"Saudi Arabia of lithium"18 Feb 2022 22:10
Another find, this time in California
https://interestingengineering.com/salton-sea-lithium
'According to the scientists, the geothermal field hidden under the Salton Sea has the potential to contain enough lithium to meet all the lithium requirements of the US. Moreover, the leftovers can even be exported.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has dubbed the state the "Saudi Arabia of lithium," and established the Lithium Valley Commission last year to investigate and report the possibilities of the valley. A research professor at the University of California, Riverside, Michael McKibben, who has been studying the Salton Sea geothermal field since the 1970s, also agrees with the potential.
"If you do a back-of-the-envelope calculation, you can convince yourself there's somewhere between 1 and 6 million metric tons of lithium in that field," McKibben says. "That would be the largest brine source of lithium in the world, bigger than any individual South American salar deposit. So, it's a big number, and it means the potential is there for – again, back-of-the-envelope calculations – something like 50 to 100 years' worth of lithium production."'