.com/p/lithium-bolivia-is-losing-a-race

The people of Appalachia have had mixed experiences with coal mining. They live there, they care and they vote in those states. Plus the environmental movement and regulations give them plenty of ammunition.

— Huxley

No kidding!

Coal mining is the economic lifeblood of many towns and areas of Appalachia. In some cases it has also been an environmental catastrophe. In some places entire mountain tops have been sheared off and the rubble dumped into the rivers.

I can’t fault the locals for having mixed feelings.

Lithium isn’t gold but market price determines if it is worth the costs of exploration, permitting, mining, processing, and remediation. Economic geology.

Politics (permitting, economic stability, political stability) is very important as mining projects can be very expensive, have long lead times, and risky. Investors have to risk their capital usually.

Copilot Search

Sociedad Química y Minera (SQM) Overview
Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile S.A. (SQM) is a Chilean multinational chemical and mining company headquartered in Santiago, Chile, specializing in the production of specialty plant nutrients, iodine, lithium, and industrial chemicals Wikipedia+1.

Its production facilities are primarily located in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, including the Salar de Atacama and Salar del Carmen.

Apparently, the Atacama desert is very lithium rich and it sounds like easy pickings. Processing water could be a problem.

“Pegmatites are extreme igneous rocks that form during the final stage of a magma’s crystallization. They are extreme because they contain exceptionally large crystals and they sometimes contain minerals that are rarely found in other types of rocks.”

(https://geology.com/rocks/pegmatite.shtml)

Spodumene is a mineral found in pegmatites, but it’s rare. Its formula is LiAl(SiO3)2, so it can be mined for lithium. Pegmatites are rare, and spodumene is rare in pegmatites. It’s a hard target for mining, nothing like oil or coal. The USGS report that’s making so much news is more about politics than science. It doesn’t contain any new geological information, and the maps I’ve seen are extremely misleading. The maps suggest that there are huge lodes of lithium spread out over the Appalachian Mountains. Getting the lithium out of the mountains is more akin to finding an Easter egg that my mother hid on the moon seventy years ago. Having said that, I’m a strong supporter of reviving hard-rock mining in the US, whether it’s for spodumene or something else.

Finally, a personal note. I was once doing some fieldwork in the mountains of New Mexico. As part of the trip, we went to an old spodumene mine that was little more than some interconnected holes in the ground. Claustrophobic. After quite a bit of hammering, I was lucky enough to find a spodumene crystal as big as my fist. Sadly lost in one of my many moves.